Page 3 of Built Orc Tough
“This is going to be a disaster,” I mutter, brushing past him and yanking open the closet to shove my bag inside.
He doesn’t follow. Just mutters, under his breath but definitely not quietly enough, “Only if you keep pretending you’re still in the city.”
I freeze with my hand on the doorframe, turn back with the kind of smile that usually gets me free wine at gallery shows. “Well, at least in the city, we didn’t have to play nice with green-skinned know-it-alls who think fungus is a personality.”
He chuckles.Chuckles. Like I amuse him. Like I’m a raccoon knocking over trash cans and he’s just letting it happen.
“I’ve got plenty of personality,” he says, turning back to his jars. “You just haven’t seen the good parts yet.”
“Trust me,” I say, slamming the closet shut, “I’m not looking.”
CHAPTER 2
GORRAN
There’s a kind of silence I’ve learned to appreciate—the heavy, weighted kind that sits low in your gut and says,you survived another day. It’s not quiet like peace, not exactly, but quiet like after the final bell, when blood’s been spilled and the crowd is gone and all that’s left is the echo of your own breath. The kind of silence you don’t hear until you’ve known what it costs.
Elderbridge has that silence in the mornings. Out here, the birdsong doesn’t start until the mist begins to burn off the grass. The river behind the shop babbles soft and steady, and the wind carries the scent of pine resin and rain-soaked moss. I let it settle over me like a blanket while I grind dried elderflower into powder, slow and rhythmic.
Then she stomps through the shop like she’s trying to wake the dead.
Heavy-footed. Mouth first, as usual. The closet door bangs open, and the distinct sound of angry suitcase shoving rattles the workroom shelves.
I glance up at the ceiling and breathe deep through my nose.
If I had half a gold coin for every time a city girl thought she could intimidate me with volume and perfume, I could’ve retiredtenyears ago.
But Ivy’s not like the others. Not quite.
She’s all sharp edges and wounded pride, like someone took porcelain and painted it with warpaint. There’s fire under the polish. I’ll give her that. Unfortunately, fire’s the last damn thing I need.
I’ve worked too hard to build a life of green and quiet and healing, and I’ll be damned if I let some high-strung florist with commitment issues turn my shop into a page from a style magazine.
A tin bell tinkles from the front as someone pushes through the door.
“Gorran, you back there?” The voice is light, female, familiar.
“Back here, Mira,” I call, not looking up.
A head of frizzy copper hair peeks through the curtain a second later, belonging to Mira Kendrel—an herbalist-in-training from the northern hills, barely twenty and wide-eyed with curiosity and entirely too many questions.
“I brought the balm you asked for,” she says, holding out a tin wrapped in wax paper. “Your batch of redroot from last week smelled... a little off.”
I take it, unscrew the lid, and inhale. “You left it in a warm pouch again.”
Her cheeks pink. “It wasnext tothe stove, not?—”
I raise a brow.
She huffs. “Okay,fine. But it was still salvageable, right?”
I grunt. That’s as close as she’s getting to a compliment today.
Behind her, Ivy appears like a storm cloud with eyebrows.
“Friend of yours?” she asks, folding her arms as she leans in the doorway.
Mira straightens instantly, eyes flicking between us. “Ivy, right? I’ve heard about you. Miss Lyria says you’re the ‘soul of structure in a chaotic world.’”
