Page 34 of Crowned By the Fae King

Cass didn't respond. He flung himself into the sky, wings clawing at the air.

Every knife in the courtyard retracted with the same motion. Bits of dragon splatted to the ground. The stone beneath looked untouched, blood gathering in the runnels between slates and dripping down the raw cliffside.

The flow of blood didn't stop, either. It welled up from the cracks between the flagstones, the amount of blood on the courtyard not diminishing even as the soil turned to mud and as it painted the cliff crimson.

A Court bleeding for its King. A man's agony reflected in the world around him.

I swallowed hard, nauseated by the smell of cooked flesh and the iron reek of blood.

The two men who'd been leading the dragon had been torn to shreds with it. They hadn't been Serpent Court dignitaries, or even Serpent Court's servants. Those deaths hit harder than the horror-movie gore of the scene. They'd been innocent. They'd been ours, and now they were dead. Collateral damage.

Cass had killed them. Had that been conscious choice, or a reaction?

Maybe it didn't matter. There would have been so many more dead if he hadn't acted. But they were still dead.

Someone ought to pay for that, I thought, my skin cold. Someone had put innocent people in danger to try to kill a King, and they deserved to have that cost come calling.

Soot

The entrance to the courtyard had moved with the courtyard. I stepped back into the palace before anyone could think to stop me. It wasn't that I particularly wanted to be in the palace, but I definitely didn't want to be on a shattered courtyard staring at the mangled remains of a dragon, and I thought that maybe I should… I didn't know. Talk to Cass? Look at him and try to divine the right thing to say to someone who'd survived dragonfire in front of a crowd of fae nobles?

Daisies growing thorns had been only the gentlest foretaste of a courtyard growing knives. Nobody who'd seen that was going to forget it. My soulmate had bite.

Adrenaline heat thrilled through me like the rising anticipation before the rollercoaster tips over the edge. Faery thought I could match that—could match him. For one fraction of a second, Cass had been off the leash, and like an adrenaline junkie at Universal Studios, I wanted more. Not more of the blood and gore, but more freedom, power crackling at my fingertips. I liked to dance in the rain and tease the lightning, and Cass was lightning.

A man's hand grabbed my arm before I'd gotten more than ten feet down the hallway. I whipped around, nostrils flaring and all the skin of my face going tense, meeting the Misted Duke's eyes with heat.

"Get your hand off me," I said, voice cold.

He let go, instantly, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. "I meant no offense, your majesty," Tech said. "I simply—" He exhaled sharply, his body taut. "You ought not chase him down."

My eyes narrowed. "And why's that, your grace?"

His ears laid back for a moment, his whole body tensing as his eyes flicked back towards the door. "He's surely strained. A man close to the edge of his control. With a monstrous power like that at his command…"

I made myself take a careful breath, not wanting to make the situation worse. "He's not a monster."

"Not yet," he said grimly.

"Did you see how fast he did it? How cleanly?" I snapped back, anger sparking under my regimented calm. "He protected every stupid fucking courtier there. Dozens of people would have been burned to death, and the only people who died were the two standing right next to the damn thing. Paloma was barely four feet away from him, and she's fine, even if her clothing isn't." I clenched my jaw. "He even caught the people who fell when he shoved our half of the courtyard out of dragon-range. What about that reads as 'monster'?"

Tech's jaw clenched for a moment, but he didn't respond in kind, merely lowering his hands with a serious expression. "His Majesty's control is obviously exemplary," he said in a quiet voice. "Yet no man can maintain perfect control for his entire life. What happens when he's upset or distracted, and something happens at the exact wrong time?"

I didn't have an answer for that. I'd thought the same thing, after all.

He seemed to sense my hesitation, leaning forward. "Mages with that sort of power can destroy civilizations, your majesty," he said, low and intense. "Of all the mages on the Western Continent, the only one to rival the sheer magical strength of the Merciful King is the Stag King, and he has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands." Tech hissed a breath through his teeth. His ears moved like a wary animal's, monitoring the voices of the people still out on the courtyard. "Courts can drive even trained heirs insane. Today only two men died. Can you truly say that, next time, it won't be more?"

My expression went tight. "They would have died either way," I said, even though that defense made my gut churn. "None of this would have happened if the Serpent King hadn't tried to kill him."

"I doubt it was the Serpent King," Tech said, his eyes going hard. "These presentations are carefully screened for baneful magic. Whatever geas-spell or talisman that was used on that beast was surely placed today, and possibly mere minutes before the presentation." His ears pinned back. "Someone was testing him. Someone here."

"Well, they failed." I crossed my arms over my chest to hide how much that information disturbed me. "And I'm not going to be their lackey. He's my soulmate. That doesn't scare me."

The duke shook his head, the short iron-gray curls of his hair bouncing. "There's nothing stopping you from opposing him," he said, though he stood back, falling into an easy stance. "You can decide to protect the rest of the world from him—that something that can tear a war-dragon to shreds in an eyeblink shouldn't be allowed to stalk the face of Faery with impunity. It's your choice, your majesty." He gave me a slight bow, hand over his heart and a sharp smile lifting the corners of his mouth. "If you'd like to seek your soulmate, he's surely had enough time to gather his control again. I think you'll be safe now."

The implication that he'd stopped me to protect me caught me up short. I frowned at him, brows pulling together, but he didn't elaborate. The words tugged at all the years of Auntie's tutelage in manners, demanding that I thank him for the consideration—but I knew better. I'd learned those lessons about fae early.

"Until next we meet," I said, turning away with my eyes still on him.

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