Page 4 of Fae Champion

“Well?” I pressed.

When the others looked to White, she stood, ignoring her stained dress and skin. “Well, nothing.”

I snorted and pushed up to sitting, where I couldn’t help but notice the commotion taking place on all sides of us in the balcony, the stands, and the dugout. Everywhere, fae were yelling.

“Nothing.” I frowned. “Seriously? You’re gonna go with that?”

White batted her lashes innocently at me. They were so fine and so white, they were a whisper.

“Maybe I should tellheryou were slacking, then.” I forced myself to sound disinterested although the “she” they’d been referring to had to be the queen, the long-reaching shadow of fear in Embermere.

A tiny squeak slipped from Green, and Blackberry went pale beneath his dark hair.

“Tell her, Morwenna,” Green told White, her command a tremulous whisper. “I can’t do without my head.”

White—Morwenna—narrowed her eyes and hissed at Green. “If she finds out we’ve been talking, she’ll take more than our heads. She’ll chop us up into tiny little pieces and feed ‘em to the sneakles.”

Green’s pallor grew to match Blackberry’s.

Morwenna went on to say, “Besides”—she hooked a diminutive thumb at me—“this one’s not gonna tell the queen anything. She’s as scared of her as we are.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, lifting into a crouch, testing my balance after whatever the land had done to me. “I’m not scared of the queen. Not anymore. Someone needs to do something about her.”

“And that”—Morwenna glanced at her cohorts before looking back at me—“that someone is … you?”

“Mock all you want, but if I’m going out, I’m taking her with me. She shouldn’t be allowed to do the things she does. It’s not right.”

“Oh, I wasn’t mocking,” Morwenna said.

“She’s right,” Cherry offered. “What the queen doesiswrong.”

Morwenna whirled on him so fast her hair and dress were a streak of white spattered with crimson. “Shut up,” she hissed. “What’s wrong with you? She has ears everywhere.”

I finally looked up toward the queen’s viewing balcony. Even across the distance that separated us, I could tell her eyes—and displeasure—were trained on me. The glass barrier at the front of her balcony was gone, a few jagged shards clinging to the sides, and her dragon head footstool was noticeably absent—her “prop” that had come to my rescue.

I grinned up at her, no longer concerned with pussyfooting around her and the threats she dispensed like candy. Her eyes hardened at the feral baring of my teeth. She was probably running through the litany of things she could do to hurt me, the people and creatures she could punish to get to me. Perhaps later I’d regret my brash display of rebellion. But if the entire mirror world kowtowed to her reign of terror, she had to be stopped.

This place, these fae, they weren’t my home or my people. Neither were the dragon shifters of Nightguard, I supposed. But Her Mighty Evilness had done her best to kill me today—wounding me in secret like a total coward—and I had no intention of lying still like a good little peon while she did her worst.

The hurried clip-clopping of hooves growing nearerwrenched my fury from the woman so very deserving of it. Mane, tail, and wings bouncing in a sheen of glorious iridescence, Azariah chuffed and a puff of rainbow flared from his nostrils. He pranced across the spacious field of flowers, and for a moment the majestic sight of the unisus was enough to remind me how very magical these lands must be if they could contain creatures such as he—and had once been home to dragons.

The mirror world had been created as punishment, yes, but it still possessed the innate power of Faerie. No matter what this queen had done, that essence should remain, and it was this very magic that had touched me. It had to have been. And now that the pulsing in my head and the ringing in my ears had receded, the pain scorching my insides had become bearable, and I was steady enough on my feet to remain standing, I didn’t think the land had tried to kill me after all.

If it hadn’t attempted to end me, then it must have saved me.

Azariah eyed me up and down, then cleared his throat, attempting to silence the din cascading down toward us.

“Fellow fae,” he boomed. The crowd quieted, but only for a few moments before the chatter built anew. “People and creatures of the fae,” he tried again with even less effect. “Listen up!”

The fae, it seemed, weren’t in the mood for listening.

I glanced toward the dugout where the rest of thefighters to compete today waited. The heat of someone’s stare skimmed across my body.

Rush. Those moonlight eyes of his sizzled across my face. His brows were bunched low in concern, those sensuous lips of his tugged downward, but when he noticed me looking back at him, he smiled slightly, tentatively, and widened his eyes in aWow, I didn’t see any ofthatcoming.

Hiroshi, Ryder, West, and Roan crowded around him, perhaps also seeking my attention, but I returned it to Azariah. Unease was quickly replacing my relief to discover myself still breathing.

“Silence,” came the queen’s voice, slicing through the cacophony as effectively as a knife. Though it wasn’t nearly as loud as Azariah’s, the fae nearest her silenced instantly, a wave of slaps and elbows to their peers sweeping across the rest of the spectators until the only sound was the wailing cry of a baby.

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