Page 118 of Fae Champion

I’d felt her flesh surrender to the biteof my blade. I’d watched the fire die in her eyes as it abandoned her beautiful body.

With her last breath, she’d believed I’d betrayed her.

She was bright as a star in the night sky. If I’d dimmed that brightness…

I wheezed in a ragged breath, ran a shaky hand through my tangled hair, and plopped to the ground, not bothering to scan where I sat. The grass beneath my ass was sodden. I stretched out my legs while the seat of my pants grew damp. The palace and its many ornate gardens at my back, I gazed out at the road that led away from here, now once more lined with the dragon heads Elowyn so despised.

Somewhere, already far from here, the group I’d been able to hastily pull together in the moments before I’d made my agreement with the queen led Elowyn ever farther away from me.

The queen had been hesitant enough that I’d worried I pushed her too far, but in the end she’d relented, the carrot I dangled too enticing. Whether it was because she truly believed I’d be the best to succeed her to the throne or if she wanted me as a royal merely because she delighted in tormenting me, I didn’t know.

Finnian and Roan were to accompany Xeno as he took Saffron and Elowyn back to Nightguard. There, the queen believed, Elowyn would find her final resting place.

She didn’t yet know that Reed and Pruhad left with them, or that I’d covertly instructed Roan to take Elowyn to the Wilds instead of Nightguard.

They’d come for Elowyn in Nightguard once before. If the queen or king ever found out she survived, they’d know right where to find her again. The location of the dragons’ stronghold was no longer secret. No one there—none of the dragons—was truly safe anymore from the reach of the Royals of Embermere.

But the Wilds?

It was teeming with monsters and horrors not even the queen dared interfere with. It was the one place where her influence didn’t reach.

The Wilds was uncivilized, the frayed edges of the mirror world that never coalesced into a full replica of Faerie. Made up of the dregs of King Spiro’s magic, the Wilds was wholly unexplored and untamed. It was where fae went to disappear … or be eaten.

I’d sent my mate to claw her way back from the clutches of death in the most dangerous place in the entire realm. The chances of her survival were slim, and yet … hair, tooth, and nail, I clung to this outcome, the only one I’d ever be able to accept.

She didn’t yet feel the bond as I did or she’d never have doubted me.Couldnever have. She would have known everything I was doing was to save her, no matter what things looked like from the outside.

Whatever power she had, it was still awakening. That had to be why the bond had only settled into place for me, where it was as much a part of me now asmy love for her … and my pain, this deep well of torment that wouldn’t end until I held her in my arms once more. Until I felt her heart beating against mine, their rhythms synced. A perfect pair.

We were destined for each other since the last time our essences passed through the Etherlands.

It was this bond, this most primitive elven magic that pre-dated the creation of the mirror world, which ensured mates could never mortally wound each other.

The bond between us was the most sacred among the fae.

Her death was only temporary?—

So long as the bond locked into place on her end too.

So long as she had the strength to fight the illusion of death that had her in its thrall.

So long as she made it through the Wilds without being killed by all the feral beasts that inhabited its dense, snarling forests, creatures even the powerful, full-blooded elves of Faerie would fear.

She’d never find her way back to me.

I understood that. I’d have to somehow learn to accept the fact.

I’d sent her away forever.

I’d lowered her precious body into the arms of the one man she already considered a friend, whom she trusted, who’d never betrayed her as I had, and who’d made his intentions toward her known long before she’d arrived in Embermere.

A future with her was what I’d had to sacrifice to save her—along with everyone she and I also loved.

As the future king of Embermere, I’d spare the thousands of royal subjects from the cruelty and torment the queen and her father had forced upon them. I’d give them a new life, a safe one, where they might truly thrive after all these centuries of darkness.

I’d offer them the light.

I’d find a way to endure without my mate for however many hundreds of miserable years I lived, but shehadto survive. She had to find her way back to her magical life, to smile and laugh again. Her eyes had to once more twinkle with mischief, to take in the world I was jaded by and instead marvel at its wonder.

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