Page 93 of My Orc Has Big Tusks
That daughter was gone.
I hefted my bag and walked past her through the doorway, choosing to leave this time instead of being left.
It didn’t take long to drive back to the rescue facility.
The entire way, I kept seeing my mother’s face when I’d told her it was “a little late for that.” Her expression had shuttered.
She’d left when I was eleven, but I’d just left her standing in my bedroom, and somehow that felt worse.
Brovish had left a key for me under the third stone on the left on the path. I unlocked the door and stood in the doorway a moment before stepping inside, lowering my suitcase to the wide wooden floorboards.
Warmth hit me first, followed by the smell of pine and woodsmoke.
I stepped inside and closed the door.
The kitchen was orc-size, counters at my chest, upper cabinets requiring a step stool. But he’d carefully organized it all. Mugs were grouped by size, and he’d placed tea in small labeled jars.
I settled on his sofa with a sigh. A novel about animal rescues sat on the table beside the big chair, bookmarked halfway through with a folded piece of paper.
A pebble collection occupied the windowsill, arranged in a pattern I didn’t understand but could tell wasn’t random. I gotup and studied them without touching. Each stone was slightly different, darker or lighter, and one had a faint pink streak running through it.
I’d seen his cozy home before, but I strolled through it, looking it over from a new angle. I was going to live here for a time. I wasn’t just a guest who came for dinner.
The bathroom was simple. One toothbrush. Soap in a dish. A towel hung in neat folds from the rack.
The bedroom was enormous, which made sense, the bed sized for the male who needed it. The quilt had been crafted with stitching I’d never seen on anything human-made, smaller and with a pattern running in directions that didn’t follow any grid. A nightstand stood on either side of the bed, one holding a closed notebook, a half-filled glass of water, and a lamp.
The carved snugglethorn standing beside the lamp had been made by hand. The detail in the wool and the tiny hooves showed someone had spent hours on this. Brovish, maybe, during the quiet evenings he spent here alone.
Krem had mentioned once that orcs carved figures of their favorite creatures as a meditation practice. It was a way of understanding them more deeply.
I picked it up, running my fingers over the smooth wood, and felt like I was holding something private. Something that showed me exactly who Brovish was.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face and changed into pajamas in the bathroom with the door closed, trying to maintain some boundary between guest and intruder. Then I sat on the edge of his bed, my weight barely denting the mattress made for someone three times my size.
Even the quilt smelled like him. My chest ached, and it had nothing to do with my mother.
He’d given me this. His home, his bed, his private space. And asked for nothing back except that I sleep.
After shutting off the light, I lay under the blankets in the dark.
Trees swayed in the breeze outside, their leaves tapping together. A rumbleback purred in the distance.
This felt more intimate than the conference room.
Because he’d done this for me without asking for anything back.
I woke before the birds started cheeping.
By the time I reached the facility, the sky had shifted from black to a deep gray that meant dawn was somewhere nearby but not committing yet. The staff room door sat ajar, light spilling into the hallway.
I heard someone inside and pushed it open.
Brovish lay on the staff room sofa the way a felled tree occupied a trail—his body skewed in all directions. His legs had given up on the armrest and hung freely in the air. He’d folded one arm under his head, and the other trailed over the side, his knuckles grazing the floor. His hair had come partially free from the leather tie.
Sofia perched on his shoulder, rigid, her tail wrapped tight around her body, her posture making her feelings known to the room.
Drogar stood behind the sofa, his eyes gleaming and his shoulders shaking.
