CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The day speeds past, eaten by the gallop of Dash’s hooves as we fly through the world in a blur of his travel magic. Yet everything seems lighter, as if I set down a stone I’ve been carrying for so long I forgot it had weight. I can only recognize it now by its absence.

Perhaps I should have spoken about that long-ago day before now. But how could I have to anyone else? I’m still amazed I did so, a whispered confession in the dark, made to Selena.

Even now, her youthful enthusiasm and love for knowledge pulls words from me, and I answer her endless stream of questions, talking more in a day than I usually do in a week. Yet I cannot deny her curious and clever mind, which skips from topic to topic in leaps of brilliance.

I explain how each orc village has its own standing stone, which produces necessities for us, and how we trade the goods evenly throughout the land so no one goes without. It’s a subject I know well, since much of King Aldronn’s travels among the villages smoothes out any trade issues that might arise. And they always arise. Orcs are headstrong and stubborn and given to settling things with brawling. But settle them, we do.

“How about you?” She pats Dash’s neck. “Do you use the magic of the standing stones?”

“Unicorns have little use for such things,” he says. “Not in Alarria.”

“But you did in your home realm?”

“There weren’t any standing stones there. Those are unique to Alarria,” he says. “But when the doors of Faerie were open, we traveled some of the realms in our other form, which rather inconveniently needs clothes and cooked food and all these other things you bipeds surround yourselves with.”

“Yeah, I didn’t quite follow that.” She gives a little laugh. “What do you mean, ‘other form’?”

“The Wild Fae whose main form is animal have another form that resembles elves,” I say.

“You’re shape shifters?” Her voice fills with excitement. “Like werewolves?”

“Hah!” Dash says. “We’re nothing like those canines. We’re unicorns! ”

“Yes, the cu sith change into elves, and unicorns change into elves.” My tone turns dry. “Obviously, two completely different things.”

Selena’s bright laugh makes me smile. How I love it. Even better, I love knowing I’m the cause of it.

She twists around to glance at me. “How about you? Do you change into an elf?”

“Goddess no!” I growl. “Why would I want to be anything other than an orc?”

Her radiant smile warms my chest as much as her words. “You are pretty great.”

“And I’m magnificent exactly as I am,” Dash says.

“Yes, you are.” Selena gives his neck a pat.

The way ahead lightens, indicating a break in the tree canopy. I say, “Unicorn.”

“I see it.” He snorts in amusement. “I have eyes, you know.” But his pace slows, dropping from a gallop to a trot, and the forest snaps back into focus around us.

We move through a stand of mountain rowans, their purple leaves partially obscuring the groups of white flowers that will become bright-red berries in autumn. Dried leaves crunch under his hooves, and the air has cooled noticeably as we’ve climbed higher into the mountains. One such gray peak waits ahead, filling the sky just beginning to show through the thinning trees.

Dash slows even more as we move out into a small strip of meadow that runs along the front of a cliff.

Evening sunlight beams down, making the dark opening in the rock wall completely black in contrast .

“A cave!” Selena points excitedly. “Is that the one we’re here for?”

I open my mouth to say yes, but a blur of motion yanks my attention to the sky. Black birds fly overhead, splotches of red flashing at beak, foot, and eye. Soul stealers.

A small brown object falls as my muscles tighten with dread. It hits the ground right in front of the unicorn’s hooves, and a billowing cloud of orange fills the air all around us.

Deathsleep!

Red dots sparkle within the cloud, and ice rips claws into my heart. Fuck. It’s the kind that hurts humans as well as fae.

We’re close, way too fucking close to escape. The cloud is all around us.

I hold my breath, but it’s only a matter of time before I succumb, and the one precious vial of antidote Gerna gave me disappeared with my clothes when Selena magicked them away that first day.

My arms tighten around Selena, even as Dash’s legs give out, and he drops. I throw us sideways, hitting the ground on my shoulder, protecting her as much as I can as the world fades to black, the last sound I hear the high croaks of triumphant sluagh.

Despair fills me.

I have failed Selena, just as I failed Bruna all those years ago.