Page 2 of Crowned By the Fae King

Smoke rushed into the room, swirling through cleaner air. I staggered in after it, sucking in one last desperate breath as I stumbled into the office and slammed the door shut behind me. The only illumination in the room was the indirect light of the blaze through the third-story window, dulled by the oiled paper used instead of glass.

I fumbled around until I found a heavy metal box with a lock, something made of steel to stymie fae magic. I didn't have time to search for a key. I heaved the lockbox up, sobbing as it cut into my burned shoulder, and shoved it straight through the window.

The clean night air sucked out the smoke. The dark line under the door suddenly went orange, the flames in the hallway fanned into new vigor by the draft.

No options but the window, so the window it was.

I pushed the lockbox the rest of the way through, tipping it over the edge to plummet forty feet to the rocks below. I hauled my aching body after it, dizzy from lack of air and half-blinded by smoke and tears, desperately clinging to the wood.

Splinters sliced into my palms. Even though the rough wooden logs were unfinished, the sheeting rain left the wood slick, and I struggled to keep my grip. I dug my fingernails in, trying to climb down the wall, feeling with my feet for footholds. My heart pounded so hard that I could feel it in my throat and belly. Every wracking cough threatened to throw me off the wall.

A heavy groan was the only warning I got before another section of the roof collapsed. Burning shards rained down. An ember-covered chunk of wood the size of my forearm landed on me, tearing a scream from my throat and making me jerk back reflexively.

My foot slipped. I scrabbled for a handhold, terror pounding through my veins. I was so close—could almost taste home—just needed to make it—

The world… woke up.

Reforestation

Nothing could have prepared me for the sensation of Faery opening its eyes. For one heart-stopping moment, I could have sworn I was staring into the terrified eyes of a man, dark irises inseparable from the black of his pupils.

I knew those eyes. Knew him—had always known him.

The world rushed into me like a tidal wave, not with looming force, but with the implacable destruction of the ocean coming ashore. I was a wall made of dead wood—flames laughing with victory as they clawed at the sky—the rotting roots of a thousand trees slaughtered for profit—terrified sparks of life in tombs of wood—sprawling beautiful landscape—gouges clawed in my stone to tear out my guts—

I was in agony.

And I was falling.

The falling tore my mind free from the pain of the land around me. I only had enough time to recognize that I was midair before I hit the ground. I broke – I felt myself break, my skull cracking against stone and my arm and ribs and hip impacting the ground behind it – but it didn't hurt, and I didn't die. I staggered to my feet before I could comprehend what I was doing, rain lashing me and blood streaking my skin, and I didn't hurt.

My lungs moved smoothly. No burns heated my skin. Faery clamored for my attention, every rock and tree and gleaming, sparkling opal, but I tore my mind away, my focus on the terror of the now.

Stone and people screamed from inside the walls of the shantytown. I ran for them. The ground moved under me, and I moved with it, the earth itself telling me where to go. Green life burst through broken stone, sprouts growing from seedling to sapling to tree in moments. Soil boiled up under my feet, as if an army of worms and fungus tilled the ground beneath me. My every footstep landed perfectly, hitting earth instead of trees.

I broke free of the growing forest at the base of the outpost, outrunning the pace of the plants, and leapt back into the chaos of the shantytown. The incredible roar of the shifting earth drowned out the shrillness of human terror.

I grabbed one woman by the arm and yanked her free of the shifting stone moments before it engulfed her, fear lending me inhuman strength. I felt her elbow dislocate—decided not to care—flung her bodily away from the broken earth onto a patch of land that had once been meadow, not forest.

Need drove me back into the chaos, somehow keeping my balance when I saw people crawling and sliding on the stone slope, trying to get out of the shantytown as walls heaved and stone grew like expanding foam. A man clawed for purchase, his legs encased in rock, and was swallowed whole. I shoved another man away moments before a tree speared up through the newborn soil; hooked my arm under a catatonic teenager's shoulder and hauled her bodily away from the forest before plants could grow through her.

Sudden silence.

I stood, swaying, my whole body covered in sweat and dirt. The silence lasted only a heartbeat before the screams began again.

The imposing dark of the forest loomed. Rain came down, cold and unforgiving, slowing as the heart of the storm passed us. I couldn't even see the outcropping on which the outpost stood, only the glow of the fire beyond the trees. The landslide that had revealed the opal dirt beneath might as well have never existed. The cliffs stood in their stark beauty, untouched by man. The primeval forest stretched endlessly through the mountains.

There were people in there. They kept screaming.

I swallowed, fear making my hands shake. I took one step forward, and someone grabbed me by the arm.

"You can't go in there," the man said, terror making the whites of his eyes show all around, catching the predawn light. "You'll die—"

I shook my arm free. "People are hurt in there." And I wouldn't die. The Court had saved me. If I hadn't died on stone, I wouldn't die on forest loam. But I couldn't say that, not without sounding insane.

I could still see Faery's eyes in my mind. Dark, dense lashes parting to reveal irises as black as mine, endless wells of ink, a gaze met not with the unknowingness of a stranger, nor a jolt of recognition, but as if they were eyes I'd looked into every day of my life.

The man didn't try to stop me when I stepped forward again. I swallowed and put my hand on one of the newborn trees.

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