THE ORC KING'S MATE

The Wedding

The hall where she met Kael for the first time was very different from what she had been accustomed to. High ceilings, stone walls, torches even in the daytime. It smelled like cold rock and something faintly like smoke.

A dozen orc warriors stood at attention along the walls. At the far end, on a throne, sat the man who was supposed to be her husband.

Lira had built a picture in her head over twenty years of stories. A monster. Something savage and mindless and cruel.

The man on the throne was not that.

He was matured, his face was square and hard and marked with scars she could see even from across the hall. His hair was dark and pulled back. He watched her walk toward him with an expression she could not name, and she found that more frightening.

She had expected anger. She had prepared for anger. She had no idea what to do with his calmness.

"You are not what I expected," he said.

And she had answered him without thinking, the way she always did when someone surprised her, and the warriors had laughed, and then he had dismissed her like she was barely worth the inconvenience of looking at.

She had spent the walk to her rooms deciding that she hated him.

Her rooms were not a prison.

That was the first surprise.

She had imagined a cell, or something close to it. Cold stone, a small window, the kind of space that said you are here to be kept, not to live. Instead she was brought to a suite of rooms on the second floor of the main building, with windows that looked out over part of the city, a bed with actual blankets, a fireplace that was already lit, and a table with food on it.

Real food. Warm food.

Senna stayed close behind her and kept looking at the walls like they were going to move. Lira walked through the rooms slowly and tried to understand what she was seeing.

"These are nicer than my rooms at home," she said. Senna said nothing. Senna was very focused on the wall.

A female orc appeared in the doorway. She was tall, like all of them, with short dark hair and a face that suggested she had very little patience for unnecessary conversation. "I am Brea. I am assigned to you."

"As a guard?" Lira asked.

"As an attendant." Brea looked at her with something that was not quite irritation but was close to it. "If you need anything, you tell me. If you want to go somewhere, you tell me. If you have a problem, you tell me."

"And if I want to leave?"

"Then you tell me that too." Brea paused.

"I would not recommend it as a first request."

"Fair enough," Lira said.

Brea looked slightly surprised, like she had expected more argument. Then she nodded and stepped back into the hallway.

Lira sat down at the table and looked at the food and thought about everything that had happened in the last three weeks. Her family's house, the letter from the King, the journey through the mountains.

She picked up a piece of bread and ate it.

It was good bread, the best she had eaten in a while, and she was not sure what to do with that either.

The ceremony was the next morning.

It was not what Lira would have called a wedding, but she understood that it was not supposed to be. It was a treaty signing that happened to include two people standing in the same room and saying words that bound them together. There were orc clan leaders present, and human officials who had traveled with her convoy, and a man in robes who spoke in a language she did not know.

Kael stood beside her and said nothing throughout most of it.

Lira stood beside him and tried not to look too directly at the size of him. He was almost a head and a half taller than her. When he stood still he was like standing next to a wall.

At one point the man in robes looked at her and said something.

She looked at Kael. "What did he ask?"

"If you come willingly," Kael said.

Lira looked at the man in robes. She thought about her father's face. She thought about the word expendable. She thought about what willingly really meant when you were twenty years old and had no power to say no.

"Yes," she said.

The man in robes seemed satisfied. He continued.

When it was over the clan leaders did something with their hands that looked like a formal gesture. The human officials signed papers. Kael signed something too, his signature large and blunt on the page, not the signature of a man who spent much time writing.

And that was that. She was the Orc King's wife.

She waited until they were out of the ceremony hall and in a quieter corridor before she spoke. "I want to know the rules."

Kael, who was walking half a step ahead of her because of his stride, stopped. He turned and looked at her.

"What rules," he said.

"The rules of this. Whatever this is." She kept her voice level. She had decided in the night that she was not going to let fear make her small.

"I don't know what you expect from me. I don't know what I'm allowed to do. I don't know if I can leave my rooms or speak to people or go outside. I would rather know now than find out later when I break one."

He looked at her for a moment. Those gold eyes were steady and very direct and she had to work at not looking away.

"You can go where you like within the city walls," he said.

"Brea will go with you. There are places that are off-limits but she will tell you which ones. You can speak to who you like. You are not a prisoner." He paused.

"You are also not a guest. This is your home now. Treat it that way."

"And what do you expect from me?"

"I expect you to be honest," he said. "I have very little patience for people who say one thing and mean another. As long as you are honest with me, I will be honest with you."

She thought about that. "That's a shorter list than I expected."

"Did you want a longer one?"

"No," she said. "Short is better."

Something moved in his expression. It was brief and she was not sure what it was. Then he nodded and turned and walked away, and she was left in the corridor with Brea at her side and the strange sensation of having had a conversation with a man she had spent her whole life being told was a monster.

He had not been monstrous.

He had been blunt, yes. Controlled. A little cold. But he had answered her questions without dismissing them, and he had told her she was not a prisoner, and somewhere in the list of things she had built herself up to face the idea of being a prisoner. She was going to need to rebuild her list.