Page 140 of Crowned By the Fae King

"Quyen? Can you hear me?"

I jerked, scrambling backwards, Cass' voice so clear it sounded like he was standing in front of me.

"Don't panic," he said, his voice calm and quiet, oh, god, was I going insane? "I'm making you hallucinate. Not easy."

There was a touch of wry humor in the words. My mouth trembled. It was so easy to believe that I was losing it; that this was a psychic break. But when he'd been cut off from power, I'd still been able to reach him, sending my thoughts to him even when he couldn't answer me. This could be the opposite, Cass using his command healing and his deep understanding of my body and my mind to communicate.

C-A-S-S-? I wrote on my palm.

Distant relief seeped into my veins. I reached for that contact, but without the power of the Court of Mercy behind me, I didn't pack enough of a punch to span the distance.

I closed my eyes, fighting back tears. S-T-A-Y-A-W-A-Y, I wrote.

"Not happening," he said.

Idiot. Too fucking loyal for his own good. I drew a frowning face on my arm and got an answering purr of amusement.

I wobbled my way to my feet. The world swam, but not as badly as I thought it should. If Cass was going to insist on flying to my rescue, the least I could do was try to get the fuck out of dodge myself.

H-O-W-? I wrote to him.

"Heard you in my dreams. Found the siphon," Cass said. The weirdness of hearing him when I knew he wasn't there didn't diminish. "Mists broke off. Then Flies. One hurt, two broke me." The words wavered, not like he was emotional but like he was struggling to keep making me hear them. It sounded like hearing someone from underwater. "Fell. Survived it, barely. But Mists is ours again? You killed him?"

I wanted to say no, but it wasn't that easy to communicate complex things through the notes. What Cass actually needed to know was that Tech was dead. I could fill him in on the details later.

Y-E-S, I told him, not looking down at Yllana.

So Sagebrush hadn't broken off. I knew it could have. Of the three duchies, even though it had been conquered the longest ago, it was the largest and still had a strong identity. Flies and Mists combined weren't the size of Sagebrush. If it was this bad with two – hell, with one – what would it have been like if all three had followed through?

I swayed on my feet but didn't fall. There was no way I was going to make it back down to the floor to pick up a dagger, but I managed to scoop up Tech's abandoned opals off the couch and stagger across the room. It was a near thing; I had to catch myself on the wall, breathing hard.

Everything hurt. I was getting used to it, bit by bit, but it sapped my strength, gnawing at me. I didn't even have the wherewithal to walk down the hallway. I had to slowly work my way along the wall, leaving bloody handprints on the pale stone.

"Don't do anything stupid," Cass told me, his voice wavering like a bad recording.

I scowled. You're one to talk, I thought back, even knowing he couldn't hear me.

Cass stopped talking to me, but the pain eased away and my muscles slowly stopped shaking. That had to be him; Cass using the blood-link to dampen the physical effects of losing part of the Court and of being off of Mercy's land. It gave me a little more stability, too. The intensity of Cass' link to the Court of Mercy meant that when he was focusing on using that magic in me, I was less like a cut-off limb and more like a cut flower put in water. It wouldn't keep me going forever, but at least I didn't feel like I was dying.

I'd expected to run into someone on my way out, but the Buzzing Palace was eerily empty. I didn't encounter a single servant or soldier. It was like Talien had emptied the place out in anticipation of events, which I supposed was probably true. Whatever had been used to cut off the Duchy of Flies from the Court of Mercy had to span the entire length of the border. That meant at least a hundred miles of array, and I imagined there needed to be people along it to activate it. This had to be an all-hands-on-deck situation.

He had to know Tech was dead. Had to know I was wandering through his palace alone. With no one else in the palace, it would be impossible to miss.

He was the King. There was a distinct possibility he could kill me with a snap of his fingers if he wanted to.

I didn't think he would, though. I was his bargaining chip. He wanted to be the King of Flies, and even if all three duchies had broken off, the Court of Mercy was still a powerful player. The Court of Flies had been conquered once. It could be conquered again. I couldn't imagine a world where Talien killed me and Cass left a single stone of the Buzzing Palace standing. He would tear it down with his bare hands if he had to.

I walked right out of the front doors of the palace, blood on my hands and opals in my pocket, and no one stopped me.

Ace was waiting for me in the moonlit night. He stood there, holding the reins of a dark horse in one hand and my rapier in the other. He met my gaze with a level expression.

There was no challenge there. No apology. He was what he was: the long enemy of my crown, a man who'd lost everything he'd ever loved and spent a thousand years with pain his constant companion, someone who'd bound himself to a path he'd come to regret. We weren't friends—but maybe we weren't enemies, either.

"Sagebrush isn't a Court," I said, my voice rasping.

A flicker of sorrow crossed his face. "No," he said softly. "It isn't."

We stood there, watching each other, acres of pain and buckets of blood between us.

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