Chapter 6

Norgren

T here is very little left.

The trollkin came through and lit whatever they could find on fire. Who knows how long the town burned? The other homes I saw on my way in had all been stripped and pillaged, torn apart inside for supplies and coin. They didn’t spare the same for the city. I find houses reduced to ash, with the occasional human limb poking out. I cover my nose as I walk, trying not to inhale.

Everything is gone.

I wonder absently how many lives this war between the humans and trollkin has taken, whether the sides regret all the homes and cities stolen by battle.

I am immeasurably glad my Tally escaped unharmed.

My Tally. I turn over this word as I leave the city and head back to where she’s waiting for me out in the trees. I’ve kept up as high and thick of a wall as I can between us, because I can’t bear all of the things she makes me feel. So I lock her out instead, trying to steel my heart against her.

But Tally isn’t there when I get back to where I left her. I look around just to make sure it’s the right spot, but I’m sure this is where she was.

Damn it.

“Tally?” I call out, and start walking along the treeline. I assumed the trollkin had left, but it’s still possible there are stragglers, or even other humans out here who escaped the fighting. They could try to do something to her in their desperation.

I don’t like having her out of my sight. It makes my throat tight, my muscles tense and ready to fight.

Up ahead, I glimpse a familiar dress. Tally is crouched over a bush, picking off a berry that I was sure was poisonous. She is gathering them up in the top layer of her dress, revealing her silky tan thigh underneath.

“Tally!” I’m breathless with my relief when I find her. Then my anger bubbles up, thinking how worried I was about her. “Why?” I demand, and point back at our meeting place. “No stay.”

She just gives me an exasperated look, then gestures to her armful of berries. “I wanted these,” she says, and she looks proud of her discovery. I quirk an eyebrow.

“Why?” I ask again.

A look of mischief crosses her face. Then she starts walking on ahead of me, back towards the house. She’s not going to tell me.

“What did you find?” she asks me as we walk. “What’s left?” But I think she already knows the answer.

“Nothing,” I say with a shrug. “Gone.”

Tally tries not to let it show, but this news clearly hurts as she curls her shoulders. I want to embrace her and tell her she can show how she feels, but I don’t want to give her mixed messages.

Now is the time when she should go. Her staying here is only growing more and more painful for me, knowing she doesn’t want me.

The moment we step into our glade, though, Tally’s whole body relaxes. She practically jogs inside the house and pours out her bounty of berries on the table. Right away she sets to working, bringing water inside, starting a fire, and getting the pot boiling. Then she drops in the berries and lets them cook.

We don’t speak about what I saw today, or how she feels about it. The air is tense and charged, though, as if we both have things we’d like to say. But I won’t talk before she does. I’m going to wait until she decides what she’s doing next, because it doesn’t feel right to kick her out when she has nothing else.

As the sun starts to fade behind the trees, Tally gets a look on her face like she’s suddenly made a decision. She gives me a stern look. “Stay,” she says, pointing at my feet the way I did earlier today. There’s a hint of a smirk at the edge of her lips.

I don’t know what she has planned, but I take the jab, then cross my arms and nod. “Stay.”

With a hmph , she turns and stalks away. After she heads out the back door I can hear her rustling underneath the house, in storage where we put her pots full of honey mixture. She returns with one, opens the lid with a pop! and spoons some out into our respective bowls.

Then she sips it. I’m baffled by this. But the liquid does smell good, if a little sour at the edges. I take a sip, too, and I’m even more perplexed by what I taste.

I had human wine once, ages and ages ago. Every so often we ogres held small meetings, where we gathered for a few days around the fire. One of the big, older ogres had pillaged a farmhouse on his way, and shared the wine with all of us.

This is like wine but... honey. It’s sweet and thick and it burns as it goes down. I give Tally a surprised look, and she grins in response .

“Delicious, right?” She preens. I didn’t know this was a talent she had. I drink more, and Tally laughs when I spill some. She pours me a new bowl and then sets to checking on her boiling pot. I’m not really paying attention to what she’s doing, because the drink has captured my heart. It’s sweet and spicy and sour all at once, and it practically dances on my tongue.

When she’s done, Tally wipes off her hands and rejoins me at the table. After we eat, I feel much looser, as if some tightly-bound creature inside me has been given a much longer leash.

Now that her town is gone and burned to ash, I wonder what Tally will do. I know she doesn’t plan on staying here—not that I want her to, of course. It would be torture to live forever, sharing a home with her and not being able to have her.

Finally, I ask her the question that’s been on my mind since she first arrived on my doorstep. “Where you go now?”

Tally tilts her head. “Go?”

“Yes. You, go. Where?”

Her eyes flit away from mine, and her shoulders droop noticeably.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking down at the floor. “Where is there to go?”

And then I notice how red her eyes are, and soon, big drops of water are flowing from the corners. She doesn’t sob or even whimper, though, as they roll down her cheeks in streams.

