CHAPTER SIX（Untitled）Wranth

CHAPTER SIX

Wranth

The familiar magic of Alarria wraps around me, so welcoming I can almost forget how we appeared in the air, flying toward an injurious impact if not for my bride’s magic. The way she made us arrive safely on the ground was amazing—almost as amazing as feeling her on top of me for those first stunned seconds of our arrival.

My hands itch even now, eager to gather her to me once again, to feel her soft curves pressed against me.

Yet my bride stares at me with a lost look in her eyes, shaken.

“Thank the goddess I’m me again! I didn’t like that.” Zephyr snorts and shakes her head, settling her mane back into place. Her blue eyes cross as she stares upward, straining to see her horn. “No, I didn’t like that one bit! Why do all the old stories say it’s so grand to take on the elfin form?”

“Oh, I didn’t think it was so bad.” The cat sith grins, showing off an impressive amount of teeth. He licks a paw and smooths it over his face and neck, making his mane fluff wide. “Then again, I always look stunning.”

Although I’d previously discounted the feline fae as nothing but pranksters, being around Mist in Moon Blade Village has shown me that they are strong fighters, their teeth and claws sharp, their spirits as ferocious as any of the Wild Fae. But I cannot forgive the way this one paraded his body in front of my bride. Normally, I have no issues with nudity—I gather regularly with other orcs in the communal baths—but with her, I can’t stand it.

“The bipedal form allows one to blend in, to travel the realms more freely. Though none of the stories say elves have fangs, so why did my elfin form have fangs?”

“I don’t know,” Zephyr says. “Mine did, too.”

His green eyes land on my bride. “What did she do? Did she open the doors of Faerie?”

“I don’t know. We went… somewhere else, and I don’t think it was Faerie.” The lack of magic in that strange world still echoes emptily through me.

My moon bound says something, the words incomprehensible.

“Why can’t I understand her any longer?” Zephyr asks. “She spoke clearly only a moment ago.”

“She must have opened the doors of Faerie. The magic started to flow again, allowing you access to your elfin forms and allowing the old translation spells to work.”

“And then they slammed closed all over again,” the cat sith says, “cutting off both types of magic.”

“I don’t want to be a biped again.” Zephyr stomps a hoof against the ground. “But not being able to talk to her is irritating.”

“Think of how much worse it must be for her, unable to understand any of us.” I pull the crystal imbued with the magic of the speaking stone from my pocket. This time, when I approach my bride, I’m pleased she doesn’t shy away. When I hold it out, she allows me to press the crystal to her light-brown palm. A tingle of magic zips through me, and she startles, clearly feeling it, too.

“There,” I say. “You should be able to understand everyone now.”

“Yes!” Her beautiful brown eyes sparkle as she gives me a radiant smile. “How did you do that?”

“Magic.” I lift the now drained crystal. “Just as you have magic.”

“Is that what did all of this?” Her fingers trail over the crystal that dangles in the cleft of her large breasts, pulling my gaze to them. “This crystal does magic?”

I jerk my eyes to hers. “ You’re magic. You’re a witch.”

“Witch…” Her eyes go a bit distant.

“So, witch,” the cat sith purrs, “what magic did you do?”

“Hey, I’ve got a name.” She hooks a thumb toward that impressive chest. “Naomi.”

“I’m Shadow.” The feline dips his head, his words deferential in sharp contrast with his amused tone. “At your service.”

“I’m Zephyr.”

“And I’m Wranth.”

The unicorn narrows her blue eyes. “So what did you do? And can you never do it again?”

“Yeah, no promises on that,” Naomi says. “I have a home, a family, I want to get back to.”

She can’t know it, but her words cut me to the quick, slicing open the deepest wound of my soul. I flinch, unable to stop my reaction. My bride has everything I’ve always lacked and longed for. How can I gainsay her for wanting to return to them?

“Was that your home we visited?” I ask.

“Yep, that was Ferndale Falls.”

The growling metal beast, the buildings made out of dead wood instead of living trees, the human calling me “coz player” instead of orc—how am I supposed to belong in that magicless place? Yet I will have no choice. If my bride returns, then so shall I. For all the mystery that shrouds my life, there is one thing I know.

I can never give her up.

I am bound to her forever.

“You went to the human world?” Shadow looks at my bride with admiration. “You’re even more interesting than I thought!”

“Why’d you say ‘human world’ like that?” Naomi’s hands go to her hips, her elbows flaring wide. “Somebody better start explaining a whole lot of shit really, really fast.”

“This is—”

A loud cry cuts through the air, the sluagh.

A protective urge wells through me.

“Come, let’s get out of the open.” I hustle my bride under the cover of the trees. They’re no true protection—as evinced by the attack the sluagh waged as Zephyr and I neared the clearing—but the pines will slow the soul stealer down.

“What happened to the saddle and all our things?” I ask Zephyr.

“ Our things?” she says dryly, eyeing me.

“ My things.” I scowl with no true heat in it. This is a long-running joke between us. Unicorns are strange that way—they agree to partner with orcs yet seem to begrudge our need to carry supplies.

“They fell off when I turned into a biped. This way.” Zephyr pushes between two pines, leading us to the area where I left her fighting part of the sluagh flock.

“So where are we?” Naomi runs a hand over a close branch, stroking the needles in the direction of their growth. “If we’re not on Earth, that is.”

“This is Alarria, one of the realms of Faerie.” I lift the saddle and attached bags from the ground, tucking it under one arm to free my hands to open the buckle.

“Faerie.” She repeats the word slowly, as if tasting each syllable.

“It used to connect to your world.” I sling the saddle up onto Zephyr’s back and bend to cinch the strap tight. “That’s why you have stories about us.”

“Yes.” The cat sith slinks past her legs, his bushy tail waving high in the air. “You must have stories of my kind.”

“Why are you here?” I scowl at him.

“You’ve been traveling through cat sith lands for several days, orc. And you question me as to why I’m here?”

“I did not trespass on a whim.” I bare my tusks at him. “The goddess summoned me.”

“It’s true,” Zephyr says. “I saw her light when she appeared to him.”

The feline’s eyes flick past me, landing on Naomi. “So that makes the human—”

“It does,” I cut across his words, my voice as sharp as a blade. If anyone’s telling her what we are to each other, it’s me. I turn to her and soften my tone. “The Moon Goddess summoned me to come and find you because you’re my moon bound bride.”