Page 91 of Fae Champion

“You have to meet the queen in the throne room in an hour,” Pru continued.

“The throne room?” My brows rose. “I’ve never been to the throne room. Why there?”

“Whatever her reasons, I doubt they’re good,” Rush said, though that much was surely obvious.

“We have to hurry and get you cleaned up, Mistress,” Pru said, “and your wounds treated.”

“I’d like to do that,” Rush said, no longer insistent.

Pru looked to me and waited.

His smile was already full of lament when I said, “I’d rather Pru do it. I need to … process … for a bit.”

“But I’m your…” Rush said. “We’re…”

I sighed again, sounding as exhausted as I felt, entirely worn down by the bitch with the crown who snapped her fingers and expected us all to do her bidding.

“We’re what?” I eventually asked.

Rush stared at me for so long that I understood he wanted to tell me so many things.

“It’s okay,” I offered before he could answer. “We’ll have time to talk later.”

The rugged, beautifully masculine planes of his face rose hopefully. “We will?”

“Sure, yeah, of course. I’ll get cleaned up and Pru’ll patch me up, we meet with the queen, and then you and I can talk. And by then, I’ll be in a space to be more … receptive.”

His smile was disarming and entirely unexpected. It lit up his face and his eyes until I couldn’t help but reflect back his inner joy.

How he could be so hopeful after all we’d been through, when the queen remained our tormentor, I had no idea, but he was. And I couldn’t help but be drawn to him—to want to touch him, to be as close as we could be—to feel him inside me again, even.

His stare heated in response to the thoughts probably broadcast in mine.

“I can wash you while we talk,” he said, a gritty purr that made my insides clench with sudden hunger. “My touch will be comforting, I promise.” His fingers caressed mine, a light, tantalizing invitation.

“The Lady Elowyn is hurt, Drake Rush Vega,” Pruinterjected, when I was certain it wasn’t her place as my goblin attendant. “She needs time to recover before facing Her Majesty again.”

No, it wasn’t her place as a servant—but it was as afriend.

My body resisted my efforts to pull away from Rush as if he were a healing elixir I didn’t just want—I needed.

My heated gaze on him, his eyes promising every delight I’d ever fantasized about, I allowed Pru to lead me away toward the bathtub and its soothing hot water.

“Come, Mistress,” she said. “Take the time you need to think. You’ve earned it.”

Blankly, I nodded at her and at Rush’s silent promise. Whatever his whirling moonlight eyes were trying to communicate, it was so intense that it was a true effort to get my feet to move in the right direction.

Rush can’t truly love me … can he?

26.BOUND BY OATHS AND DESTINY

Though a drake was the highest position in Embermere’s nobility short of royalty, Rush walked beside me, a mere viscountess—if anyone still believed the ever-morphing tales the queen spun—as an equal. He’d cleaned up while I had, ditching his fighting leathers for a tunic and britches in woodland hues that accentuated every dip of his honed muscles. But for once, I wasn’t distracted by his body—a significant achievement since I was startlingly aware of the pleasure it could offer me.

Rush’s stare was so intense on my face that I could scarcely think. And when he wasn’t looking at me, his every step was clipped with his ire, his sensual lips tugged low with his brooding.

The queen had said we had an hour to meet her, but before Pru could do much more than retrieve her magically expanding multi-tool kit from wherever she hid it in her frock, a disembodied mouth—this time a feminine onewith feathered lipstick in cherry red still clinging to its dead lips—zipped into my bathing chamber to cut our time in half. Pru had instantly panicked and begun spouting the familiar, “Hurry, hurry, or it’s off with our heads” when that much was a constant given, and stashed away her sewing kit without patching me up. A few cuts were minor compared to the urgency of keeping our heads.

My hair still wet, Pru had styled it up into several twists of easy braids, squeezed me into a dress, the taffeta sticking to my still-damp body, and shoved me out the door without jewelry or other adornments. She hadn’t risked even an extra second to wish me the fortune of dragons, and when I’d next turned to seek her out, she was gone, the king’s five guards hurrying after Rush and me in a jangle of bouncing swords, their scabbards smacking against their thighs.

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