Page 3

May

Light surrounds me with warmth and radiant joy—my mother sounds ecstatic to have found me!

“Mom!” I try to say, but I don’t seem to have a mouth or ears. I can’t feel my body. I’m nothing but light. The word pulses outward from me as pure thought instead of sound.

The music changes, the high bells quieting to let the strings thrum a haunting melody that makes my soul ache.

She’s trapped and lonely, so terribly lonely, and I’m the only person who can set it right.

“I will,” I say. “I’ll do it for you, Mom!”

But the longer the voice sings, the less familiar it sounds, slowly morphing into a ringing chorus throbbing with power underlaid by…

Wait. Is that rage? What the fuck? My mother never had a single angry bone in her entire body.

“Who are you?” I cry out, the thought swallowed by the music, which keeps insisting I do what it wants.

Oh, hell no. “Why the fuck are you pretending to be my mother? That’s seriously sus.”

“I am your goddess.”

“ My goddess?” I snort. “Last time I checked, I hadn’t signed up for any religions, let alone yours.”

The command rings through the music, over and over. “Find me. Free me. Find me. Free me.”

My entire being freezes, locked into shocked compliance, even as my mind screams no.

It takes me a moment to realize I’m me again, crouched on a hard surface, my palms planted on either side of my feet to help keep me steady. The rough sandpaper of rock abrades my fingertips as a wobble makes them flex.

I blink rapidly, still bathed in blinding light, but my sense of smell has returned big time, the scent of pine almost overwhelming.

The moon hovers directly overhead, the swirling white surface broken by more and more zigzags of pale-blue lightning.

The song continues to ring in my ears, demanding compliance.

Fighting dizziness, I push to my feet, anger thrumming through me. “If you think I’m going to do what you want after you pretended to be my mother—” My voice breaks on a hiccupped sob, the sadness my anger hides bubbling to the surface. God, there for a bit, I really thought I was talking to Mom. Discovering it was a trick feels like losing her all over again.

“FIND ME. FREE ME!”

The voice reverberates through my entire body, pounding against the inside of my chest and shivering along my bones. My knees give out, and I plop back down onto the rock, gasping for breath.

With one last chorus of demanding notes, the moon flies up into the sky, disappearing from view.

The night descends into darkness. I keep waiting for my eyes to adjust, and it takes a moment to realize they already have. It’s completely dark. Which should be impossible, because tonight’s a full moon. Tiny stars dot the deep purple sky overhead, so it’s not clouds blocking the view. Where did the moon go?

The sound of the wind whispering through trees combined with the smell of pine tells me I’m in a forest. I spin slowly, but no matter how hard I look, I can’t spot any lights in the distance, so wherever I am, it’s not near Ferndale Falls. The town is small, sure, but it still has plenty of lights.

No moon. No Ferndale Falls. Where the hell am I?

Before I can explore, tiny lights wink on in the surface I sit on, coming from little crystals inset into the stone.

Warmth blooms on my chest, and I grip the necklace my mother gave me, lifting the crystal pendant. It glows a silvery light-blue.

My jaw drops. Mom always said the crystal was magic, and when I was a little girl, I believed her with my whole heart. But then she died, and as I grew up, I lost that belief and thought all the talk of magic and witches was just Mom being Mom, a woman raised by hippies who liked herbal medicine and being super environmentally conscious. I never imagined it could be real.

Tingling electricity shoots through me, making my nerves hum with a feeling of potential. I grip the crystal, my hand cupping it in the old familiar way. Even if the goddess lied about being my mother, I feel Mom with me now.

The lights slowly dim, my crystal cooling, and the glorious feeling of potential fades as well, leaving me in darkness. Fighting down disappointment, I explore a bit on hands and knees. I’m on some kind of rectangular rock platform, about six-feet wide and twice as long. I reach down the sides, feeling only empty air. Good thing I didn’t try to walk anywhere! Who knows how high up I am?

Tiny blue lights appear in the distance, dancing and moving around so quickly they look like fireflies on a caffeine bender. I have no idea what they are, but I watch for several minutes in case they come closer.

When they don’t, I shrug and curl up on the hard stone. It’s not that different from sleeping on a wooden floor, and I’ve done that plenty. One thing you learn when you become a backpacking, travel-the-world-without-a-plan kind of girl is you sleep when you can.

“Magic is real, Mom,” I whisper and let myself drift off.

I jolt awake. I’m sprawled out flat on my back, starfishing across the top of the rock. The sky overhead is storybook blue, the white clouds so fluffy you want to pluck them from the air and stuff them into pillows. Birdsong trills high and sweet. The tops of pine trees circle all around.

What woke me? I can usually sleep through almost anything.

A deep grunt makes me roll over until I can look over the edge of the stone.

“What the hell are you?” I blurt.

Something built like the Hulk, only gray, climbs the side of the column like King Kong scaling the Empire State Building. He’s naked except for a fur loincloth and a massive two-headed axe strapped to his back.

Why do I get the feeling I’m supposed to be the shrieking blonde damsel in this situation?

Oh, hell no. This girl doesn’t do damsel.

I seriously need to figure out what’s going on here, and I need to figure it out now . My crystal warms on my chest, and my hand instinctively curls around it.

He looks up at me and leers, his face crudely formed with a smashed-in nose and a mouth that looks like it was drawn by an unsteady hand. His smile sends warning signals flaring in my brain—red alert.

“Hello, pretty witch.” He reaches upward, his hand falling thankfully short. “Come here. I won’t hurt you any.”

There’s an echo right after the words, even though his mouth doesn’t move. “I’ll hurt you a lot.”

“Fat chance, asshole.” I jerk upright.

