Page 72 of Orc'd & Loaded
"The technique is flawless. The restraint is surgical. But beneath the precision lives something I rarely encounter in fine dining." He pauses. Looks down at the remaining bites. "Genuine, reckless passion. The kind that leaves marks."
Behind me, Boris makes a sound. Low. Almost sub-audible. The vibration travels through his ribs into my spine and pools at my skull.
Vance sets the plate back on the table with the reverence of a man handling scripture.
"I want a second plate."
The volunteer blinks. "Sir, the judging protocol only requires-"
"I know about the protocol. I wrote the protocol for six regional competitions. I want a second plate because I intend to eat every bite this time instead of rationing it like a coward." He straightens his gray lapels. "Immediately, please."
The kitchen door swings open before I can push it. Boris barrels through, hauling me with him, one massive hand still locked on my hip. We hit the prep station together. The remaining ingredients sit in their mise en place containersexactly where we left them. The wild spice dust still glows faintly in the mortar.
"Same ratio?"
"Same everything. Don't change a molecule."
Boris grabs the parsnips. I grab my mandoline. The blade sings.
My hands shake. Not from fear. From something electric and enormous pressing outward against me, something with no name that tastes like vindication and smells like sulfur-honey and sounds like a food critic demanding seconds in front of three hundred witnesses.
Boris sears the parsnip fans in the cast iron. The wild spice hits the hot miso glaze and that internal glow returns, sunset-in-caramel, alive on the dish. I place the microgreens. The edible flowers. The final dusting of red-black powder from the mortar.
Four minutes flat.
Boris carries the plate out personally. He sets it in front of Vance with both hands, and the table groans slightly under him leaning over it. Vance looks up at the orc looming above him. At the blood dried brown on his forearms. The hawk claw marks. The gravel embedded in his knuckles.
"You climbed something for this spice."
"Cliff." Boris straightens. "Punched a bird."
Vance's thin lips do something extraordinary. They curve. Barely. A millimeter of movement that probably qualifies as a full grin by his standards.
"Good."
He picks up his fork. Cuts. Eats. His eyes close on the first bite and do not open again until the plate is clean.
The crowd erupts.
I stand in the kitchen doorway with my hand pressed against the frame and my good hand pressed against my sternum where my heart is doing something medically inadvisable. The noiserolls over me like a wave. Cheering. Stomping. Someone bangs a wooden spoon against a pot.
Boris turns from the judges' table. Finds me across the square. Blood-streaked. Grinning so wide his lower tusks catch the afternoon sun.
He mouths two words.
We won.
Not yet. Not officially. The other dishes still need scoring. But Reginald Vance just ate two full plates of our food and smiled, and the notebook beside his water glass remains closed, which means he doesn't need notes, which means the review is already writing itself inside his skull in sentences that will be printed in magazines I have pinned to my apartment wall.
Boris crosses the square toward me. The crowd parts. Not because they're afraid of him. Because him moving with that much purpose simply reorganizes the space around his body like gravity.
He reaches the doorway. Looks down at me.
"You're still bleeding on my coat," I say.
"Your coat was ruined three chapters ago."
"That doesn't even make sense."
