Page 75 of Till Orc Do Us Part
The words blur for a beat before sharpening into focus.
"Find your brave."
I swallow hard.
Jamie watches me with the unflinching gaze only a child can give. “You’re a green giant. You can do brave stuff.”
A rough laugh escapes me—low and soft.
“I will try,” I say.
He grins, satisfied, and plops down beside me on the steps. “Good. I’ll help.”
We sit in silence, the boy’s small warmth a fragile tether against the dark.
I turn the compass in my palm, the needle spinning lazy beneath the taped message.
"North doesn’t always mean right."
"Find your brave."
Perhaps the path is not the one I planned.
But it is the one I must take.
For this place.
For her.
For me.
Later, long after Jamie’s small frame leans sleep-heavy against my side and I carry him back to Liara’s waiting arms, I walk the boardwalk alone.
The night is sharp with cold. The wind cuts clean through the thin fabric of my shirt, but I welcome it.
It keeps me awake.
The planks groan beneath my boots—old wood steeped in stories, in salt, in stubbornness.
I move slow.
Every step a memory.
"You can’t just… do this."
"Then why does it feel like one?"
"I fight for this place."
"And I will stand beside you—or not at all."
Rowan’s voice threads through the dark, tangled with the sea’s low murmur.
I lean against the rail where the love-locks hang—a riot of rusted metal, bright ribbons, names scrawled in fading ink.
Here, beneath the paper lanterns not yet taken down, I remember the way she looked at me—defiant and afraid and aching in ways she could not say aloud.
I run my fingers along the cold metal, the rough edges.
