Page 5 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

“I will.” I tip my head. “Thank you, Sheevora the Magnificent.”

She launches into the air, a dark shadow that blazes bright green as she crests the shadow line and enters the last of the day’s light.

I make camp, pitching my tent and arranging my furs, fully willing to do as she bid. Our crucial alliance with the dragons is new, and my quest is far too important to neglect even the smallest request.

Yet as soon as I close my eyes, a different song haunts me, the notes so sweet and pure no mere mortal could ever fashion them. Light, brighter than day, floods my tent, making the stretched leather sides glow.

I roll outside and stand.

A silver moon shines overhead, the goddess come to me. Does she bring a sky gift to aid my quest? Instead of dropping an artifact from another realm of Faerie, the orb drops lower, coalescing into a ball of brilliant silver shot through with blue. Music continues to play, teasing me with a song I feel I should know, even though I’ve never heard it before. Louder and louder it grows, and the sphere dashes forward to splash across my eyes, sinking into my very being.

My body turns, pointing in a new direction. The Moon Goddess has summoned me. It must be some horrible mistake, because I lost my true love years ago. Yet when the goddess next shines her light on Alarria, she will deliver unto me a moon bound bride.

CHAPTER THREE

Selena

Mami’s lullaby holds me close in bright warmth. I have no idea where I am, and I don’t even care.

For what feels like the first time in ages, I let go. All of the burdens of the last few years fall away—the fight for scholarships, grades, study time, sleep. Mierda, the ability to do anything but grind, grind, grind, the promise of a future as a doctor constantly dangled as a prize just out of reach.

I long to help people, to be a healer, and I’m ready tobethe thing, not just dream it. Patient, I’m not.

Eventually, I stop moving, but I can only tell once the light withdraws back into a ball that sails up and away intodarkness, the last notes of the lullaby fading. Where am I? The air feels too cool and crisp for Miami, and it’s far too quiet. My fingers flex against the hard surface below me, scraping on the roughness of stone. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I’m on my back, staring up into a deep-purple night sky, spangled with tiny, winking stars.

I sit up and try to pull my feet under me, but my ankle shrieks in agony. “Carajo!” I forgot all about it while in the soothing light, but it lets me know it’s not just a little hurt—it’s really hurt. I’ve torn ligaments, at a minimum. I need to wrap it and apply ice, lots and lots of ice. Then I should—

My crystal necklace starts to glow a pale blue, and crystals embedded in the surface I sit on brighten, too. Ay! I’ve worn it for years, and it’s never done anything like this!

An electric shock zips through me, and…

The pain in my ankle stops, like someone flipped a switch!

I reach out to probe the injury, bracing for pain, but there is none. No swelling, no tenderness, either. I rotate my foot gingerly, putting the joint through its full range of motion. It feels fine, as if I never hurt my ankle in the first place.

Holding up my necklace like a little lantern, I get on my knees. The crystals glowing in the stone below me extend only a few feet in each direction. When I knee walk over and pat at what’s past them, my hand plunges into open air.

“Carajo!” I’m on some kind of platform, who knows how high. The crystals dim, and I back away, even more wary without them to show where the edges are. When mynecklace finally goes dark, I can no longer ignore the fact that it glowed and that I feltsomethingwhen my ankle healed.

If you’d asked me only a few hours ago what I believed in, I would have said science. Blood work and x-rays and PET scans and all the different ways medicine has discovered how to heal a human body.

And yet, there’s always been a part of me that believed in something more. In the recipes in the old family cookbook that weren’t food, the herbs used to treat various ailments.

But this, this is something more. My fingers trace over the smooth sides of the crystal pendant I’ve worn ever since Abuelita gave it to me for my quinceañera. Most girls got crosses, and indeed, Mami gave me a little gold one on a dainty necklace I keep safe in my jewelry box.

But Abuelita pressed this solid pendant into my hand and curled my fingers around it. “Keep this with you always, mija. My grandmother said it’s magic.”

“Grandmother Abigail? The English one? The one with the stories?”

“Si. The one who spoke of Faeries.” Abigail emigrated to Peru in the middle of the 1800s. There, her talk of magic and other worlds were laughed off as British eccentricity, and the family still told stories of her wilder tales.

But what if they were true?

Magic.

This crystal is magical.

The warmth and rightness of the light that brought me here echoes through me again. Butwhere is here?

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