Page 49 of Orc'd At A Wedding
"Yes."
"Not a question yet. I just wanted to note that I'm about to ask you something."
"I await your question with great patience."
"Sarcasm."
"Never."
I take a breath. "Come back to the city with me. Not to the gig app, not as anyone's fake anything. Just—" I search his face. "Come back with me. See what this is when it's not inside a sixty-hour crisis."
He is quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that isn't hesitation but is instead the deliberate, considered pause of someone who does not say things they don't mean.
"I had already intended to ask you the same thing," he says. "I was simply waiting for a tactically appropriate moment."
"Was the car park not tactical enough?"
"The car park was sufficient."
The laugh comes out of me again, lighter this time, easier, not fighting against anything on the way out.
I look down at the knife in my hand. The carved handle is warm against my palm.
"You know my family is going to be unhinged about this forever," I tell him.
"Your family's reactions are not my primary concern."
"Aunt Susan is going to ask you invasive questions every Christmas for the rest of our natural lives."
"Aunt Susan should be deeply concerned about what I do and do not share with her."
"My father is going to try to give you a check again."
The look on his face is absolutely serene. "He will be unsuccessful."
Inside the venue, someone has started a toast. The microphone feedback squeals briefly across the night air, and there is laughter and clinking glass and all the formal machinery of someone else's love story continuing on without us, and I think that might be the most perfect thing about this moment, that I am outside in a car park with my heels going uneven on the tarmac and a throwing knife in my hand, completely unconcerned with how any of this looks, while my cousin's wedding carries on behind those closed doors.
I made it through the whole weekend.
I have an Orc.
He's mine and he's keeping the knife in my hand and he's coming home with me.
Aunt Susan is going to have an absolutely spectacular meltdown and I am going to enjoy every second of it.
"Alright," I say, tipping my head back to look up at him in the particular way I'm already getting used to, the craning back, the scale of him against the sky. "So. Formally courting. What does that involve, exactly?"
The warmth of his expression deepens.
"Meals," he says. "Your safety. My presence. My time. My full and undivided attention and all resources at my disposal applied toward demonstrating that I am worth keeping."
"You're already worth keeping."
"Nevertheless. I will be thorough."
"Of course you will."
"Five stars is insufficient when the motivation is personal."
