Page 1 of Bound to the Orc King

CHAPTER ONE

May

“Have you ever seen a guy with two dicks? I have! Get your butt back to Ferndale Falls now.” I read my friend Naomi’s text for the hundredth time since I first got it two days ago.

Those shocking words made me call her immediately. When she didn’t pick up, I tried Hannah, but my other best friend would only say, “Something very exciting is happening, but I can’t tell you over the phone.” When I accused her of making up spy shit, she just laughed and said, “Come home and find out.”

They know how much I hate being told what to do, but the bait they dangled sure as shit worked this time.

I lower my phone and eye the dimly lit length of Main Street. Small quaint shops and cafes line both sides, closed for the night or no longer in business. Ferndale Falls at nine thirty on a Tuesday night is calm and quiet and cute as can be.

But it sure as hell isn’t what anyone would call exciting, and I don’t see anybody, let alone fantasy men with two dicks.

Only a strange feeling tingles in the air, something I can’t quite define. It stirs a familiar restlessness in me, one that makes me need to move, to do. I hurry down the sidewalk, passing the ice cream shop that used to make the best Rocky Road.

Farther along, the front windows of Naomi’s bookshop are dark, but I try the knob, anyway. Locked. Shit. I’d kind of hoped my two best friends would magically be here, waiting for me, even though they have no idea when I’m arriving. Antsiness urged me to go to the airport and put myself on every standby list, and it worked. I got a flight that boarded immediately, so I didn’t get a chance to contact them.

Yet a thread of relief also goes through me. I love my friends—if they called me at two in the morning to bury a body, I’d be the first to grab a shovel—but they also have everything in their lives sotogether. Hannah’s always known exactly what she wanted to do since we were teenagers, and she manifested it upon graduating college, becoming the youngest mayor in Ferndale Falls’s history. Naomi just got married to a terrific guy and sounds happier than I’ve ever heard her, raving about a new mystery job that’s amazingly fulfilling, while still continuing to run her family’s bookstore. They’re both adulting like champs.

And then there’s me. The rebel. The hot mess.

It’s hard to see everyone else getting on with their lives when I still don’t have any idea who I want to be. It’ll be easier to face their combined adultness after some sleep.

If only Icouldsleep. I spin, eyeing the quiet street, my restlessness getting worse.

After being crammed into a tiny airplane seat all day, I need to move. Maybe if I wear myself out, I can sleep.

I can’t return to my family home yet, can’t face my father and his quiet yet constant air of disappointment. Everyone says I’mmy mother’s daughter, a free spirit just like her. He loved her, so why does he seem to hate that same quality in me?

The backpack slips from my shoulder, and I lean it against the door of the bookshop, knowing it will be safe. This is one thing to love about my tiny hometown. If anyone took my pack, it wouldn’t be to steal it—it would be to deliver it to my house as a favor. My fingers dance over its uneven surface as I feel for a pocket to slide my phone into. The heavy red canvas almost disappears under the patches I’ve sewn across it—one for every place I’ve visited over the past couple of years, Scotland, half of Europe, India, Nepal, Egypt, and most recently, China.

All of them were amazing. None of them were quite right. Why can’t I find the place where I belong, the place that will let me discover who I am?

I whirl around and jog down Main Street, heading out of town toward the waterfall. Ferndale Falls isn’t laid out like most New England towns, isn’t evenly ringed by residential areas. There are no houses to the north or east, so the main part of town in those directions butts up against heavy forest. I cut along familiar trails, taking a more direct route than roads allow, and in no time at all, I’m winding along the path to the falls.

I hear the roar of rushing water a few minutes before the trees open up in front of me. Moonlight bathes the falls, highlighting the leaping froth churned by the constant flow of water down the rock face.

A tight knot of tension eases in my stomach as I slide to a halt and suck in what feels like my first deep breath in months. God, I love the falls. I pick my way to the edge of the pond and find a moss-covered rock to perch on.

Out of everywhere I’ve traveled, this is the most peaceful place I know. Every memory of my mother is precious, but my most cherished are of the times she brought me here for special “sweet treat” picnics. Mom sang while she spread out theblanket, her voice weaving in and out of the sound of the falling water. She laid out nothing but sweets, grinning and reminding me this was a secret party without Dad, just us girls. Each cookie or pastry came from a different country, and she told me a fun story from her travels to each place as we ate the treat. Every time we picnicked, she’d add a new one, but I had my faves: Jaffa cakes from England, bursting with chocolate and orange, mohnkuchen from Germany, the sweet poppy seeds crunching between my teeth, and rose cakes from China, sweet and floral.

We always finished with fairy cakes, tiny short cupcakes drizzled with honey. She’d tell me a new story of Faerie each time, one passed down through the family, full of adventures waiting on the other side of a magical door. “Anne released the tiny pixies from the lanterns, and the flock fluttered around her like a cloud of glowing-blue butterflies, promising to be friends for life.”

The memory curls my lips into a soft smile, and I grip the crystal necklace she left me, the hexagonal pendant cupped by my fingers in a miniature of the hug I wish I could give her. I always feel closest to her here.

“Hi Mom. I know it’s been a while,” I whisper. “I was gone for longer this time because I finally went to China like Dad wanted and met a bunch of the family.”

As I’ve done every time I return from a trip, I tell her everything. How exciting the packed street markets of Hong Kong are, how beautiful the ancestral village in Yunnan is, with terraced rice paddies coiling around the mountainsides like a goddess decorated the landscape with massive ribbons, and how Nai Nai makes the best pork dumplings I’ve ever tasted.

After a while, I fall silent, the toe of my ankle boot digging into the mulch covering the ground. Then I let out a held breath and say the thing I’ve barely been able to admit to myself, because saying it will make it real.

“It wasn’t what I hoped it would be. I had a fantastic time, and everyone was really nice.” I swallow. “But it wasn’t the place.Myplace. The one that fit.”

It’s one of the main reasons I held off on going to China for so long. Dad thinks I did it to resist his demand that I go—and he’s not wrong; Ihatebeing told what to do—but it was more than that. Visiting China always felt like my last shot at discovering where I belong in the world, and as long as I hadn’t gone there yet, it existed as hope and possibility.

Now that hope is gone, and I’m right back where I started.

Only…

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