Page 89 of Bound to the Orc King

“Chained to him how?” Luke asks.

“My magic works via visual metaphor, so what I see is…” I spread my hands wide, palms up. “It’s not lies, but it’s a way to interpret the truth instead of maybe being the literal truth.”

“You didn’t go into his memories?” Aldronn asks. “The ones you saw in my mind yesterday were highly accurate.”

“I didn’t have time to look around.” I describe the palace and the ornate throne room. “The Dark God sat on the throne, even though this was Severin’s mind. That’s wrong—I can feel it—it should have been Severin on the throne.”

“Where was he in this vision?” Sheevora asks.

“He sat at the foot of the throne, and a silver chain led from his ankle to the Dark God.”

“It’s as Tumbletoad said.” Wranth leans forward, scowling. “The Dark God tricked the elves and turned them into the dark fae.”

“It’s interesting that after three-hundred years, they still don’t serve him willingly,” Aldronn says. “We should find a way to use that.”

“How?” Sheevora asks.

“I don’t know,” Aldronn admits. “All my premonition magic tells me is I’ll see this King Severin again.”

A gust of wind howls past, making the flames leap, and I hunch into my cloak as a shiver runs through me.

“Where do we go today, May?” Luke asks.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“We’ve gone north, like you said. We’ve reached the Northern Wastes, so where do we go next?”

“The goddess didn’t say. I already told you that.” I throw up my hands and let out a frustrated huff. “She was morethan happy to scream me into a coma. She could have told me somethinguseful. But no. All I got was: ‘Find me. Free me.’”

“Therefore, she must think that you have the ability to find her.” Luke says,

“What? You think I have a built-in goddess-radar or something? No, wait. There’s got to be a better word for that. How about goddessdar?”

“I don’t think any of us fae know what radar means,” Aldronn says, pronouncing the word carefully. “Another of your colloquialisms?”

“Nope, you can blame this one on scientists. It’s a device that sends out signals and finds things.” I wiggle my fingers like waves floating through the air. That’s about as technical as I get. Science was never my jam.

“Try to use your goddessdar,” Aldronn says.

I shoot him some side eye. “You know I made up that word to be funny.”

He shrugs. “I believe in you.”

“We all do,” Naomi says.

Sheevora’s face is carefully neutral, and Luke definitely looks like he doesn’t believe in me, but screw him.

Closing my eyes, I grip my crystal. If Aldronn’s mind is a castle, and Severin’s is a palace, what does the mind of a goddess look like? Then I realize the visual metaphor for her is built into her name. She’s a moon, shining cold and bright, floating so high overhead she doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of her actions.

I picture walking on the moon, bouncing around in big space boots like Armstrong, a bubble helmet on my head. But this is just me, my imagination running wild. I’m not actually connecting to her mind. Does my power even work long distance? Aldronn and Severin were both close when I read their minds.

Old May would give up at this point and assume she couldn’t do it. I don’t want to be her anymore.

Straining with everything I’ve got, I reach for the goddess. This time, I imagine I’m in space and need to get to the moon. There’s a flash of warmth I can feel through my glove, and the sound of the wind falls away as I truly enter my mental space this time.

I fly through velvety darkness sprinkled with stars, and the tiny dot of one of them grows into a silver disk. The faint strains of beautiful music tease my ears. I dive forward—

Only to slam into an invisible barrier that knocks me back into my body.

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