Page 51 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

“Can we retrieve them from there, from the mouth of the mountain?” Selena asks.

“No,” Bellavesaria says. “It’s a lava vent. Anything tossed into it is incinerated.”

The gnome gives a solemn nod. “The mouth is hungry. Nothing escapes it.”

Fuck. I’ve barely begun, and already my quest is a failure. I’m a failure. Frustration and anger war within me. I stand and stomp back into the tunnel we just came from, waiting until I’m out of sight to slam my fist into the unyielding rock wall.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Selena

The look of hollow emptiness on Sturrm’s face guts me. Carajo! I just know he’s blaming himself for something completely out of his control.

And you know what? Enough of that mierda. If he can’t break free of the negative thought patterns he’s built up about himself from his past, then I’lldraghim out of them.

“Give us a moment,” I say to the others. Then I march into the tunnel after Sturrm, glow stone in hand.

As soon as I round the first bend, I find him standing with his back to me, his shoulders high andtense.

“Sturrm.” I reach for his shoulder, and as soon as we touch, a thread of my magic leaps into him and speeds back to me, carrying a flare of yellow all around his right hand, indicating a serious injury. I tug on his arm. “What did you do?”

He doesn’t move, no matter how hard I pull.

So I wiggle between him and the wall, my breasts sliding across his stomach.

Thatmakes him move. He flinches back away from me, and I grab his right forearm, holding the glow stone close. His knuckles are scraped raw and bleeding, but what’s worse is I can feel the broken bones inside his hand.

Anger heats my blood. I hate that he hurt himself. It’s obvious what happened, but I ask again, anyway, wanting to get him talking. “What did you do?”

“I punched the wall.”

“And the rock punched back. Did it help with what’s bothering you?”

He shakes his head, and his voice sounds empty. “It solved nothing. I’ve failed in my quest.”

“Mierda, no!” I send a pulse of healing magic into him, and the scrapes heal in front of my eyes like a time-lapsed movie run on fast forward. The next pulse starts to work on knitting the bones. The bright yellow aura of the injury fades to orange, then red, then disappears altogether as the bones knit whole. “The sluagh were here weeks ago, which is before you were sent on this quest. You didn’t fail. You were given an impossible task.”

“What?” The numb look drops from his eyes. “How can you know when the sluagh were here?”

“The gnomes I healed. They’d been in the deathsleep coma for a while. When we get back to the others, I’ll confirm.” I send another, stronger push of magic, the power tingling through my body and into his. “None of this is on you, you hear me? And the only way you’re going to fail is if you give up.”

He grunts. It’s not his yes grunt, but it’s also not a no.

“Don’t give up, Sturrm.” Don’t give up on us, a voice in my head adds. I don’t say it out loud—now’s clearly not the time—but I hope he can read it in my eyes.

This time when I tug on him, he moves, following me back into the moss-lit cavern where everyone waits. Or rather, Dash and Bella wait. The gnomes frolic like a knot of excited puppies, laughing and rolling in a big ball of movement.

“I want to check something,” I say. “How long ago were the soul stealers here?”

The gnome who tried to trick me with the ruby separates from the rest. “Three weeks past.”

I turn to Sturrm and raise an eyebrow, getting one of his yes grunts.

The gnome bows to me, his little moss cap somehow remaining on his head. “Milady, you have done us a great service by returning our kin to us, hale and whole. It grieves me to not offer you trade in kind.” He taps the parchment. “There are no crystals left in the cavern marked on your dragon map. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any crystals left in the mountains.”

“What? Really?” Hope blooms in my chest.

“We can take you to them. It will be an honor.”

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