Page 9 of Romancing the Orc

Her tiny face twists in thought for several moments before she nods. After another set of whistled commands, each sprite picks up a magicked berry and flies toward the camp.

I leap forward to run with them.

Time to rescue my mate!

CHAPTER FIVE

Lara

Consciousness returns slowly, awareness seeping in via bursts of sound and bright light that make me scrunch my eyes closed. I amsonot a morning person. When I try to roll over and bury my face in the pillow, my arm won’t move.

Wait. What?

My whole body jerks as I tug with my arms and legs, but it’s no good. I’m sitting upright, tied to a chair at wrists and ankles.

I blink several times as my eyes adjust to brightness. I’m in a large tent. Strong sunlight strikes the white fabric, making the interior glow like the inside of a lantern. Lush carpets cover the floor in bright, tropical colors, and all the furniture is made from bamboo in sleek curving lines, like you see in pictures of fancy vacation resorts for the rich and famous. A large section of thetent’s back wall is rolled up to make a glassless window that looks out over thick jungle. It’s still as hot and humid as Miami, but a large fan hangs from the ceiling—and who knew you could have fans in a tent?—stirring the air into an artificial breeze.

“Ah, good. You’re awake,” Elton’s posh voice says. He sits across from me in a plush chair, leaning back with all the nonchalant ease of a king on a throne. “I must apologize for the accommodations. We’re roughing it on this excursion.”

I suppress a snort. Roughing it? Only someone rich would think this qualified. He should have seen my first efficiency apartment, which was smaller than this tent, with a peeling linoleum floor, paper-thin walls, and zero insulation. I boiled in the summer, froze in the winter, heard every little thing the neighbors did, and fought a constant war against bugs. I donotdo bugs.

My mouth feels so dry my tongue’s glued to the roof, and it takes me a second to croak, “Where are we?”

Maybe we’re still in Florida, and the police will be here any moment. I’ve got one of those tracker apps on my phone, and Sherrie has access to it.

Shit. No pockets in this damned catsuit, so no phone.

“We’re on my island.” Elton smiles.

This time I can’t keep from snorting. What a rich asshole thing to do. “Of course, you own an island.”

“It’s a special island.” His smile drops, and his tone goes defensive. “This island didn’t exist until a few months ago.”

“There’s no way this is some kind of new island made by an active volcano.” I know I write fantasy, but does he think I’m stupid? I eye the rampant greenery outside. “There wouldn’t be plants yet.”

“This island didn’t appear because of a volcano.” He leans forward, a manic light in his eyes. “It was magic. Magic exactly like that found in your books.”

Oh, great. Just my luck. I not only get kidnapped, I get kidnapped by a guy who’s completely delusional.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “I made up all of the magic.”

Or kind of. I based it on an old family journal filled with strange, runish shapes that were supposed to be the language of the fae. No one can read it—the symbols aren’t actual Norse runes and don’t correspond to any known language. Yet I spent hours poring over it as a girl, imagining I could understand parts of it, then more hours researching everything I could find on Faerie. Is it any wonder I turned into one of those teens, always daydreaming, always making up stories of Faerie in my head?

It’s how I knew I wanted to be a writer and why I write fantasy with magic and orcs. Every story I found about orcs soundednothinglike Tolkien. The orcs were instead proud warriors, quick to anger but with a core of honor.

I used the symbols from my ancestor’s journal as the fae language in my fantasy books, assigning each rune a meaning that felt right.

“Everyone’s told me my entire life, ‘Elton, Faeries aren’t real’ and ‘You need to find something worthy to spend your time on.’” He sneers the repeated phrases in a sing-songy voice. “But I don’t care how many charities my older brother starts. What could be more important than being the person who proves magic and Faeries exist?”

I get it. Not the competing with your family part—my parents have always supported me, no matter what I wanted to do, like writing monster romance—but I get wanting to believe in Faerie and magic.

He picks up a folder from the small table beside him and opens it. After plucking out several 8x10 inch photographs, he holds them up in front of me. They’re close ups of pearlescent-gray stone covered in carved symbols.

Shock courses through me.

The rune-like shapes are the same language that fills my ancestor’s journal.

If that’s not surprising enough, they no longer give me only a vague idea of meaning.

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