Chapter 1 

Hope

The damp, rotting perfume of the forest floor—a scent that usually anchors me—thickens in my throat today akin to a suffocating blanket.

I dig my fingers into the black soil, the dirt wedging deep under my fingernails, staining the pale skin of my hands until they look as rough as the roots I’m ripping from the ground. Salix bark. It’s a fever reducer. A painkiller. I need enough to brew a concentration strong enough for a horse, but gentle enough for a five-year-old boy whose physiology I am still, five years later, frantically guessing at.

Hmm-hmm-hmm.

The low, vibrating hum rises in my throat without my permission. It’s a lullaby, the same three notes I’ve sung to Yokgu since I found him shivering in the reeds, but now it serves a different purpose. It keeps my teeth from chattering.

"Focus, Hope," I whisper. The sound of my own voice is swallowed by the dense fog rolling off the Causadurn Ridge.

I rock back on my heels, wiping a stray lock of messy brown hair out of my eyes. My hands are shaking. I check my pockets, counting the sachets by touch. Dried feverfew. Willow bark. A small pouch of dried meat I saved from my own ration three days ago. My stomach gives a violent, cramping twist of hunger, a reminder that I haven’t eaten a full meal in weeks, but I ignore it. The hunger is a dull, constant ache I can diagnose and dismiss. 

Hypoglycemia? Manageable.

What isn’t manageable is the heat radiating from Yokgu’s skin this morning.

I shove the bark into my satchel and stand. I am small for a human woman, a fact the village elders never let me forget. They look at my narrow shoulders and see weakness; they look at the dark, bruise-purple circles under my eyes and see a woman wasting away for a monster. They don’t see the callus on my palm from the grinding stone or the jagged scar on my forearm where I fought off a badger to get to a berry bush.

I am not strong like the warriors of legend. I am strong like a weed—stubborn, deeply rooted, and impossible to kill.

I turn to head back toward the village, my boots squelching in the mud.

The silence hits me.

It isn’t the peaceful quiet of early morning. It is a vacuum. The birds have stopped singing. The crickets have ceased their rhythmic chirping. Even the wind seems to hold its breath, terrified to move the leaves.

The hair on my neck stands up, a primal, evolutionary scream of warning.

Then comes the smell.

It hits me before the sound does—a heavy, metallic wall of scent. Wet, matted fur. The copper tang of old blood drying on iron. It is the aroma of a storm, but there are no clouds dark enough above to promise thunder.

Orcs.

A panicked tambourine rattles in the hollow of my chest. This is not just a wandering scout. The scent is too strong, too concentrated. This is a raiding party.

"Yokgu."

The name is a spark and a shackle on my lips. I hike up my skirts and run.

Branches whip at my face, stinging my cheeks, but I don’t feel them. I navigate the root-snarled path by muscle memory, my breath tearing in and out of my lungs. The fog obscures everything, turning the familiar woods into a grey nightmare, but I know the way.  

I have to.

I burst from the tree line and skid into the clearing that houses our pathetic cluster of huts.

It’s already begun.

The village is screaming.

Figures loom in the mist—massive, hulking shapes that dwarf the fleeing humans. The sound of wood splintering echoes like gunshots. A torch hits the thatch roof of the elder’s hall, and orange flames roar to life, illuminating the nightmare in flickering, violent bursts.

I don’t look at the slaughter. I don’t turn to the sound of Mrs. Garreth running with her chickens or the blacksmith trying to raise a hammer against a creature twice his size. I sprint toward the leaning, moss-covered shack at the edge of the riverbank.

My home.

I slam into the door, fumbling with the latch. My hands are slick with sweat and mud.

"Yokgu!" I hiss, tumbling inside.

The interior is dark, smelling of drying herbs and woodsmoke. Yokgu is where I left him, curled in a pile of furs near the hearth. He sits up, his large, nocturnal eyes wide and terrified. His skin, a soft, pale green that usually reminds me of new spring leaves, is flushed dark with fever. His tiny tusks, barely protruding past his lip, chatter together.

"Mama?" His voice is thick, congested.

"Quiet, baby. Not a sound."

I grab him. He’s heavy, far heavier than a human child of five, dense with muscle and bone structure that I have spent years trying to hide under oversized tunics. He clings to me, his hot forehead pressing against my neck. He smells of sweat and sickness, but underneath that, he smells like my son.

I drag him toward the corner of the room, kicking aside the woven rug. I jam my fingers into the gap of the loose floorboard I loosened three years ago for this exact moment.

"Get in," I command, my voice shaking but hard. "Go all the way to the back, into the dirt. Do not come out. Do not make a sound. No matter what you hear."

"Mama—"

"Go!" I shove him down into the crawlspace.

His small, green fingers grip the edge of the wood for a second, then he slips into the darkness. I slam the board back into place and drag the heavy rug over it. I grab a basket of dried lavender—strong-smelling, cloying—and dump it over the rug to mask his scent.

I have seconds.

I spin around, grabbing the iron poker from the fireplace. It is pitiful. A twig against a landslide. But I grip it until my knuckles turn white.

Thud.

The ground shakes.

Thud.

Something massive is outside the door.

I back up until my legs hit the table. I can hear the heavy, wet breathing through the wood.

