Page 109 of Fae Champion

When the queen just scowled, he added, “I’ll make it worth it to you.”

The queen waggled her lips back and forth, before glancing at me as if I were the turd she’d passed that morning.

She looked at Rush. “You’ll be in my debt in a big way.”

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” he answered, and my heart sank at how ready he sounded to do her bidding just to spare me from her worst.

Unsure what to do when it was more imperative than ever that I know, I closed my eyes, preparing to tune out their noise. No matter what I’d said and whom was at risk, could I really sit back and allow Rush to kill me? Was that the only path left to me? It couldn’t be, could it?

Whatever time I had left, I’d use it to call on my magic.It’s now or never, I was in the process of tellingit, when the soft tinkling of bells rang beyond the double doors of the large hall.

As one, the queen, Ivar, and Braque turned toward them.

She tsked her annoyance at the imminent interruption and told Ivar, “Sheathe your cutlass.”

The chimes grew louder, more distinct, and moments later one of the doors swung open and Dashiell, his many braids capped in tiny silver bells, plastered himself to it to make way for the king as he thundered past. Dashiell allowed the door to slam shut and ran after my father, who scanned all of us slumped against the wall.

His furious gaze landed on me as he panted, asking of the queen, “What’s the meaning of this?”

His coloring was better than the last time I’d seen him, telling me he’d regained at least some of his physical strength since his poisoning. When it had happened, the queen had been upset enough to create her own storm, casting night over day in all of Embermere. Yet now she looked at him with such disdain that it made me question that storm and why no one ever seemed to actually be punished for all the unchecked aggression that took place at the queen’s court—unless it was directed at her, of course.

She tipped her chin upward in haughty regalness. “This is none of your concern, Oren.”

My father stretched into the full broadness of his shoulders, outrage flushing his face, already pink from the exertion of runningover here.

“None of my concern?” he boomed. “Elowyn ismy daughter!”

The queen narrowed her eyes, the muscles in her neck tensing noticeably around the heavy diamond and ruby necklace she wore. “But she’s not mine,” she rumbled, low and more perilous than when she shouted.

“That doesn’t mean you have the right to kill her, Talisa.”

“Who says I’m going to kill her?” Her stare remained hard and menacing.

The king waved his hand in the direction of all her prisoners. “Your artistry for playing the truth like a mandolin is well known to me.” He inhaled loudly. “Perhaps you don’t intend on killing my daughter yourself, but surely with how many times you’ve attempted it recently, it’s only a matter of you ordering someone else to do it for you.”

She didn’t deny it. “What do you want?”

“Isn’t it obvious? For you to leave my daughter alone.” He studied how many of us were bound and helpless. “And it’d be a nice gesture for you to free everyone else too.”

The queen ran her tongue over the top row of her teeth. “Even the filthy beast?”

“No. I won’t stop you from killing the dragon.”

A gasp shuddered through me. Some man he was…

“Hmmm,” the queen muttered. “I might have been tempted to allow you the honor of the kill, but I’m not happy with you at the moment, Oren. Not one bit.”

My father’s shoulders remained strong but he didn’t say anything, not even a,Well, I’m not happy with you either, you despicable, monstrous, hideous bitch.

Her mouth twisted in disgust, she scanned Dashiell from top to bottom. To his credit, he didn’t so much as dip his stare downward, meeting hers with the kind of courage I wished my father more often displayed.

She harrumphed, adjusted on her throne—of which there was glaringly only the one, though from my current angle I noticed the scuff marks where there’d recently been a second—and sighed. “Oren, I won’t be sparing Elowyn.”

He opened his mouth to express his outrage?—

“Nothing you say will sway me otherwise. The girl’s too tempestuous. She knows nothing of our ways and refuses to be taught with an unbearable arrogance. She’s rough and crass and all around a brute. Females shouldn’t fight. That’s a man’s role. She threatens to disrupt our very way of life, our beliefs, our carefully crafted balance, the society that’s worked perfectly well as it is for thousands of years. And what’s worse, she defies me in public, with a rapt audience.”

Her frown softened. “Oren, darling … she called me aliarin front of all our subjects.A liar.” She sniffed as if simply recalling the humiliation were unbearable.

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