He grunts. “You speak ogrish. Good.”

Another echo: “I like it when I can understand their screams.”

“What the actual fuck, dude? What’s up with the creeper-talk? Do you get off on scaring women?”

Instead of answering, he starts to climb again.

I leap to my feet, whirling to see if there’s anything that can help. Sunlight drenches the surrounding forest. If the stone stood at the edge of the clearing, I could jump into one of the pine trees, but it’s right in the center, so there’s no way I can leap that far.

Fuck me sideways with a rusty spoon.

“You! You call yourself a goddess?” I scream up at the sky. That goddess who pretended to be my mom for a hot minute dropped me into this mess—she can damn well get me out of it. “Come and fix this!”

No ball of light appears. No woman’s voice sings out.

“Typical,” I mutter. Why should I be surprised? Both European and Chinese mythology are jam-packed with gods and goddesses screwing over humans.

A meaty gray hand slaps onto the top of the rock.

I stomp on it, bearing down with the low heel of my cute ankle boot. Why did I have to be so practical? A stiletto heel sure would be awesome about now.

Instead of letting go, or better yet falling off the side of the pillar, the asshole laughs.

I hate being laughed at.

When I stomp again, he only laughs harder, small black eyes staring up at me with an unholy glee. His hand lashes out, grabbing my ankle.

“Shit!”

A man—a green man—rides out of the trees on a white unicorn. He’s tall, with the kind of chest and shoulders you only get if you live at the gym or do heavy construction ten hours a day. Brown leather pants and a purple tunic shirt hug his muscles. He’s handsome, with a strong jaw and a gorgeous mouth framed by tusks. Long black hair flows behind him, kept from his eyes by a…

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “Is that a crown?”

“Get away from my bride!” he roars.

Bride? Do what now?

The hand wrapping my ankle releases to grip the stone once again.

The green man stands in the stirrups and jumps up, balancing on the saddle like a trick rider at a rodeo. When the unicorn runs past the pillar, the man leaps, sailing higher than any human could manage. He latches onto the gray dude’s shoulders and heaves.

They go flying backward.

The green man does a complex twist in the air, one boot lashing out to hit the rock and send him shooting in a new trajectory away from the other guy. He rolls across the moss, popping back up to his feet.

The gray dude lands flat on his back with a loud whomp, all the air expelled from his lungs. But the asshole doesn’t stay down for long. He jumps up, pulling the axe from his back and spinning to face the newcomer. A long dark bruise already shows on his back where his full weight landed on the weapon’s handle.

“Orc scum!” he yells. “This sky gift is mine.”

Okay, green guy is an orc. Check.

“You lie, ogre. The Moon Goddess summoned me.” The orc unsheathes his sword. “The human is my bride.”

We’re seriously going to have to have a talk about this bride shit, but for now, he can call me anything he likes as long as he gets gray dude away from me.

The unicorn thunders back into the clearing, chasing a scaled yellow-green horse. “Face me, kelpie!” a female voice cries out. “Feel the might of my horn!”

I gasp. Holy shit. Even the animals talk!

The kelpie wheels around, front hooves striking the air, and another female voice says, “You’ll have to get close to me to use that horn.”

Both pairs of opponents clash, and my eyes bounce back and forth, trying to take it all in. It’s like watching an action movie, and after only a few moments, my gaze locks onto the orc. He moves with the precision of a martial artist who’s trained for years, but unlike the competitions I’ve seen, none of his motions are decorative—everything is pared down to practicality.

And lethalness.

The orc blocks a fierce downward blow, sidestepping and driving the pommel of his sword into the ogre’s side.

The ogre snarls and flails with his axe. “You think that crown is going to stop me?”

“No.” The orc smirks, his lips lifting to show off his tusks. “I think my sword is going to stop you.”

A precise slice opens a black line across the ogre’s chest. Then a second on his thigh.

The kelpie screams, the sound equal parts anger and pain. She gallops past the men, and the ogre throws himself clumsily across her back, pulling himself upright using brute strength. They disappear into the trees, the unicorn pounding after them.

The orc wipes his sword clean on the moss and sheaths it. Then he walks up to the base of the stone and holds out his arms. “Jump, and I’ll catch you.”

“Will you?” I lift an eyebrow.

“Of course, I will.” He gives me an imperious stare. “I just said I would, and I’m a man of honor.”

“Yeah, well, that last guy just said a lot of things, too.” I hook a thumb toward where the ogre went. “All of it lies.”

“Jump.” It snaps out with the crack of an order.

Oh, hell no. My back bristles. Even if this guy is on the up and up, I don’t do orders.

“What choice do you have?” He lifts his arms higher.

Dammit. He’s right. I hate it, but he’s right. I grip my crystal, wanting to know if he’s telling the truth. It warms in my hands, but I don’t hear any conflicting echoes like I did with the ogre.

“Fine,” I grit out and throw myself off the pillar.

A whoosh of wind, the plummet just long enough to make my heart race with the thrill of adrenaline.

Then strong arms snatch me out of the air, crushing me to a chest almost as hard as the stone I spent the night on. Up close, he’s even better looking, that gorgeous mouth topped by a pair of handsome dark eyes.

I take a deep breath of leather and man and the clean hint of pine. God, why does he smell so good? It’s not fair. My heart’s still racing, and it has nothing to do with the fall.

“My moon bound bride.” His voice echoes in my head.

“Stop calling me that,” I say.

“I didn’t say anything.” He startles.

“By the goddess, what magic does this witch have that she’s already enchanted me? I want nothing more than to spread her naked across my furs.”

My crystal burns on my chest, and his lips definitely didn’t move for any of that last bit.

Fuck.

I can read his mind.