Page 105 of Her Orc Healer

Maevewasalreadyhalfwaydown the lane before I realized I’d stopped walking.

“Ro?” she called, twisting back on her heel. “You coming?”

I nodded and forced my feet to move.

The streets of Everwood had returned to normal too quickly. Doors stood open, merchants haggled, someone was hammering a new sign onto the front of a bakery. People smiled when they passed us. As if the world hadn’t shifted sideways just three days ago. As if it hadn’t almost broken entirely.

Maeve skipped ahead again, her boots scuffing the cobblestones. She had color in her cheeks today. She'd eaten all her breakfast, made a mess of the jam jar, asked if she could wear her blue ribbons again.

I told her yes. I told her she looked strong.

I didn’t tell her my hands were shaking when I tied the bows.

Auntie Brindle had offered to come with us this morning, but I'd declined. This visit needed to be just us—me and Maeve, whatever we found. Whatever we had to face.

I adjusted the linen-wrapped bundle tucked against my hip—bread still warm from the oven, a jar of raspberry preserves, two clean shirts I'd found at the market that might actually fit his broad frame, and a small packet of tea Iris had pressed into my hands with a knowing look. The weight of it was grounding, practical. Something to focus on besides the knot that had taken up permanent residence in my chest.

"Good morning, Rowena!" called Tilda from her flower stall. She waved, eyes bright with curiosity. Everyone was curious these days. Word had spread through Everwood of strange happenings in the Moonshadow Forest. Of magic gone wrong. Of an orc healer who'd saved a child from dark magic.

Stories change in the telling. Grow wings. Sprout thorns. By the time they reached me, they were more myth than memory—and I was happy to let them stay that way. The truth was sharper. More jagged.

I lifted my hand in a brief wave, not slowing my pace.

"Come see!" Maeve called, already halfway to the next corner. "The sugar-spinner's here!"

I caught up to find her watching a dwarf craftsman weaving impossible shapes from molten sugar—birds with gossamer wings, stars that seemed to shimmer in the light. Maeve's eyes were wide with wonder, her hands clasped beneath her chin.

She was smiling. Really smiling. The kind that reached her eyes, that wrinkled her nose, that reminded me she was just a child—not a vessel, not a mark, not a destiny. Just a girl who loved sweet things and bright colors and bedtime stories.

The dwarf winked at her and spun a delicate butterfly from golden threads, its wings paper-thin and almost translucent. He passed it to her with a flourish.

"For the bravest little lady in Everwood," he said. His accent carried the rolling cadence of the northern mountains.

Maeve accepted it reverently, careful not to break the fragile creation. She looked up at me, her eyes shining. For a moment, caught in the slant of morning light, with her face tilted toward mine and happiness written so plainly across her features, we looked exactly like the vision the shadows had shown Kazrek—the one where we were safe and whole and happy.

But he wasn't here to see it.

The thought twisted in my chest. Sharp and sudden, like a knife slipping between ribs. I swallowed it down, forcing a smile for Maeve's sake.

"What do we say?" I prompted gently.

"Thank you," she chirped, beaming at the craftsman.

I fished a copper coin from my pocket and pressed it into his weathered palm. He closed his fingers around it and gave me a small nod. Understanding passed between us—the quiet acknowledgment that sometimes, children needed magic to remind them that the world wasn't all shadows and fear.

Across the square, a pair of robed mages stood beneath the old alder by the fountain, their heads bent together in tense conversation. One gestured toward the trees, the other toward the sky. Their voices didn’t carry, but their urgency did.

The Silverroot Circle was supposed to have moved on by now. Uldrek had said as much when he stopped by the shop yesterday—there were schedules to keep, towns waiting for medicine and supplies. But Everwood had drawn attention, and more than a few of the caravan’s mages had insisted on staying to study the residual magic left behind in the forest. Corruption that old didn’t fade cleanly, they said. It needed watching.

Uldrek had rolled his eyes so hard I thought he might tip over.

“I’m not a scholar,” he muttered, leaning heavy on the counter as Maeve showed him how her compass glowed now without flickering. “I guard people. I guard things. If I wanted to listen to six mages argue about spectral imprint decay, I’d... actually, no. I wouldn’t.”

“You could leave,” I pointed out gently.

He just shrugged. “Kazrek’s here. Vorgrim too. Someone’s got to make sure the lot of you don’t accidentally join a cult.”

Then he gave Maeve a copper coin, winked, and said he was off to “patrol somewhere far away from intelligent conversation.”

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