Page 3 of Orc’s Moon

“Touché.” I glance past him at the smoke pouring into the sky two streets back, and my brief victory curdles fast. “I didn’t set it. I was inside. One of them wanted this badly enough to chase me out a service tunnel for it.” I don’t know why I’m telling a total stranger that. I know exactly one thing about this man — his arm is the reason I’m not currently under a quarter ton of stone — and apparently that’s enough for my mouth to start handing out information my brain hasn’t cleared.

His attention drops to the edge of parchment still visible at my collar, and the stillness behind his eyes goes flat.

“Wanted what?”

Not gentle. Not quite a threat either — closer to a man recalculating a problem he thought he understood ten seconds ago. His hand still hasn’t moved. I notice that with an inconvenient amount of clarity, given everything else currently on fire.

“A map.” No point lying to a nearly seven-foot orc currently holding me off the ground. “Old enough that several men are willing to burn a national archive rather than let a historian finish reading it.”

He doesn’t ask which historian. He’s already looking at me like he knows.

“Sir!” A watchman pulls up ten feet away, breathing hard, giving the orc a wide, instinctive berth the way people apparently learn to. “The east wing’s fully engulfed — we’ve got scholars trapped on the⁠—”

“Go.” One word. The watchman goes, no argument, no second look at me, and I tuck that detail away too — whatever this man’s voice carries, it isn’t volume.

He looks back down. His hand is still at my waist. I’ve had four separate chances to step back in the last thirty seconds and used exactly none of them.

“Warden.” He says it like the single word covers three sentences he’s decided not to spend breath on. “Vorren Blackfang. Assigned to the Council on matters concerning the northern ruins.” Something works behind his composure before he continues. “That makes tonight my problem. And you, apparently, part of it.”

“Lyessa Ardin.” I don’t offer a hand — both of mine are busy, one flat against the parchment burning a hole through everyone’s evening, the other braced against a wall I stopped needing thirty seconds ago and haven’t found a reason to let go of. “Historian. Formerly employed by an archive that is, as of tonight, on fire.”

“You’ll need somewhere that isn’t.” He doesn’t wait for me to agree. His gaze drops again — not to the parchment this time, to the scrape along my forearm I hadn’t noticed until he found it, a souvenir from the tunnel I don’t remember earning. Something in his expression goes flat and hard, and whatever’s driving it isn’t duty. It’s a man discovering damage he didn’t personally prevent.

“I need somewhere to finish reading what I found.” I straighten, refusing to examine the heat climbing up my throat while standing in a smoke-choked alley with a stranger’s hand still warm at my waist. “Not somewhere safe. Somewhere with light and an hour nobody’s trying to kill me in.”

“Those aren’t currently the same place.” His hand finally leaves my waist, and missing it irritates me nearly as much as the fire does. “You’re coming with me regardless. Council will want the map. I want to know who tried to take your head off to get it.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

“No.” No apology in it. No softening either. Flat, like he delivers everything. “It wasn’t.”

I should be furious about that — the clear-eyed, professional corner of me insists on it — stacking it next to every other man who’s decided my research belongs to whoever asks loudest. But the parchment’s warm against my ribs, the building I built my whole life around is burning two streets behind me, and this man put himself between me and a collapsing wall without even thinking.

Behind us, the Archives groan again, another section giving way, throwing a fresh column of sparks into a sky already choking on smoke. Everything I’ve spent seven years building a career out of is in that building. And somewhere in this city, right now, is someone who lit that fire on purpose, so I’d never finish reading six words written in silver ink three hundred years ago.

I look up at Vorren Blackfang, weighing every reason a woman with sense would put distance between herself and a man who handed her an order instead of a choice thirty seconds ago — and every single reason loses to the very inconvenient fact that some low, stubborn part of me does not want that hand back at my waist. Wants it there again already.

“Fine.” I fold my arms, chin up, daring him to enjoy that too much. “But I keep the map.”

An almost-smile ghosts through his expression, gone before I can pin it down. “We’ll discuss it.”

“We won’t.” I start walking before he can answer, because it’s the only way I know to get the last word.

He’s at my shoulder now instead of behind it. “You will.” Doesn’t so much as raise his voice to say it.

I don’t dignify that with an answer. Mostly because I don’t have one ready.

Behind me, I hear him fall into step without being asked — not beside me, not quite, but near enough that I understand exactly how this night’s going to go. He’s not planning to let more than a few feet sit between us again.

I don’t know yet that what he saved me from is only the start of what’s hunting me. I don’t know that six words folded against my ribs are about to unmake every account of history I’ve ever trusted, his included. I know the city’s burning behind me, that a stranger’s handprint is still warm at my waist, and that whoever wants Blackspire to stay buried has just made their first mistake of the night.

They let me live long enough to get angry.

TWO

VORREN

Two days on a hard road out of Asterhold, and I’ve spent every mile of it fighting the urge to put my horse between hers and the treeline.