Page 76 of Orc'd & Loaded
"Nobody died."
"Then why did you drag me into a garbage alley with your murder face on?"
"This is not my murder face."
"Boris. I've seen you punch a hawk. I know your murder face. This is adjacent."
The laugh that comes out of me is rough and wrong-shaped. I scrub my hand over my jaw. The scrape on my knuckles from the cliff face pulls and stings.
Just say it.
"I don't want this to end."
She blinks. "The party? It's still going. We can go back-"
"Not the party."
The alley is quiet except for the electric hum of the lamp and the muffled fiddle from the square. A moth circles the bulb in desperate, stupid loops.
"The collaboration. The cooking. The-" I gesture between us, a broad, clumsy sweep of my hand that encompasses the six feet of dirty concrete separating her small frame from mine. "This. All of it. I don't want it to stop when the festival receipts clear."
She goes very still. The bandaged hand presses harder against her body.
"What exactly are you saying?"
"I'm saying I want you permanently."
The word lands like a cleaver on a cutting board. Clean. Final. No ambiguity in the grain.
"I want mornings arguing. I want you yelling at me about smoke ventilation for the next thirty years. I want to build menus with you. Fight with you. Cook beside you until we're old and slow and somebody else has to chop the root vegetables."
Her lips part. No sound comes out.
My hand finds the leather wrapping against me. I pull it free from the apron strap and hold it between us. The bundle is about fourteen inches long, narrow, heavier than it looks. The leather is oiled dark and tied with a simple cord.
"What is that?"
"Open it."
She takes it with her good hand, bracing it against her bandaged palm with a wince she tries to hide. The cord gives easily. The leather falls open.
Steel catches the yellow light.
The blade is eight inches of hand-forged carbon steel, full tang, with a slight curve at the belly for the precise rocking cuts she favors during her prep work. The spine is thick enough for heavy leverage on dense root vegetables. The edge holds a mirror polish that could split a hair lengthwise. The handle is black walnut, hand-carved to fit her specific grip, smaller than a standard chef's knife because her hands are smaller than standard.
I spent nine hours on the blade alone. Heating. Hammering. Folding. Quenching in oil that hissed and spat like something alive. Grinding the bevel on a wet stone until my shoulders ached and the sparks left tiny burns on my forearms that I can still feel when I flex.
The bolster is where I put the engraving. Two letters, intertwined. S and B. Not stacked. Not side by side. Woven together, each letter incomplete without the other, forged directly into the steel so deep that no amount of sharpening will ever wear them away.
Solene stares at the knife. Her thumb traces the engraving. The bandage on her palm rasps against the walnut handle.
"You made this."
"Three nights ago. After you burned your hand saving my foot from that skillet."
"You forged a knife."
"I'm an orc. We don't do flowers."
