Page 47 of Bound to the Orc Warlord

Unease stirs my stomach, growing larger as one of the flocks breaks off to fly toward the rock formation. Weird orange clouds billow up from the forest beneath them, like nothing I’ve seen since I’ve been in Faerie.

Drake gives an alarmed screech of warning.

But I don’t need it. Because the other flock is close now. Close enough to see vicious dots of red marring the black, like fresh blood splattered across pavement.

My heart gives a pained thump, banging against my ribs as my stomach twists into a tight knot.

Those aren’t birds.

They’re a sluagh.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dravarr

Midnight rears again as the second cloud of noxious fumes billows toward us in a haze of orange. Only long years of riding allow me to keep my seat.

As soon as her front hooves touch the ground, she wheels, her haunches gathering to launch her forward.

Right to where a flock of black and red birds flows down to create a dark figure. The fabric draped over the sluagh’s body can’t hide the way its flesh churns with the constant motion of its disparate parts. The face within the shadowy hood writhes, feathers and the tips of wings stretching the surface in a sickening display all around its blood-red eyes.

“Orc,” an unholy chorus of voices calls out from between too many pointed red teeth, “you will not stop me this time.”

The wind’s in my face, and I snarl in delight, baring my tusks. The storm I cursed only moments ago now does me a service, blowing the coward’s foul herb away from us.

I slide from Midnight’s back, freeing my sword in one smooth move. The lowered light of day catches on the moon steel blade, shining silver and true.

“I wouldn’t be so certain if I were you, soul stealer.”

Midnight strikes the grassy ground with her hoof, an echoing thump that promises her enemies pain. “Especially since it’s two to one.”

The sluagh laughs, an eerie, echoing sound of a million voices slightly out of synch. Some think this dark fae actually begins life as one being, but as it sucks the souls from its victims, they join it, trapped for the length of its life, bent to its will.

True or not, it’s a fate I’ll die before allowing to befall my bride.

“Who says I’m the only one?” It grins, showing the sharp triangles of its red beak teeth. It gestures skyward, and my horrified eyes follow the movement up into the sky.

Where another sluagh attacks Ashley.

“No.” It slips from my lips in a horrified whisper.

“You can’t help her with that one,” Midnight calls out. “But you can make sure she doesn’t face this one on her return.”

My hands tighten on the hilt of my sword as I grunt in agreement. A faint pang twinges in my injured shoulder, but it’s nothing that will stop me.

Focusing only on the enemy in front of me, I lunge. The tip of my blade pierces right where the sluagh should have a heart, much as I doubt any such organ stirs within its cold breast.

It breaks apart into a flock of birds, leaving only one black body skewered on my sword. Even as I watch, the bird fades from existence. If its loss injures the sluagh, it doesn’t show, the flock flying around us in perfectly synchronized swoops.

Midnight brandishes her horn, scraping one of the blood-beaked menaces from the sky, but again it does nothing.

This is the true power of a sluagh. You have to defeat every single one of its parts to kill the whole. Myths of old speak of giants who could crush all of a soul eater in one fist. But if any such giants exist, the Moon Goddess has not yet brought one to Alarria.

We battle the cloud of angry birds, but we are bears fighting off bees. One swipe of our paw might crush an individual, but several more take its place.

A wordless roar tears from me, seeped in all my rage, all my frustration. This monster will not touch my moon bound again!

She flies toward me, harassed by the other sluagh.

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