CHAPTER TEN

Goddess help me. After holding Selena in my arms, I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to let her go. Yet I must. She can’t be for me. She’s too young. Her personality shines too brightly. Selena deserves someone who can make her happy, not a bitter old man who lost his heart years ago.

But I want her. Oh, how the most selfish part of me wants her.

Not simply for her young, lush body. Not only for the joy she sees in everything. I want her for the way she came into my arms so readily after her nightmare. The trust she showed me in her vulnerable moment. Such trust is heady, filling a need in me I didn’t realize existed. As one of the king’s guard, I protected my liege and my people, but it was always a distant, somewhat impersonal thing.

Soothing Selena’s fears and holding her like this touches my soul. It’s one of the most intimate moments of my life.

She crawled all the way onto my lap, settling with her torso propped against mine, her face pressed into the hollow of my shoulder. Her sweet breaths tickle across my bare skin.

The dawn light gilds her warm skin with a golden glow and picks up touches of red in her dark-brown hair. I can’t wait for her eyes to open, to see the rich copper-infused brown of their depths. Everything about her is warm and welcoming.

I hate that she had a nightmare, that she has something in her life that gives her nightmares. As someone whose dreams play out that fateful day from long ago when I lost Bruna, I don’t wish anything similar on anyone else, let alone Selena.

My arms tighten, and I want to sing to her again in daylight, a happier song. I only know a small handful of such tunes, having been drawn more to poignant ballads of love lost.

Selena makes me want to change all of that.

She stirs, her lips making a little pout of resistance to waking that fades the moment her eyes open. As soon as she sees me, she smiles, soft and open.

That smile goes straight to my heart, making the creaky old thing thump to life.

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 about us , 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 to travel .”

“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 a hidden 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.

“Orc,” her deep alto booms across the clearing as her triangular head drops down to spear me with one huge amber eye. “You left against my orders.”

Selena jerks in my arms and says something that must be a swear.

“I did, but as I hope you can see, it was for good cause.” I tip my head toward Selena as Dash comes to a halt. “The Moon Goddess summoned me to receive a sky gift.”

“The dragons saw no such visitation by the goddess.” Her gaze falls upon Dash. “And we can see as far as a unicorn can run in that time.”

“Ah, mighty dragon. I beg to differ, but you are wrong,” Dash says, sounding completely unapologetic. “For I am no mere unicorn. I have pooka travel magic.”

“But you have a horn.” Her head cocks to the side as she inspects him even more thoroughly. “You should be able to heal, not travel.”

“What can I say?” He whinnies a laugh and tosses his head. “I’m special.”

“I must record this in the magical lore,” she says. “I will speak with you further on it.” Dragons infamously hoard, just as the tales say. Only it’s knowledge, not gold. Though for all I know, they have a mountain of the precious metal as well.

“I would be delighted to tell you how exemplary I am,” Dash says, amused.

Then Sheevora returns her attention to me and the woman I hold in my arms. “And so you have a moon bound bride.”

“No, she isn’t mine.” The words tear from my throat as I slide from the unicorn’s back.

“He’s in denial,” Dash says.

“No, I’m not.” I glare at him, then lift Selena to the ground. My hands don’t want to leave her waist. “Selena’s too young, too...”

She looks up at me, her copper-brown eyes warmer than the sun.

She’s too beautiful and happy and perfect. I would not see her joy marred.

My hands drop, and I take a step back. “She’s not mine.”

“Are you quite certain?” the dragon asks. “What does she have to say on the matter?”

“I don’t know. We can’t speak.”

“Let’s fix that.” Sheevora reaches forward, one huge talon extended toward Selena.

A confused mixture of anticipation and dread swirls within me. It will be good to be able to talk to Selena .

Yet even though I know it would be best for her to say so, and even though I know it to be true, it will be horrible to hear that she finds me far too grumpy and old.