Orchard Shade

THE WILDS

The royal orchards fed six crowns before Malgareth taught the green to lie. The Orchard Shade is a picker who never left the rows — a dim silhouette among the feral fruit trees, still gathering a harvest no one will collect. It grows violent only when the fruit is touched; the crop belongs to the king, and the Shade has not heard, in three hundred seasons, that the king is dead.