Page 38 of Built Orc Tough
That gets my attention. I glance up. Her face is stern, but there’s something softer in her eyes—concern, maybe. Frustration, certainly.
“She kissed me,” I say, because if I don’t speak it aloud, it’ll just keep echoing inside me.
“I know.” She crosses her arms. “She told me.”
Of course she did. Ivy and Terra speak in lightning strikes and unspoken alliances. If she was brave enough to tell her, she must be hurting worse than I thought.
“I pulled away,” I mutter, low.
Terra doesn’t flinch. “Why?”
I shrug, more with my shoulders than my words. “Because I didn’t want to ruin it. This... thing we have. This balance.”
“You think pulling away didn’t ruin something?” she shoots back. “She’s been walking around here like someone cut the sun off mid-morning. You’ve made her doubt something that made her feel brave.”
“I was trying to protect her,” I say, quieter now, because the words feel heavier than they should. “From me.”
She moves closer, leans a hip against the herb table, and drops her voice. “Gorran, I’ve known you since you came here. I saw what you looked like the day you showed up with a blade on your back and nothing in your eyes. I’ve seen the work you’ve done to change that.”
“That doesn’t erase what I was.”
“No,” she agrees, “but it proves you’re not only that. You’re more than the blood you spilled. You’re more than the stories they told in the pits.”
I stare at the feverfew, at its frayed edges and sweet, peppery scent, and try not to let the shame rise like a tide.
“She deserves someone... better,” I say finally.
“She wantsyou,” Terra replies, and her voice doesn’t waver. “Not someone better. Not some myth you’re trying to live up to.You. The man who keeps her silly tea jars alphabetized. The man who makes her laugh like it surprises her every time. The man who, gods help him, puts glittery pollen in his beard and doesn’t storm out in a rage.”
I try to protest. The words don’t come.
“She’s not asking for a hero,” Terra says, leaning in, “She’s asking for honesty. For presence. She’s asking you to stop hiding behind guilt and start showing up like you mean it.”
I stare at her for a long moment, then down at the green ribbon she left folded on the counter—a small, simple thing Ivy only uses when she’s carefully crafting something that matters.
I pick it up, twist it between my fingers.
That’s the part that terrifies me.
Because she does matter.
Because with her, I am more.
And maybe, it’s time I stopped being afraid of that.
Maybe love doesn’t ask you to be perfect. It just asks you to bebrave.
—
The ribbon is still in my hand as I walk back through the corridor, its fibers soft and familiar against the skin of my calloused palm. I don’t have a plan—no grand speech or orchestrated gesture—but I have something better. Resolve.
The shop’s front glows with late morning light, slanting through the stained glass window in fractured patches of amber and green. Dust motes swirl lazily in the air, and the scent of rosewater and warm soil clings to the space like a second skin. Everything feels alive here. Grounded.
I find her hunched over the table, tying off a spray of sage and heliotrope with thin gold wire. Her posture is tighter than usual, like she’s holding herself together through sheer will alone, and something inside me clenches at the sight.
She hears me before she sees me—her hands pause mid-twist, head tilting just slightly as my boots creak against the floorboards. She doesn’t turn.
“I’m not in the mood to talk about pruning techniques or why you alphabetized the tinctures wrong again,” she says, dry and clipped.
