Chapter 14

Telise

I got lucky. My first day on the job and we score a big win. Well, they do, anyway—the people at the top who stand to benefit from this war. The more trollkin we kill, the more land we can snatch from them, and the big dogs can continue to expand their empires. Just how things have always been, and how they always will be.

The trollkin fell in great and terrible numbers, riddled with shrapnel. Most of them aren't dead, just bleeding out and dying slowly. It's now our job to find the dead and the living alike, scavenge what we can off of their bodies, then kill the dying and bring in the rest as prisoners.

Trollkin hate nothing more than being denied a valiant, honorable death.

As I step over bodies, each troll face I see looks like Raz'jin's. One of them grabs my ankle as I walk by.

"Death," she says. "Please."

I can understand her enough that I crouch down and say in Trollkin, "I'm sorry." Then I bury my dagger in her chest. I wait until the life drains out of her eyes before I take what I can off her body and drag it to the pile of weapons and armor growing along the charred remains of the fortress wall.

Some of the trollkin retreated into the woods when the bomb fell, so I duck into the trees and start looking. There's blood everywhere, dribbling off of big leaves and pooling in crevices. The first two bodies I find are dead, with shrapnel to the head and throat. They had nothing to defend them—not a shard of metal on either of them. They weren't even properly armed.

That's when I spot a boot poking out from underneath some heavy brush. Something about that boot rings a distant bell. I crouch down and push the branches aside, hoping I'll find another dead body and not someone else I have to kill. Then I grab hold of the boot and pull.

First a leg emerges, and then another one. One leg is covered in blood, thanks to a huge chunk of sword buried in the flesh.

Blue flesh.

My hands start to tremble as I push away more brush.

No.

I grab him by the waist and pull as hard as I can, and soon, he's free. I take in his wild hair, his scratched-up tusks, and his familiar face. I know that face better than anyone's.

My Raz'jin.

He's unconscious, but alive—just barely. I have to hold back the tears that rush to my face as I search his body for any other wounds. Given the pool of blood around his leg, it's taking its toll on him. I look around to see if any other soldiers from my unit are nearby, but it's just me out here.

I don't want to hasten the blood loss, so I leave the sword where it is. I reach into my bag and pull out the first aid kit I was provided, and I almost drop all the pieces as I open it because my very arms are trembling.

He can't die out here. I won't let him.

I take out the cleaning solution and bandages. A woman on the train full of recruits taught us the basics: Remove the offending weapon, clean the wound, and bandage it up. That's really the best we can do out here on the field, but it should be enough to hold someone over until they can get proper medical attention.

But how can I possibly get him in front of anyone who could help? There's just no way.

I pull out the sword tip and quickly clean the wound. Luckily, Raz'jin is passed out, and I just hope it's not too late for him. If he died here...

I can't think about it. Focus, focus. Once I've cleaned the gaping hole in his calf, I grab a thick bandage and wind it around as many times and as tightly as I can. Blood starts to saturate it, but soon the flow slows down.

Finally the adrenaline catches up to me, and I fall to my knees next to Raz'jin's face. I push some of the wild hair away from his eyes.

"Please," I whisper to him in Trollkin. "Please, wake up." I reach into my pocket, where I still keep his emerald, then I grab his arm and press it into his hand. "See? I have it. I'm so sorry."

He's still breathing, but he doesn't move. I can't let one of the other members of my unit find him like this, so I kneel down and hook my hands under his armpits and start to pull. There has to be somewhere I can take him, somewhere we'll be safe until...

Until what? He's lost so much blood, there's a good chance he'll never wake up again. Maybe I'm wasting my time and my energy .

But I can't abandon him. Now that I've found him, there's no chance I'll leave his side again.

Raz'jin

I feel like I'm floating in a haze right above my body. The last of my life force is slowly draining out of me... Until suddenly it's not anymore.

Somebody is carrying me. No—dragging me. Who could that possibly be? Perhaps it's Blizzek, who somehow survived.

I can feel the rocks and branches tearing up my back as I'm moved, but the pain is dulled and far away. I'm drifting farther and farther from myself.

That's when I hear a voice: "Raz'jin?" I would know it anywhere. My body stops moving. "Please," my little human says. "Please, wake up."

If she wants me to do it, then I will.

Suddenly all the pain becomes exquisite and terrible. I can feel the gaping wound in my leg, the scratches and scrapes all along my back. I groan.

