Page 48 of Orc's Desire

“Grawhhhh!” I roar, digging deeper.

Gweneth needs me. I will not fail her.

Khiara is at my side, joining in the effort then Muda is too. All of us groan, giving it all we have, but the bars hold strong. Resisting all that we have. Failure looms. Sliding its way insidiously into my thoughts. Urging me to give up.

No. Gweneth, I am coming. Hold on my dragoste.

My dragoste. My intended. The one Tajss created for me to share my life with. I know it with all the certainty that I know my own name. Strength comes from somewhere. Filling my muscles with a renewal.

The bars squeak. The immovable giving way to the inevitable. My love for her will not be stopped, no matter what the barrier.

They break free and the three of us stumble back, falling on our asses. The stale water splashes across, soaking all of us.

“Yes!” Muda exclaims, recovering the fastest.

He is on his feet thrusting one fist into the air. He runs to the tunnel then pauses, looking back over his shoulder.

“Come on!” he says, his voice high-pitched with excitement. “It’s time to save the girl.”

Yes. Yes, it is. Here I come Gweneth. And I bring death with me to any who have harmed you.

28

GWENETH

“Tajss provides,” Rani says so softly it’s barely a whisper.

“How do you mean?” I ask.

I’m sitting with my back against the door. The floor is so cold my ass went numb a long, long time ago, but that’s okay because now I don’t really notice it. I’ve told the tale of humanity, at least as I know it, up to the point of the first Zmaj rescuing us.

Rani chuckles and sighs. There is a heaviness to her sighing that is palpable even here in the dank dark. As if she is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“Everything happens, in the end, for a reason. One thing leads to the next, even if we can’t see it. I’ve long thought this, but it’s not always a pleasant thought.”

“If you’re right, I mean, it’s kind of comforting, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Only if you’re on the ‘right’ side of it,” she murmurs, and that heaviness is in her voice again.

She’s talking about her people, the Urr’ki. They’ve been retreating from the Zmaj for a long time. At war for generations. A war that they have been consistently losing. But maybe, just maybe, I bring hope. Or more specifically Rosalind does, I’m just a cog in a much bigger machine.

“Your people have lost a lot,” I say.

“Yes,” she agrees. “That is one way to put it.”

“Why only one way?”

“Some things are inevitable,” she says. “We made many mistakes and now we pay the price for them. Good and bad.”

“That’s grim,” I say.

“Yes, but it’s also freeing. As I said, I see now, more than ever, that Tajss provides.”

I think about this and try to wrap my head around it. She is talking on a massive scale, but the most I can really grasp is Dilacs and myself. The series of choices, chances really, that had to happen for the two of us to find each other. Looking at it that way, it should be impossible. The odds of us even bumping into each other are astronomical.

What other logic is there to think then that something, somehow, pushes things at least a little bit in one direction or another?

“You haven’t told me your story,” I say.

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