Page 2 of Tusk Love

The connection that had been forged the day she emerged into the world, red-cheeked and squalling and covered in her mother’s water, while the woods her parents were traveling through disintegrated into ash all around them.

Now, twenty years later, in another forest halfway across the continent of Wildemount, Teinidh appeared beside Guinevere, blazing and statuesque, her humanoid body made of intertwined burning branches, eyes like molten craters and hair a crown of flames.

The bandits’ jaws dropped, and they hastily began backing away. It was the last thing the six of them did in this life, other than scream as the wildfire spirit swept through their circle in a vicious red-gold blaze. The putrid, sickly sweet odor of charred flesh filled the night air.

By the time it was over, Guinevere swayed unsteadily in the middle of a ring of smoldering bodies blackened beyond recognition. Teinidhwas gone, but the conflagration remained. Leaves and underbrush caught on fire, and flames swiftly licked their way toward the surrounding trees.

The bandit leader had been too far away to get caught up in Teinidh’s attack. He wasstillfar away, rooted to the spot, gawking at Guinevere. She turned and fled—not to safety, but to her parents’ flailing oxen. The act of summoning Teinidh had sapped her of strength, but she picked up one of the dead guards’ swords and, with what little might she still possessed, brought it down over the ropes that tied Bart and Wart to the already smoking tree trunks.

The two oxen bolted as soon as they were free, no thought left to them but to escape the inferno. As they vanished into the darkness, Guinevere stumbled back to the wagon—the fire hadn’t reached it yet; she had to save the trunk—

A meaty fist tangled in her long, loose hair, spinning her around with enough force that she was vaguely surprised her neck didn’t snap. With all his subordinates dead, Lashak roared in fury, raising his free hand to strike her. Guinevere’s meager courage vanished, and she closed her eyes again, bracing herself for the blow.

But it never came.

When she dared to look, an arrow was sticking out of the bandit leader’s spade-sized palm.

The orc seemed as startled as she was. For what felt like ages, the two of them could only stare at the projectile, which had sliced clean through Lashak’s hand.

The spell was broken when a deep, resonant, and thoroughlyboredvoice drifted into their ears over the sputter of burning leaves: “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

Lashak shoved Guinevere away. She fell to the ground just as a tall, broad-shouldered figure strode into the clearing, and she surveyed him from her half-crumpled position through eyes that were beginning to sting from the acrid smoke.

He wore a travel-stained brown tunic, frayed breeches, and scuffed boots. Moonlight danced through waves of thick jet-black hair, some of which had been gathered into a disheveled topknot while the restflowed free. A few strands tumbled down from a widow’s peak to frame chiseled features put together with rugged elegance, overlaid with skin the dark gray-green of oakmoss. Firelight cast a burnished gloss over sweeping black brows, deep-set eyes the color of molten gold, and the white tusks that bracketed the stern line of his mouth. They weren’t as large as Lashak’s—not as large as they would have been on a full-blooded orc—but they were sharp.

The new arrival’s bow was slung over his back, and he approached Lashak with a curved sword in each gauntleted hand. Despite his humble attire, there was a calm assurance radiating from him that dulled Guinevere’s fear. That made her think that maybe, just maybe, she was saved.

Then Lashak snapped off the arrowhead, pulled the rest of the arrow out of his hand, and tossed it aside without even the slightest hint of pain. All seven feet of him faced his opponent fully; he drew his greataxe, which was several times the size of the other man’s swords put together, and Guinevere realized with a sickening clench in the pit of her stomach that she wasn’t saved at all.

“Someone my own size?” Lashak echoed with a sneer. “Would that be you, then, half-breed?”

The stranger rolled his eyes. “That kind of talk may have been acceptable in whatever provincial backwater you crawled out from, but we’re a little more sophisticated here in the Dwendalian Empire.”

Guinevere blinked at him. How was he so supremely unrattled?He isn’t even wearing armor.

Letting out a battle cry that shattered the air, Lashak charged. And, without flinching, the stranger met him halfway.

Guinevere had grown up in a nice stone house in the Shimmer Ward district of Rexxentrum. Her parents were untitled, but they’d spared no expense to raise their only child like a proper lady, commissioning the finest gowns and hiring the best tutors—even long after the money had started running out. Deeply conscious of their sacrifices and desperate to shield herself from their criticisms, Guinevere had applied herself to her lessons with vigor, had never gone anywhere she wasn’t supposed to, had made friends only with those of herstation or higher, and had never intentionally broken a single rule. The only quirk she permitted herself was clinging to the totem crafted for her by the old hermit of Cyrengreen, and even then Guinevere had carefully replaced the rustic twine with the silver chain five years ago, to make it more fashionable.

Yes, she had lived an orderly, sheltered existence. And now she was down on her knees in the dirt, in her nightgown and her satin slippers, surrounded by dead bodies and a fire she’d caused, witnessing raw violence for the first time in her life.

Initially, she could make neither heads nor tails of the fight. The two foes each did their utmost to kill the other in a frightening blur of limbs and metal, etched in the pulsing scarlet of the ever-growing flames. But the longer she watched, the more the cycle of slashing and dodging and parrying made sense—like some particularly fiendish, complicated waltz—and it dawned on Guinevere that, while Lashak had the advantage in terms of size and strength, the stranger was faster and more agile.

And he was smarter, too. After crossing his swords over his head to block a ringing blow from Lashak’s greataxe, he darted out of reach, then made as though to leap to the right. Lashak swung at where he assumed the stranger would land, but it turned out the latter had merely feinted—for he nimbly corrected his course and wentleft,thenbehindhis opponent. The curved edges of his swords carved a path from Lashak’s shoulder blade to his hip.

The bandit leader collapsed, howling. The stranger loomed over him, a sinister moonlit silhouette with bloodied swords and an impassive expression. His eyes snapped to Guinevere, and they were pools of liquid amber in the glow of the fire…

The fire!

She was on her feet before she knew it, the grievously wounded Lashak and the coolly triumphant stranger forgotten. The wagon’s canvas bonnet was already ablaze, but she dove inside without a second thought. Gagging on thick clouds of smoke, the agonizing heat a miasma against her skin, she grabbed the satchel that contained the most valuable wares with one hand and the handle of the pearwoodtrunk with the other, and she shuffled backward out of the burning vehicle on her knees and elbows, slowed down by her dear burdens.

She shrieked as a pair of large hands clamped around her ankles in a viselike grip and yanked her the rest of the way out of the wagon.

No sooner had the stranger deposited her onto solid ground than he told her to run. She complied expediently enough, but she’d barely taken two lumbering steps before he tried to tug the satchel and the trunk out of her hands.

She held on tighter.

“Leave these,” he instructed tersely.