Page 71 of The Orc's Captive Bride
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’m willing to accept that risk. Because the alternative is worse.”
Vorlag studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“Then we’d better get back to work. We have two days left, and a millennium of lies to unravel.”
They bent over the scrolls once more.
Outside the windows, the sun tracked across the sky. Morning became afternoon. Afternoon faded toward evening. She filledpages with notes, drew diagrams, and mapped connections between passages in different texts.
A pattern was slowly emerging. Subtle, but definitely there.
The original Veilborn priests had been clever. They’d woven the counter-curse into the very fabric of the creation myth and hidden it in plain sight among the instructions for binding. Natural balance destroyed in favor of artificial order.
“It’s elegant,” she murmured. “Terrible, but elegant.”
“All the worst atrocities are,” Vorlag said. “They’re committed by intelligent people with sophisticated rationales. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
“How do we fight that?”
“With truth. And the courage to speak it, no matter the cost.”
She looked up from her notes and smiled at him. “Have you always been this philosophical?”
“I’m old, Dr. Monroe. Philosophy is what you have left when you’ve made enough mistakes to know better.” He smiled sadly. “I spent decades supporting a system I knew was corrupt. Telling myself that order mattered more than justice. That stability justified any price.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I saw what that stability cost. I saw the people who were sacrificed to maintain it, and I realized that a world built on such foundations deserves to fall, no matter how beautiful the architecture.”
“That’s a dangerous opinion for someone in your position.”
“I’m aware. But at my age, safety seems less important than integrity.” He gestured to the scrolls around them. “This is my penance, Dr. Monroe. Helping you undo what my predecessors created. Trying to make amends for centuries of complicity.”
“You can’t atone for things you didn’t do.”
“No. But I can refuse to perpetuate them.” he said fiercely. “I can choose to be better than those who came before me. To break the cycle instead of continuing it.”
“That’s what we’re all trying to do,” she said quietly. “Break the cycle and refuse to be what we’re told we should be. To choose something better.”
“Indeed. Though it’s easier said than done.”
“Most worthwhile things are.”
She was close, so close to understanding the pattern. She couldn’t stop now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Khorrek’s hands were steady as he stood before Lasseran’s door. It was the result of his training, of the discipline beaten into him through years of brutal conditioning.
The memory of Thea standing before Lasseran—small and defiant and so clearly frightened—made his chest ache with an almost physical pain. He was a weapon, and weapons didn’t question their wielders. Except he’d been questioning everything since the moment those clear grey eyes had met his at the stone circle.
Even before that, he admitted to himself. His encounters with the orcs of Norhaven had changed him—had made him begin to question what he’d been told all his life about their wildness and savagery. But he’d done his best to bury those doubts. He might even have succeeded if he hadn’t met her.
The door in front of him opened before he could knock.
“Come.”
Lasseran’s voice held an edge Khorrek recognized—the dangerous quiet that preceded violence. Fuck. But he had no choice. He entered and closed the door behind him.
