Page 1 of Yuletide Orc

CHAPTER 1

They weren’t coming for me. Maybe my party were injured. Or dead. Maybe I was the only one left alive. I pushed aside the mounting dread and fear, compartmentalizing it all as survival became the only priority.

Iwas still alive. If I lived, I could help them. But I had to save myself first. Had to get moving again. Had to defeat the remaining enemies.

I pressed a hand against my bleeding side and whispered a small spell for healing. Something powerful enough to bind the skin and close the wound. To maybe stop the bleeding before I had no more blood left to lose. A soft, blue glow the same shade as my cobalt hair hummed across my pale fingers. Magic,mymagic, began to stitch shut my wound.

Heavy footsteps crunched in the morning snow. Large flakes fell around me, obscuring what small view I had of the forest from the ground. Sunrise had only just begun peeking through the trees, the sky still latching on to dark blue. This clash had lasted all of two minutes, and from the looks of it, my party of mercenaries had lost against the orcs despite having surprise and the last remains of nightfall on our side.

Fear bubbled up my throat again as my magic warmed my healing skin, but laborious breathing now accompanied the approaching footfalls. I groaned and forced my hands beneath me, leaving my wound to the open air again. It was more important to stand now. To get away or at least face the end head-on.

Agony scorched across my side as I pushed off the ground and onto my knees as he advanced. The orc emerged through the thick, falling snow like a moving boulder, all broad shoulders and rippling muscles beneath his green skin. Blood streaked through his tied-back, light-brown hair and across some of his tribal tattoos. He glared down at me with pale-green eyes as he gripped his massive battle axe before him. His enormous hands wrapped easily around the weapon’s hilt—the same blade that’d cut open my side. One of his tusks was longer than the other, and he sported piercings along both ears.

It was the rage in his eyes that intimidated me the most.

I pressed my hand to my side again and willed my magic to finish healing me as we stared at each other. I was scared to move—not because I didn’t think I could take him, but because I didn’t have a plan. The only “plan” my party had had when we’d taken a job to “clear out some orcs” along Caiburn’s town border had been ruined by snow and the presence ofthisorc. This fucking chieftain in particular.

“Thief mage,” Bikkar the Bonecrusher said with so much disdain that he might as well have cut me with his blade again.

“Bonecrusher.” A dry laugh escaped my lips. Nothing about this was funny. Maybe it’d distract him. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

I needed to heal myself so I could fight. So I could find my friends and check on them. This entire job had gone utterly sideways, and while we’ve fought with orcs before, Bikkar and his tribe were the strongest around. The most powerful, and theonly one with political influence. We’d fought with them before and had been ordered by the Crown to stay out of their way after numerous causalities on both sides. But my party’s benefactor hadn’t includedthisinformation when we’d been hired. By the time we had realizedwhomwe’d been trying to “clear out,” it had been too late.

I swallowed hard and allowed a single moment of fear to really sink in. I’d seen time and again before what those hands—those strong, tense hands—could do with that battle axe. I’d get one shot at escape, and if I didn’t succeed, that would be the end of me.

Bikkar sauntered closer without loosening the grip on his axe. That made me smile, however inappropriate a smile might have been at this moment. He still thought I could escape or attack. Orsomething. There was a reason he wasn’t letting down his guard.

Good. I’d take all the help bluffing that I could get. I always did.

“If you don’t want to keep meeting like this, thief,” Bikkar began, and his rumbling, deep voice reverberated through me straight to my core, “then perhaps you should stop killing my people.” His lips curled in a snarl. The leather along the battle axe’s shaft creaked as he wrung his hands around it.

That was when I did something I never thought I’d do in his presence: I caved.

I felt my expression fall before I could stop it from becoming something short of pleading. “We didn’t know. The person who hired us?—”

Bikkar stomped forward and reeled back his axe. The action kicked up snow, but I didn’t dare move to wipe it away. The last thing I needed was to give him any indication I was going to attack. Something in my gut told me he wasn’t going to kill me,not just yet. Still, my heart froze in my throat as seconds passed into safety.

Finally, Bikkar broke the silence. “I should kill you.”

“Why don’t you, then?” I shouldn’t have tempted him, but the question still hung in the air. The rest of my party of mercenaries and thieves might have already been dead, and if they weren’t, they were most certainly injured and unmoving. “Everyone else is already dead.”

“They’re running,” Bikkar corrected.

“They wouldn’t.”

Bikkar didn’t swing his axe. Nor did he lower it. The truth of his words sent dread spiraling through me anew. He just stood there, towering over me menacingly. He was a terrifying hulk of an orc. But he was handsome, too. The lines of his strong jaw. His tea-green eyes that seemed to shift through emotions as we stood here. Anger. A lot of rage. Deliberation. And… something softer.

“They did. My people died. Yours ran.” He spat on the ground. “Cowards. And now you cower before me instead of standing to attack. To meet your end with an ounce of courage.”

Ah, pity. Pity was that softer emotion.

I was still on my knees before him. I wouldn’t beg for my life. There was nothing within me that would make me beg Bikkar foranything. But kneeling before him now, I understood where Bikkar was coming from.

So, with a deep cringe as pain bloomed across my still-healing wound, I forced myself to stand before Bikkar as tall as I could. I lifted my chin and kept working my magic. There was no point in hiding me healing myself anymore. Especially not when one swing of that sword would end me.

My window to escape was closing. But I’d always worked better against a ticking clock. “There. Happy now?”

The corner of Bikkar’s mouth twitched, but then he shook his head as if his next words weren’t what he’dwantedto say.

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