What a callous thing I did, essentially telling her to leave after she’s just discovered her home is gone and all her friends are dead.

Seeing her crumble like this, that heavy wall inside me breaks and the need to comfort her overwhelms me. I scoot my big chair closer to her small one and slip my arm around her back, squeezing her tight. She hiccups, so I nudge her closer. The moment she leans into me, the dam inside her bursts, and she starts to sob.

The sound of her misery makes me draw her in even further, pressing her against my chest. While I rub her back, I find a good place to settle her in the crook of my neck so my tusks won’t get in the way. Her hot tears run down my collar, and her own smaller arms creep around my waist, her hands balling up in the fabric of my shirt and clenching it tight. I hold her like that as her wails fill the house, and simply rock her.

Eventually, Tally’s crying ebbs from a sob to a gentle whimpering. Finally she wears out, and by now she’s most of the way in my chair and halfway into my lap. But I’m not thinking of her like that as I hold her. All I want is for her pain to disappear.

“Norgren.” Her voice is husky from crying.

“Tally,” I answer, trying to keep my tone light.

She shakes her head. No, whatever she’s going to say is serious. “I hurt you,” she says.

I pull away slightly to look down into her eyes. They’re warm and brown, still shining with tears. I nod, understanding what she means—the time she turned down my offer and ran away.

“And I’m sorry, Norgren.” She studies her hands. “But you hurt me, too. Telling me to stay, and getting angry when I objected. I didn’t even know you.”

I tense up. I’ve tried so hard not to think of that moment, when I was a fool and pushed her too far. When I asked for too much. I was hasty and eager and I know that she’s right.

I didn’t consider her feelings at all. And then I held it against her, all this time.

“I’m sorry,” I say in return. I can’t help staring into her eyes, admiring her long, dark lashes, reveling in the soft plane of her face and small bump of her nose. But I don’t dare do anything but hold her, not now. “I’m sorry I hurt you, too.”

“Thank you.” She sits back on her own chair, and I think our moment of tenderness has ended, but I’m happy that we got to have one at all.

Tally

I’m the last human left here. I wonder how far the trollkin army spread, how many towns and villages they’ve plundered and burned as they went. I always thought we were deep enough in human territory for it not to matter, and the war wouldn’t reach us.

I was wrong.

My face feels both dry and wet at the same time, my sinuses full of fluid after crying for so long. My body is heavy, and I wonder how much of that is my misery and how much is the mead I drank.

For good measure, I finish off my bowl. Norgren is leaning over his chair, tilting it back and forth with his head perched on one hand. His body language is open, very unlike how he’s been since I came here. The more we drink, the hungrier the look in his eyes gets.

I find that I like it. I enjoy how his gaze slides down to my chest when I move, gathering up some of the raw berries from earlier, before I turned them into a jam in the pot. If you cook them, they stop being poisonous, and become the tastiest jam known to mankind. Perhaps in all the world. I am excited to surprise Norgren with it in the morning, on some of that bread he made. Maybe that would make him like me more.

I am seeing him now, too, in a different way. Looking at Norgren’s heavy-set face is doing strange things to me in the juncture of my thighs. I’m paying much closer attention when he moves, the way all of his dense muscles flex. I loved how it felt when he held me, comforting me as I cried. His arms were strong and yet gentle. I saw his tender heart then, and it mesmerized me.

Now, suddenly, it feels like I understand him—the real him. And the discomfort that comes with that, how my mind and heart and body all react at once, makes me feel like I should walk away before I do something silly.

Something like what? Like leaning between his big tusks and pressing my mouth to his?

Yes, that idea has crossed my mind, along with a few others. I’ve walked in on him changing clothes, and I don’t mind at all what I saw. His body is big and his muscles are thick and dense, and powerful enough that he can carry a felled tree without flinching.

Maybe I’m just lonely out here and Norgren is the only one around. The mead has put my sex drive into high alert, and now I’m just anxious to fill the need. That’s all it is.

“Sleep,” I tell him. “I’m going to bed.”

The words seem to surprise Norgren out of the stupor where he’s just been staring at me in silence.

“Yes, sleep.” He doesn’t look like he really feels that way, but he gets up and shakes off the warm blanket of the mead. He gestures to the cup. “Thank you. Delicious.”

I smile at that. I’m glad I could give him this, in exchange for all he’s done for me without expecting anything in return.

I go into the bedroom and take off my clothes before worming my way into the blankets, like I always do. But it’s cold in here, away from the fire, and suddenly I feel quite alone.

I am alone. Besides Norgren, there’s no one around for dozens, maybe hundreds of miles.

“Norgren?” I call out.

“Mmm?” I hear from the other room.

“Don’t sleep on the floor.” It’s not fair for him to be out there on the hard ground and me in here on the plush bed. “Sleep in here.”

Maybe it’s the mead making my mind fuzzy, but I want him here with me, under these plush blankets, not cold and alone out there like I feel.

I don’t want to be alone.