"Raz'jin!" Somebody takes my head in their soft, small hands. "You're all right."

Am I? But her broken Trollkin convinces me that it must be true. I open my eyes slowly, and when I do, I find familiar bright green eyes looking back at me. Relief washes across her face, and before I know what's happening, she's bent over and holding my head against her chest.

"What...?" I manage out the word, and my voice is hoarse. "Telise?"

I have to be dreaming. There's no way that she's real. There's no way I'm lying on her lap, her breasts right in my face.

"It's me." She sits back up, and gently rests my head on her knees. She's smiling at me with the widest smile I've ever seen, huge tears dripping down her round cheeks. "It's me. I'm so sorry."

Sorry...? I blink a few more times, trying to get my bearings. Where are we? All I can make out is the dense cover of trees around us.

Wait. This woman...

This mongrel human threw me out. She stole from me. She's the reason I'm here at all. Isn't she?

I groan as I pull away from her, trying to support myself on my own.

"Raz'jin?" Her voice is less certain now. "Don't move."

I'm not going to let her tell me what to do, not after all this. "Ugh." I'm finally able to bring myself to a sitting position, and my leg screams in pain. "Where am I?"

"Your camp is that way. I hid you." She doesn't sound fluent, but she's able to get the message across. I taught her well. "Don't move your leg. It's hurt."

When I'm finally able to open my eyes again, I glance down at my calf, where there's a heap of bloody bandages wrapped around my wound. When I look up at her again, I know that Telise is the one who did this. She's the one who saved my life.

She should have just left me.

I glare at her. "Why are you here?"

Telise recoils a little, and her eyes are surprised. What did she expect? Some sort of happy reunion?

"War," is all she says. "Same as you."

Oh. So she got dragged into this mess, too. What's the chance that we would end up on the same front, fighting in the same battle?

I wish fate would stop fucking with me this way.

"Raz'jin?" She reaches up to touch the side of my face, but I grab her wrist in my hand and hold it at a distance. It seems to finally settle in her expression that this is not what she'd hoped it would be. But she doesn't know how long I've spent wading through the misery she caused me, the distances I've traveled trying to forget about her.

Her hand drops back to her side. Her tears haven't stopped, but they've gone from the happy kind to the sad. Telise wraps her arms around herself.

"I'm sorry," she says again, but no amount of apologies will make a difference to me. I've erected a tall, impenetrable wall around myself. Then she reaches into her pocket for something, and I wonder if she's going to whistle my position to her friends.

Instead, she pulls out a huge, green jewel. My emerald.

She holds it out to me, keeping her eyes on the forest floor. "Take it," she says. "It's yours." This time she doesn't try to apologize, as if she knows there's no apology in the world that can fix this. She just keeps her hand extended, the glimmering emerald sitting in the middle of her tiny palm. I reach out and take it, and the brief sensation of my fingers against her skin sends a spark up my arm. I know that skin so well, and what every last inch of it feels like. Now she's muddy and dirty and scratched up, but I can still make out the little freckles that cover her from head to toe.

I slide the emerald into my pocket and grunt as my leg moves. I'm not going to thank her for returning something she should never have taken in the first place.

But she didn't sell it. No, she held onto it for what, a year? More? It came into war with her, when she could have turned it into enough gold to sit pretty for some time. She could have bought her way out of conscription with this .

Telise kneels down in front of me, very near but not quite touching me. Seeing her up this close it's hard not to reach out and grab her, pull her in tight, and claim every part of her. Mine . That voice inside me won't stop repeating it.

"Raz'jin," she says, squeezing one hand tight inside the other, "I did not understand."

"Didn't understand what?" I ask, irritation in my voice. I can still remember the sharp ache in my chest when she insisted that there wasn't anything between us, the bite it took out of my soul when the ship pulled away from Eyra Cove that day and I discovered what she'd done.

"Mate," she says. "I didn't understand what you meant."

I thought I had made it pretty obvious.

"We don't have this," she says, gesturing to herself. "Humans. We don't mate. Not like you."

How barbaric. And yet they reproduce? And build cities?

"Foolish," I say. But maybe they aren't so foolish to not develop a bond like that, one that can't be broken. It could save so much pain.

"But you." She reaches out one hand so tentatively that I don't react. Her fingers land on my tusk, and I remember the way she thanked me the night that I freed her in the orc village. "You, Raz'jin... you are my mate."