Page 64 of Fae Champion

“I have no doubt the king has other offspring sprinkled about here and there. He was reckless then, didn’t care about anything anymore. But you … he thinks there’s something special about you or he wouldn’t be standing up to the queen for the first time in decades to keep you alive.”

“Decades?”

He nodded.

All at once I realized I had no idea how old Rush was. “So … you were around then?”

“Not at court as I am now, but yes.”

“So…”

He smiled softly, almost sadly. “I’m nearly eighty years old.”

“Oh,” I squeaked, though I’d known fae lived for centuries. Zako had been two-hundred-and-two when he’d died.

Rush rubbed a hand along my back and I couldn’t help but think,No wonder he’s such a skilled lover, and question how many people had been on the receiving end of those skills.

“It might not look like he’s doing all that much,” Rush said, “but the king’s fighting for you.”

I snickered. “You’d be right about that. It doesn’t look like he’s doing much at all. He tried to tell me who my mother was that one time, and since then, no matter what I do, he won’t be alone with me.”

“Probably because he knows it’s dangerous.”

I snorted another time. “The queen’s already trying to kill me at every turn. Not sure it can get much worse than that.”

“It can. Much worse.”

“Oh,” I said lamely.

The pad of a single finger blazed up and down my spine, and I struggled not to shiver; I didn’t want him to stop.

“The land doesn’t save just anybody from death,” he added. “Whatever power it sent into you was enough to do away with Braque’s spell and glamor. Not just anything can do that. There’s a reason he and Ivar are always with the queen. They’re more powerfulthan pretty much anyone else at court.” He pulled back to look at me. “Other than maybe you.”

“Me?” I chuckled nervously. “I didn’t tell you, but when I was in the dungeon last, when I thought I was going to die there, I tried to call on the magic of the land. Nothing happened.”

“Hmmm, interesting.”

“No, not interesting. Not there. No magic. Nothing.”

“It was there enough to reveal you as a royal to Azariah, and he can sense those kinds of things even when the rest of us can’t. I’d bet the queen punished him for revealing what the crowd might not have noticed otherwise.”

Twisting so that I lay flat on my stomach, I pushed up onto my elbows, my breasts hanging heavily to the bed below. Rush’s stare sped toward them and he licked his lips—without realizing it, I guessed.

But this information was too important. I insisted, “I thought everyone knew I was a royal of some kind because Braque’s glamor fell.”

Rush spoke to my breasts. “No, most knew you weren’t Zinnia anymore, but it takes a very specific kind of magic to distinguish a royal. Azariah probably only said it ’cause he was so shocked. Most spells don’t fool him. He’s too powerful. But Braque’s did.”

His brow furrowed as he finally looked away from my chest. “I’ve been trying to talk to Azariah, but every time I’ve gone looking for him he’s been elsewhere, andthe queen doesn’t usually let him go anywhere but where she tells him.”

“Wow, that’s awful. He’s a unisus! The queen should be bowing down to him.”

Rush smiled. “We call them pegicorns, but yeah.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“To try to figure out why he thinks you’re a royal. The royal bloodline runs through the queen, not the king. So you have to be related to her somehow.”

“Aren’t you all related to each other? If you left the Golden Forest three thousand some years ago, you’d all be related at least a bit, right?”

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