Page 114 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

She looked up at him. “So, they just let you walk right out?”

“I don’t know if everyone would have been amenable, but I managed to convince Kinsahad I needed a spot of fresh air after nearly being executed, and he let me out with Katil. She was supposed to keep an eye on me, I suppose.”

“That’s foolish on his part,” said Gathren.

“I think he felt bad about killing me,” said Iahir. “Not that he had done it, but about being so close to doing it.”

“But you don’t have to go back,” she said.

“Well…” He squared his shoulders. “My family—”

“Yes, of course,” she said, letting out a breath, and turning to look down at the piles of ash in the alleyway.

“Why?” he said. “You don’t have some sort of idea? Because there’s nowhere we can be together, there’s no place that would welcome us. I suppose I’d had some idea of going north, maybe to one of those keeps held by the orcs, but I doubt they would treat me particularly well.”

“I understand Dathor is holding his keep along with his elf cousin,” she said. “Maybe there, but I don’t think Dathor likes me very much.”

“You did sort of call him names before you put him on a train,” said Iahir. “So, you don’t have any ideas?”

She swallowed, shaking her head. “Well, I suppose I thought that you would be on the run if they were trying to execute you, and that we must get as far away from this place as possible, so I had sort of thought… a ship?”

“A ship,” he said.

“Yes, I think I thought we’d be stowaways,” she said. “Which sounds dangerous and difficult and everything else. But maybe we could disguise ourselves in some way and—”

“Because it’s utterly believable for us to be traveling together, an orc woman and an elf man, if we are but wearing a disguise.”

She winced. “No, I suppose it’s not.”

He shifted on his feet. “I could be your prisoner? Perhaps I have some important information about something across the seas, something I know was buried in the dwarf lands, and you have been charged to take me there, and we could get passage on a dwarf ship. There are some that still come to the harbor. Findas allowed dwarf vessels to dock the last week of the month, and that is… now.”

“Yes, but are any ships docking in the wake of everything?”

“I do not know,” he said.

“It’s a better idea than I had,” she said. “Maybe it would work. What would we do there, amongst the dwarves?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.

“What about your family?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, hanging his head. “I do have a responsibility, and I am concerned about them, but… well, my brother betrayed me and sent me off to be executed, and my father seems to be more lucid than he was, and my mother…” He shook his head. “My mother…”

“You must go to your mother,” she said, reaching up and putting a hand against his cheek. “And I must go to my father. We have known for some time that this, between us, it doesn’t work.”

“Perhaps,” he said, letting out a breath. “And perhaps we are also owed a proper goodbye, warrioress.”

“What does that mean?” she said, smirking. “Does that mean you want to fuck me one last time?”

“Obviously, that’s what it means,” he said, nodding. “We just need a place.”

“Your Kinsahad won’t wonder where you’ve been?”

“Let him wonder.”

“Well, I am staying in a very nice abandoned house with a very nice bed.”

“Are you?” He grinned at her. “How convenient.”