Page 20 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

Her sweet soprano caresses my ears, and I don’t need the magic of the speaking stone to know she thanks me.

“It was nothing,” I lie.

Because it was everything.

The forest slips past in a streak of indistinct shapes, Dash’s magic carrying us ever onward.

“How long?” I ask. I promised the dragons I’d stay in the meadow where they left me. Nothing will ever make me regret rescuing Selena, yet I have little desire to endanger the newly formed dragon-orc alliance, either. Besides, Sheevora holds the power of the speaking stone. The sooner we get to the dragons, the sooner I’ll be able to talk to Selena.

“Not long,” Dash says.

“That’s too vague.” I frown.

Dash’s laugh is a high whinny as he tosses his head. “So impatient.”

A wordless growl rumbles through my chest.

Selena stirs in my arms, her small hand patting the one I have spread across her stomach, holding her in place. She’s a horrible rider, but she’s getting better, her body starting to move with the unicorn’s gait.

A dark shape looms ahead, too indistinct to tell anything but weight and presence.

I flinch, my body curling around Selena’s instinctively as Dash races forward. “Dash! Look out!”

His rear hooves strike whatever serves for ground in this liminal space, and he pivots left at the last second.

Selena slips to the right with a little gasp.

My thighs clench the unicorn’s sides to hold me in place as I pull her to me.

The dark bulk slides past only a hair’s breadth away. If I were willing to let Selena go—which I’m not—I could reach out and touch it. Although something tells me that’s perhaps not the best of ideas.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Probably a rock formation.”

“And if we hit it?”

“Relax, orc,” Dash says, voice filled with amusement. “Pooka have run like this since first there were fae, and we will run for an eternity more.”

“I’m not worried about the entire pooka species,” I snap. “I’m worried aboutus, here and now.”

“As quickly as I’ve been running, don’t you realize we constantly pass through trees?”

I jerk upright in shock. “What?”

“Come, you must have suspected.” He gives an amused snort. “Otherwise, I’d do nothing but zigzag all over the place, going sideways almost as much as forward. That’s no way totravel.”

“So you’re on the shadow roads?”

“The ones the cat sith use? No. The feline fae have their magic, and we have ours.” His voice sparkles with mischief. “Ours is far superior, of course. The pooka follow no set roads—we run where we will. We used to run across all of Faerie. No one realm could hold us.”

“Until the doors closed.” They slammed shut three hundred years ago, isolating each realm. Before the Moon Goddess brought my ancestors here, Alarria had been ahidden realm, lost to myth, tucked away in the heart of Faerie.

“Until then,” he agrees with a sigh. “Maybe someday I will run as far and wide as a pooka should.”

The way lightens ahead, and instead of speeding up, Dash slows his wild gallop. The trees surrounding us snap back into focus as he trots the last few yards to the edge of the meadow.

Where a dragon waits, and not just any dragon—Sheevora.

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