Page 34 of The Forbidden Fae King

I turn to my name being called.

“Cyprien is here!” Hawthorne shouts, pointing his sword to the treeline.

A dozen warriors stand there wearing the royal uniform, silentsentinels watching us do the dirty work for this realm. We are outnumbered and I do not care. My impotent frustration runs fire through my entire body, down to the tips of my extremities.

“Do you not see?” I jump onto a tree stump and roar at them, amplified by magic. I raise my sword straight up into the air. “Do you not see the rot on these creatures? The way they fall apart the moment they die, because the magic cannot sustain them? Are you still blind?”

Cyprien shifts on his feet. The elaborate gold trim on his brown leather armor throws the light, along with the gold beads woven into the many braids of his black hair, pulled into a thong and shaved on the sides.

“What I see is snow on the spring side of the border,” he throws back, voice booming as loud as a clap of thunder. “No wonder the tulips have died here when winter encroaches on our lands. No wonder the flower nymphs suffer.”

I want to shake the man who should have my back. Who should have trusted me after all these years, but supported my enemy instead. He has always been blind to what is right before him and cursed by his own inaction.

A sharp movement catches my attention and I slice clean through the middle of another spriggan, one that is humanoid in form but has lost most of its arms to the rot. It falls with a disgusting squelch.

These poor creatures are decaying as they live. I cannot imagine the pain they must be in.

Killing them is a mercy.

That much is clear from their high-pitched wails. In the sluggishness of this pack’s movements. Their magic can be sown back into these borderlands. The gods know we need every last drop of it.

“Come here and see these spriggan for yourself!” I yell across the space.

All around me, my band of high fae warriors efficiently slaughter the beasts. The ten still loyal to me, doing the work of an entire kingdom. We are not enough.

“I have seen,” he calls back after a long pause, stiff but yielding.

Shock reverberates through me, and I turn to stare at him. There is gravity behind this admission.

I dare to hope for a single heartbeat of time.

Perhaps I could convince Cyprien of the truth. Thathecould bring others to our cause. That maybe we could save our kingdom, our entire realm, in the short time we have left.

Within a flash, his expression twists from humbleness to something dark and cruel, as his gaze flicks over my shoulder. That olive branch dissipates immediately.

An ethereal song whispers in my ear and I swing around to the source of that power behind me. The old portal in the middle of the clearing hums to life, the moonstone arch glowing brightly through the growth of vines draping across it. Mists bellow out.

“No,” I whisper to myself. “No. It cannot be.”

The portals to the human realm have been locked since the Dividing War. Fae are forbidden from activating them without the approval of the leaders of every single court in agreement, or at least their own king.

It is for our protection.

To stop humans from the slaughter they had inflicted on our kind when they still allowed us in their lands. To stop those from both realms dragging back victims.

“I should have known!” A viciousness tears from Cyprien. “I should have damn well known! I almost fell for your lies, Aldrin. Your convenient stories. Are we back to this, are we? You would go against your council? Your people? This idea of yours was the reason you were exiled.”

“No, Cyprien! I didn’t open the portals.” My words fall on deaf ears, as he swiftly turns and addresses his soldiers. My weaves of air drag back his commands not meant for me.

“Arrest him. Arrest all of them.” Cyprien snaps.

The squeal of metal on metal fills my head as they pull their swords from scabbards in unison. The ground vibrates around me as something huge charges and I turn to the alpha male spriggan just in time. I cut it down without a second thought, despite the healthinessof the creature. I have killed too many of its diseased kin. We all have our breaking point when we betray our nature and turn violent.

I fixate on that portal, as two human women walk through.

Such insubstantial, slight things, to be my utter undoing.

Pretty, with white flowers in their hair, one with red-gold locks and the other auburn, and a scattering of faint freckles over milky white skin. Sisters perhaps, the first with big doe eyes and parted rosebud lips, and the other fire in her emerald eyes and stern angles to her face. Both have rounded ears.

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