Page 99 of Fae Champion

The pygmy ogre’s blubbering still seemed to echo through the cavernous throne room when Ivar stalked over to Bandel, who backed farther against the wall instead of defending himself from the man who was perhaps a fourth as wide as him. Even Bandel’s club hung uselessly at his side when Ivar brought up his cutlass once more and swung.

Bandel’s head thumped to the floor in a moist thud, the ogre’s eyes still large with shock, his mouth open as if he’d meant to object.

My glow wavered and faded. They’d been terrifyingly hideous and lethal, clearly, but they’d also seemed almost like malleable children, who’d been misguided, manipulated, and misled. They shouldn’t have to suffer because ofher!

“What nonsense,” the queen muttered before training her glare on me with the intensity of a hunting falcon. “Their deaths are on you. I couldn’t even hear myself think. Fools, absolute fools,” she added, though I couldn’t decide whom exactly she meant by that, if it might be all of us left standing.

“Last chance, Rush,” she said, looking impassively at the headless pygmy ogres and the growing puddles of blood forming at either end of their severed bodies. “Kill Elowyn.”

Rush took a long time, but he finally looked up from where he’d stared at the damage Sundo had done to Hiroshi. His eyes were already haunted. “Or what?”

“Or your friends die, you die, and Elowyn still dies.”

As if he were a shell of the warrior I’d seen in the arena, he gritted his teeth. “I cannot kill the woman I love. But I will kill myself for you if it will spare her and my friends.”

The queen scowled. “Enough with the idiocy, already. If I wanted you dead, I’d kill you myself.”

“Braque, fetch that scum Xeno and the … dragonling.” She sucked on her lips, forming a web of fine lines around them on her usually flawless skin.

“Shall I also get someone to dispose of the bodies?” Braque asked.

“No, leave them.” She grinned, showing teeth. “We’ll do the cleanup all at once.” Her meaning was loud: she wasn’t finished murdering yet.

My heart thundered in my chest, but my statement was soft and passing as my hope. “I thought … I thought you said they were dead.”

“I thought … I thought…” the queen mocked beforetsking. “I had no reason to eliminate my leverage.”

“But … then you lied,” I said before thinking,As if that were the worst of heroffenses…

“I didn’tlie. It’s politics, girl, something you know nothing about. Running a kingdom like Embermere’s more complex than you’ll ever grasp. It requires many sacrifices.”

Braque had disappeared through the side doorway.

“Holster your weapon,” the queen growled at Rush, “or I’ll be tempted to kill you all and save myself the trouble.”

A wary Rush, gaze darting everywhere at once, backed up so that he stood near me and sheathed his sword.

Mere moments later, suggesting the queen had them on hand predicting she’d need them, Braque entered leading a bound and gagged Xeno and Saffron, with two new pygmy ogres squeezing in behind them.

28.TWINKLING WITH DELIGHT, OR IS THAT MADNESS?

The very moment Xeno entered the throne room, his eyes found mine. They scanned me from top to bottom, lingering on the exposed slice across my neck, now a dry, angry, red line, before determining I was at least in one piece.

As much as Rush, Ryder, West, and Hiroshi, Xeno was a warrior. He’d trained his entire life in Nightguard to protect the last remaining dragons. As capable as any of the others, in seconds he identified the many threats in the room, along with its greatest.

Apparently still annoyed by the inconvenience of having to leave the arena festivities to further threaten my life, the queen arranged the ample skirt of her dress and studied her nails for a moment, wholly undisturbed by the gore spreading throughout the room, soaking into the floorboards.

Braque scuttled rapidly on his stubby legs to once more stand behind her throne atop the dais, but Ivarpositioned himself between his queen and everyone else, crimson glistening off his curved, wicked blade, kept sharp enough to slice through bone.

My heartbeat thundered, my breathing deep yet fast, as I stared at Xeno and Saffron—and the proof, at long last, that they were indeed alive.

I wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that I’d been indirectly responsible for their deaths.

In the weeks since I’d last seen him, Xeno’s usually glowing, healthy complexion had faded, now sallow and pale. His cheekbones were too sharp, casting the normally pleasant lines of his face in gaunt angles. And a dirty rag wrapped his face, bound at the back of his head, clamping down the hair that had been short the last time I’d seen it and was currently stringy and long enough to tuck behind his ears.

His soiled clothing hung off his once strong frame. Some muscles still remained, but they weren’t as bulky as when I’d last seen him—when he alone had tried to save me from being abducted.

Every other dragon shifter had stood by and watched while Dougal, Sandor, and Finnian had knocked me out and taken me against my will. Xeno had fought for me—and earned an arrow through the heart that I could have sworn I’d also felt through my own, even as the potion’s magic was pulling me under.

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