CRACK.

The door doesn’t open; it explodes inward.

Splinters shower the room. I throw my arm up to shield my face, coughing as dust fills the air. A massive hand, green and thick as a tree trunk, grips the doorframe, tearing the wood away as if it were parchment.

The warrior that steps in is a wall of muscle and violence. He has to duck to enter, his tusks scraping the lintel. He wears leather armor studded with iron rings, and his skin is a vibrant, mossy green. He smells of unwashed body and fresh violence.

He sees me. His lips peel back, revealing yellowed tusks.

"Human," he grunts. The Common tongue is clumsy in his mouth, thick and guttural.

I don’t scream. Screaming is a waste of oxygen. I raise the poker, pointing the jagged iron tip at his throat.

"Get out," I say. My voice is steady, surprising even me. "There is nothing here for you. We have no gold. We have no steel."

The Orc laughs, a wet, barking sound. He steps forward, ignoring the weapon. "Don't want gold. Want slaves."

He lunges.

He is fast—terrifyingly fast for something so large. I swing the poker, aiming for his eye, but he catches the iron bar in one hand. The impact jars my arm to the shoulder. He wrenches the weapon from my grip and tosses it aside like a toy.

Then his hand closes around my upper arm.

The pain is instant. His fingers are like iron bands, bruising the muscle down to the bone. He yanks me off my feet, and the world tilts. I dangle in his grip, my feet kicking at empty air.

"Small," he sneers, inspecting me like a piece of bruised fruit. "Weak."

"Let go!" I twist, sinking my teeth into his forearm.

The skin is tough, like cured leather, but I bite down until I taste copper. The Orc roars, not in pain, but in annoyance. He shakes his arm, and I am flung backward. I hit the wall hard, the breath driven from my lungs in a wheezing gasp. My head cracks against the timber, and stars explode in my vision.

Before I can recover, he grabs me by the back of my tunic and drags me out of the hut.

As I struggle, I keep praying. Don’t come out, my little boy. 

The air outside is choked with smoke. He hauls me toward the village square, where the other survivors are being herded. Men are on their knees, bleeding. Women are weeping, clutching their children.

The Orc throws me into the mud at the feet of the other captives. I scramble to my hands and knees, spitting blood. My head swims, but my eyes dart back to my hut. It’s still standing. The door is broken, but they didn't burn it. 

Yokgu is safe. 

"Silence!"

The roar comes from the center of the chaos, but it isn’t the warrior who grabbed me.

The mist at the perimeter of the square parts, and a shadow emerges that makes the other Orcs look like children.

He is massive. Towering nearly seven feet, his breadth blocks out the grey light of the morning. While the other warriors are green, this one is the color of a coming storm—slate-grey, dark and impenetrable. His hair is long, coarse, and black, braided with leather cords that whip in the wind.

But it’s his face that stops my heart.

A gruesome burn scar stretches from his left shoulder, crawling up his neck and consuming the left side of his pectoral, the skin shiny and mottled. And where a natural tusk should be on the left side of his jaw, a jagged prosthetic of black iron curves upward, gleaming dully in the firelight.

He wears a cloak of black fur that looks like it came from a beast that doesn't exist in nature. He carries no weapon in his hands; his mere presence is the weapon.

Chieftain.

The word hangs in the air, unspoken but understood by the terrified vibration of the ground.

He walks into the center of the square, and his subordinates part like water. He moves with a predator’s grace, silent despite his size. But then, a sound cuts through the screams.

Click. Scrape.

He grinds the black iron tusk against his natural tooth. It is a jarring, bone-deep sound, like a shovel hitting a grave marker. The other orcs flinch.

He stops three feet from me. He doesn't look at the burning granary. He doesn't turn to the weeping elder. He looks at the humans huddled in the mud with eyes that are dark, intelligent, and utterly devoid of mercy.

He sniffs the air.

His nostrils flare. He turns his head slowly, scanning the group. His gaze lands on me.

I freeze. I am covered in mud, bleeding from a cut on my temple, small and insignificant. But he stares at me with an intensity that feels like a physical weight. He isn't looking at my body. He is smelling me.

He takes a step closer. The smell of him washes over me—rain on hot stone, and something sharper, dangerous.

"You," he rumbles. His voice is a deep tectonic shift, deep enough to rattle my ribcage. He speaks Common perfectly, with a clipped, harsh efficiency.

I lift my chin. I will not cower. "What do you want?"

His eyes narrow. He looks at my hands, stained with berry juice and herbs. Then he looks at my chest, where I clasped Yokgu moments ago.

He leans down. He is so close I can feel the heat radiating from his massive frame. He inhales deeply near my neck.

"Lavender," he says. The word sounds like an accusation. "And sickness. Orc."

My blood turns to ice.

He straightens up, his slate-grey face unreadable, cold as the iron in his jaw. He turns away from me, looking toward the edge of the village.

Toward my hut.

"The scent is stale on her," he says to the warrior who dragged me out. "But fresh there."

He raises a massive, scarred hand and points a finger directly at the dark doorway of my home.

"Tear up the floorboards," the Chieftain commands, the click-scrape of his tusk punctuating the order like a death knell. "Bring the boy out."