Page 71 of Bound to the Orc Renegade

“Of course.” But I don’t share her delight. I don’t want to find ferns. I want the violet trifolia. Where the hell is it?

The longer we walk, the more frustrated I become. Disappointment fills me, far too familiar, even though I haven’t felt it over the recent days. It hisses with all the things my father always says. “Why can’t you be like Dravarr?” “Why didn’t you win?” “Why are you never good enough?”

I growl and shake my head, trying to fling his words away from me. I willnotfail. I will prove him wrong.

“Here, let me go first.” I reach out and pull her to a halt so I can step around her.

“Sure.”

Her tone sounds a little hurt, but I keep going. I can make it up to her once I find the violet trifolia. After all, she’ll only have a husband who’s a member of the king’s guard if I’m successful. Also, it’s actually safer for me to take the lead—I can ferret out any foe before they get to her. I walk faster and faster, my eyes scanning the ground ahead. Where the hell is it? Ferns, mayapples, and moss decorate the mulch of fallen rowans leaves that have faded from their original bright purple to a silvery mauve.

“Krivoth, I can’t keep up,” Taylor calls from behind me.

“I’ll be right there. I’m still looking.” I stomp forward. Three purple berries, forming a triangle. How hard can that be to find? But with the mountain rowan leaves everywhere, I’m surrounded by purple. Frustration plucks at my nerves, pullingthem tight. How can I be this close to achieving everything I want and yet still unable to grasp success? I shove aside several branches, pushing ever forward.

Still nothing!

“Krivoth!” My bride’s voice comes from too far away. She’s fallen even farther behind.

I spin around, unable to see anything but a wall of purple leaves. “Taylor?”

“I think I found it!”

My amazing bride! “Stay there! I’m coming to you!” I shoulder back through the branches, ignoring the slap of leaves against my face. Tearing through one last bunch of them, I break into a small clearing.

Taylor crouches beside a bunch of mayapples, her hands holding several of the wide, circular leaves out of the way, to expose another plant that hugs the ground. Three purple berries form a triangle right in the middle of a small cluster of deep-green leaves.

She beams up at me. “See! I found the violet trifolia!”

Wings rustle in the trees, and a black bird with a bright red beak dives straight for my bride.

I jolt forward, heart thundering, arm moving as if through molasses as I pull my sword free of its sheath.

My bride might have found the right plant.

But a soul-stealing sluagh has also found her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Taylor

Even though I’ve seen the beautifully and differently colored purple rowan trees for days, there’s something different about the Skular Woods. It takes me a moment to realize it’s that there are no other trees. We’ve been walking for a while, and there hasn’t been a single pine tree.

The ferns look the same, but there’s a lot more of another kind of plant I don’t know. About a foot tall, a flat circular shape made of leaves tops each stem like daisy made of big dark-green petals. They spread across the ground, each plant growing just close enough to the next that their leaves overlap like a sea of umbrellas seen from above.

“What are these? They’re cute.” I stop by a group of them and point.

Krivoth glances down. “They’re called mayapples. And they’re not cute. They’re poisonous.”

I snatch my hand back. “To touch?”

“No, to eat.”

“Good to know.” My nose wrinkles. “So why call them apples?”

“They make a fruit that looks something like a little apple.”

“So the fruit’s edible?”

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