Page 19 of Finding Her Heart
Humans could settle the Peace River Valley. The Orki protected everything but the mountain pass. Snuggling into their lands, in a fertile and mild climate, accepting their protection, came with a price. The Orki had the right of way. Could enter the towns, trade for man-made goods, and like a man, offer for the town's daughters. If the girl was young, still with her family, they would speak to her family, just like any man. If the girl was a woman of age and still unmarried, the Orki did not have to negotiate. He had the right to take. It was in the Peace Law, even if the villages chose to ignore it.
"Just take a woman away, steal her in the night against her wishes?" Mama said in outrage.
The memory of her father countered,"It is only if she is unmarried. And what woman can survive the humble life alone? And from what I understand, those who have gone with them do not regret it."
"Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it right,"Mama grumbled.
When Annabell was too young to be taken the first time, the pale-skinned, white-eyed Orki and his war beast approached her. He asked her brothers for marriage rights. They knew the bargain. They received the same lessons from Papa, but after that damned stupidity with the council that got a man killed, it was no longer an honor but a shame to become an Orki War Bride.
Agreement or no, the Peace villages did not view kindly on the proposal. Just to be approached marked a girl. Already branded as a Child of Woe, set apart as strange and her first offer of marriage comes from an Orki Original.
Annabell had been delighted. Excited. It was her most secret dream come true. She would get to see their world, the rest of Dorsus. A romantic adventure.
Her brothers were disgusted. Appalled. Insulted. They did not believe Papa's tales. They told her Mama would never want that life for her. They told her she could not do such a thing, that she would be taken from her life. They told her she would have no one she knew around her.
An Orki had her now.
She tried to tip her head to see him better. He was a warrior in every way, holding her across his lap in the vee of his legs while he rode atop the war beast that singled her out earlier from the crowd. Slashed, scarred lines marked his pectorals with unusual precision. Without thinking, she rubbed her cheek there, silly with that sound he made. The texture of supple leather. The feeling was as 'cream' as she had ever encountered.
"Good leather is cream,"Mama's voice was an unhappy echo. She did not approve.
He wore something around his neck, clearly seen from her vantage point. A necklace of scarred flesh circled his throat and protruding from the front was a rectangle of black stamped metal, a circle, with strange shapes were indented in it. In the dark, with only the moons and shadows of night to see by, it looked like the metal disappeared inside of his body. Above that, the sharp line of his lower jaw, which jutted forward in an underbite that accommodated two overgrown teeth. Tusks. Not human.
They had not spent more than twenty minutes together that first meeting. The great war beast bounded up to her, a giant thing acting out the sweetness of a harmless puppy. She laughed and tested her Orkis words on her. She knew more of it then. Her family, her father in particular, was a knowledge keeper of sorts. He'd even been a temporary schoolmaster, and he shared his insights with Annabell, who soaked up every word. His death cursed it all, but Annabell still retained a good grasp of words, even if her pronunciation was bad. She had understood what he was saying.
Had he introduced himself? She searched her memory but couldn't find it. He must have. She remembered his unique eyes. White like his skin, with triple eyelids that blinked at her. White skin, white eyes rimmed in then rings of black. But she couldn't remember his name.
"Dawdling and distracted. What am I going to do with you, Annabell Roe?"Mama said unhelpfully.
"What is your name?" Annabell asked, ignoring her critical inner voice.
Dipping his head to look at her, milk eyes with black centers looked back at her. He grunted, a sound centered in the barrel of his chest. But he didn't open his mouth to answer. Under the heavy, hairless brows, he searched her face.
Annabell wondered what he saw. She had no idea what drew an Original to choose a human woman, but it had nothing to do with beauty. She'd lost the small beauty of her girlhood. Her family was known for their handsomeness—it had never done her any good at all; time dulled her considerably. When they met, her hair glowed with a subtle nimbus of red and gold in the sunlight. Now, it was the same muddy color as the earth around Righteous's main boat launch. Her clear moss-colored eyes had been large, heavy-lidded. Now she looked in the glass and saw dark circles, patchy spots, and wrinkles in her eyelids, the color dulled, darkened. Sadness and sleeplessness changed how she carried her shoulders. The firm youth and elasticity of her skin and body hardened with long days and nights. She was bony in places she didn't want to be and soft in places she didn't need to be.
Benjere pointed out the circles around her eyes every time he visited. After her run-in with the raider, the bruising had more purple and green than usual, but she'd seen her reflection. The change was not so great.
Her father hadn't known how the Orki chose their brides. She had asked. Often. She'd grow up and catch an Orki husband, she told him. As if an Original could be caught like a fish. Papa made becoming a war bride like becoming a princess. It sounded like true love, like adventure, like freedom.
An Okri treated his bride like the most important person in his life.
"Don't you dare, Annabell Roe. Don't you dare,"Mama whispered, ignoring Papa's memories. She always did that.
Everything, everyone in Righteous was gone. Dead. The raiders arrived in the dark of night, leaving no men alive. They killed her brothers. Her family. Perhaps her oldest and youngest brothers were alive, safe in other towns, with their families— she could only hope. But her last ties to the town of Righteous Way were buried in the earth with stains of blood.
The sharp memory of graves struck her hard. For a moment, giddy with still being alive, those losses had thinned, the wave of their return hit her hard, along with guilt ripping at her gut. A sob cracked free from a dark place, evaporating all the relief she felt at being saved, and submerging it with shame.
She survived. They had not. She had nothing left but woe.
Covering her face with her hands, she cried.
"What have you done, Annabell Roe?"
Woe made her the eye of every storm, unscathed at the center of it, forced to watch. The truth of her curse sank into her bones. Pressing her against the snowy-colored skin of the Orki. She didn't deserve to escape death or the mauling rape that others had suffered.
Surrendering to the curse stole her desire to do anything but weep. She was the least worthy of the entire family. The cursed one. The disappointment.
The tears came with a burning tightness in her face. Steeped in the male's comfort and security, her pain felt even sharper. A wail of denial squeezed out of her throat and into the air. She cried for her village. The beloved settlement where people went to live to escape violence. She cried for family members. For faces she would never see again. For Benjere, her most hated and beloved of her brothers. His children, Bess, their pain. She wept for her neighbors, for the women who survived and now lived with the loss of many loved ones.
