Page 80 of Fae Champion

I couldn’t decide whether the ear had relayed that or not. Either way, it was what the queen would want to hear.

He lowered his daggers. I launched at him, both of mine lifted. This fight wasn’t over! Not yet. Not while?—

My hands went slack, the lethally sharpsais slipping from my hold and falling to my feet with a clatter, the handle of one glancing off a toe.

Suddenly, the desire to submit came over me—a feeling I’d never experienced before. I found myselfkneeling before the man who’d learned to see me as his equal in the arena—until now.

I felt like a mere observer of my actions. They felt foreign, wrong. I was a puppet on the end of invisible strings, and every speck of me wanted to revolt, to break free of Rush’s control—his magic.

But I placed my knuckles on the earth, concealed by mist, and curved my back, bowed my head.

“Thank the Etherlands,” I heard a fairy say from far, far away. “The queen’ll never know now.”

Even with me prostrate on the ground, the fairies were still only concerned about what the queen might do to them. They were not friends.

I wanted to fight, to buck and thrash against the power Rush had over me. But how could I fight against what I couldn’t see? Couldn’t so much as feel, insidious though it must snake inside me?

But just as Rush sheathed his daggers and stepped close enough that he blocked the sun, casting my face in shadow, a spark flared deep within me.

One moment I was unable to resist the urge to follow what must have been Rush’s silent commands, and the next a flame burgeoned deep in the pit of my stomach. As if a violent gale were fueling it, that flame swiftly became a fire, and then rapidly after … itraged.

Sweat slicked my skin, already flushed beneath my fighting leathers. My throat, mouth, nose, and eyes burned as if they were actually aflame. The blood that had continued to drip from the slice across my throat dried in an instant, evaporating into a spray of red mist.

The earth beneath my knees and hands rumbled,awakened.

Another round of stunned gasps reached me through the throbbing pulse behind my forehead as I leaned back into my heels and brought my hands to my thighs.

“That’s not possible,” Rush breathed.

I tilted my stare up to him.

Whatever he saw on my face made the silver of his eyes flare, his tattoos brighten along the sliver of looping vines visible above his collar, inching across the back of his hands.

“You’re…” he uttered. “Wow.”

My thoughts felt disconnected from my actions. No words bubbled to the surface. Only fire writhed across my tongue, licked at the inside of my lips, toying with the idea of emerging to blaze across this world.

Rush dropped to his own knees before me, a beatific smile spreading across his face. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, and the hovering ear inched closer to record every word. “I-I didn’t know. I was only doing what I thought was best.”

Slowly, gingerly, with a tenderness that suggested he considered my beauty evanescent, he fluttered a hand down to rest over mine, still atop my thigh.

“You…” he tried again before trailing off, at a loss for words.

The flames barely contained by my flesh danced and swayed and yearned, eager to emerge, to commingle withhim.

Sweat beaded along my brow, across my upper lip, further dampening my leathers. The ground beneath me heated right along with me—more, more, more. Perspiration rolled down my temple, slid across my cheek, and splattered loudly to the land.

I heard the drops plop, along with the rustling of the crowd, its incessant chattering, making out myriad cries of shock and alarm I shouldn’t have been able to, my mind too hazy to piece them all together. Rush’s heart beat faster than mine, like a horse determined to win a race. His muscles creaked within his frame as he flexed his fingers over mine, caressing, squeezing, feeling.

His seed from mere hours before liquified and dripped along the hot inner walls of my body. My core softened, readying itself for him again.

His eyes widened once more; his tattoos brightened again, before dimming.

The four fairies flanked him, peering at me with eyes as big as grape seeds could get, seemingly unconcerned that Rush might rise and accidentally squash them. Azariah moseyed over to us in a slow clip-clop, his gaze pointed down so it looked at me straight on, his twisted horn a menace none of them noticed.

Shouts singled themselves out from the continuous murmuring from the stands, but though Rush startled at them, I registered them as one did a foghorn a great distance away.

More calls, these eager and rallying, caused Azariah to shake off his stupor and peernervously around us. A fairy with sunshine-yellow hair fluttered onto Rush’s left shoulder and plopped down there, all the better vantage point to stare at me from.

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