Page 70 of The Orc's Captive Bride
“I don’t know. But I believe he has the strength to break free. If he has a reason.”
“A reason?”
“You, Dr. Monroe.” Vorlag smiled gently. “You’re his reason. His hope for something beyond survival and obedience. He just has to realize it.”
Her throat tightened.
She wanted to believe that. She wanted to think she could be enough to help Khorrek overcome forty years of conditioning. But she was also a realist. Some damage ran too deep, and some scars never fully healed.
All she could do was offer him the choice—the possibility of something different. Whether he took it was up to him.
“Let’s focus on what we can control,” she said, pushing her emotions aside. “Breaking the curse. Finding the counter-ritual. That’s something concrete. Something I can actually do.”
“Agreed.”
They bent over the texts again. Her back protested the hours of sitting hunched over scrolls, but she barely noticed. This was a puzzle she had to solve.
“Here.” She pointed to a symbol that kept recurring. “This appears in every major section. Always in the same relative position. What is it?”
Vorlag leaned closer. “It’s… balance. Or equilibrium. The natural order.”
“Why would that be important in a text about creating a Curse?”
“Because all magic requires balance. For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. You can’t create something without destroying something else. Can’t bind without offering freedom elsewhere.”
“So when they created the Beast Curse, they had to create the counter-curse simultaneously?”
“Theoretically, yes. The mechanism for breaking it would have been built into the curse itself. Like a key hidden inside a lock.”
“Which means if we can understand how the Curse works—truly understand it, not just the surface mechanism—we’ll understand how to break it.”
“Yes. But that understanding has been deliberately hidden behind layers of misdirection and false trails.”
“Because they didn’t want future High Kings to find it.”
“Precisely. They wanted the option available, but only to those who had the wisdom to use it properly.” Vorlag’s expression grew troubled. “Lasseran is many things, but wise is not one of them.”
“So we have to find it first.”
“We have to find it, period. Lasseran doesn’t even know he’s looking for a counter-curse. He thinks these texts will help him strengthen his control.”
“What happens when he realizes we’re looking for a way to undo everything?”
“I imagine he’ll be quite upset.”
The dry understatement made her laugh despite herself. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Dr. Monroe, I need you to understand something.” Vorlag’s tone grew serious. “If we succeed in this—if we find the counter-curse and break the Beast Curse entirely—it will change everything. The orcs of Norhaven will be free for the first time in hundreds of years. Lasseran’s plans will be ruined. And he will do everything in his power to punish those responsible.”
“I know.”
“You could die. We all could. Khorrek included.”
“I know that too.”
“And you’re willing to accept that risk?”
She thought about Khorrek’s face as he’d told her about his childhood, and the emptiness in his voice as he’d described the training halls. She thought about an entire people cursed for hundreds of years. She thought about Lasseran’s empty eyes and silken threats.
