Page 50 of Orc'd At A Wedding
I push my lips together against the smile pulling at them, fighting it and losing completely.
"Olog."
"Yes."
"Shut up and take me back to the room."
He offers me his arm, formal and deliberate and completely, magnificently serious, and I slide my hand through it and let him walk me back through the car park and away from the venue and the family and the ticking clock that has been hanging over my head since the moment this weekend began.
The knife sits warm and certain in my free hand.
I carry it all the way to the hotel door.
CHAPTER 14
OLOG
Ilook down at the knife in her palm, hilt-first, exactly as I intended, and we walk arm in arm, our newfound commitment sinking deep into my bones, my soul. I see her examining it herself as we walk. She smiles, shaking her head.
"You gave me a knife. A knife," she says.
"Yes."
"You just pulled a knife from your boot. Who does that?"
"A throwing knife. The distinction is relevant. Its purpose, the symbolism, is what’s truly important."
She turns it over once, carefully, with the cautious handling of someone who has not spent significant time around edged weapons, which I have already noted and catalogued as something I will remedy. The carved handle is old bone, smooth and pristine. My grandmother's work, the grip wrapped in dark cord that she replaced twice before she passed it to my father and he passed it to me when I left for the city. The blade is not decorative. It has never been decorative. Orcs do not give decorative things at significant moments. That is a human custom I have always found slightly baffling, the gifting of objects designed to look like weapons but incapable of functioning as them.
"Olog."
"Yes."
"Is this truly a custom that your people find valuable? Purposeful?"
I consider the most efficient way to explain this, given that she is still slightly tearful and her mascara has tracked two dark lines down her cheeks and her silk dress is rumpled from the evening and she is the most objectively arresting thing I have looked at in the entirety of my thirty-three years, including the time I saw a lightning storm from a ridge at four in the morning and genuinely stopped moving for eleven minutes.
"In Orc tradition," I say, "when a male determines that a female is worth defending above all other priorities, he offers her his primary combat weapon. It is a declaration of intent. The message is this: I give you the thing I trust most to keep myself alive. I am telling you that your survival now outranks my own."
She blinks. The processing delay is visible, traveling across her face in slow, distinct stages.
"That is," she starts, stops, starts again, "that is a lot."
"Yes."
"That's essentially a marriage proposal. You know that, don’t you?"
"It is a proposal of protection and shared combat. The formal ceremony comes later if you accept. The knife is the first step."
"Shared combat." Her voice does the thing where it pitches up slightly at the end of a sentence, not quite a question, not quite a confirmation. "Like. Fighting together."
"The original Orc bonding tradition developed during a period when territorial conflicts were common and selecting a partner based on their capacity to fight beside you was rational and practical. The tradition has evolved. It now encompasses metaphorical combat as well. The navigating of hostile family members, for example."
Something happens to her face. A twitch at the corner of her mouth. She is trying not to smile.
"Aunt Susan counts as shared combat." Her face cracks, and I catch a glimpse of dazzling white teeth.
"Aunt Susan absolutely counts as shared combat. I would classify her as a moderate-to-high threat level, high persistence, limited tactical flexibility. She is manageable with consistent application of direct eye contact and monosyllabic responses."
