Page 47 of Fae Champion

I interpreted that to mean,Why would I put him in the position where turning me in was the best of our poor options? Why hadn’t I left Embermere when he’d wanted me to?

“Her Majesty will be expecting us,” he added, his voice void of emotion though I could feel so much of it rolling through him. My arm now laced through his; his bicep was twitching.

“Have you told her already, then?” I asked.

“No.”

Just that, the one word. A single eyeball hovered ten feet in front of us, floating backward as we advanced so as not to miss a single movement.

I leaned my head toward him; the guys were maybe forty feet away now. “I understand why you’re upset.”

“Oh, do you?” he snapped so viciously that Istopped to stare at him. He kept walking for a moment, jerking to a halt when I refused to advance.

“We can’t delay,” he said. “We have to find Her Majesty on her throne.”

Or else she’d dispatch with me here, and my chances were better with an audience that might at least oblige her to pretend to be just.

I’d become another dead noble in a lengthy list of them. If, evidently, no one was concerned that lords and ladies were assassinated fairly regularly with no murder suspect ever being denounced, then they wouldn’t blink at my death. After all, I’d be labeled a “traitor,” and it wouldn’t matter that the royals had been the ones to kidnap me in the first place.

In Embermere,wrongwas entirely subjective—and defined byHer Majesty.

A chill spread across my skin as if I were suddenly feverish. I met Rush’s gaze, the silver of his irises bubbling with anger.

I swallowed thickly. “We should probably say our goodbyes now, just in case.”

I’d been a fool—a naïve, hopeful, damn idiotic fool. I’d asked these men to deliver me to a woman who’d lean into any excuse to have me killed. Like them, I’d put their cause above my own life. But I was new here, and I wasn’t prepared to go down as a martyr.

I should have run and let them figure out the rest once I was long gone. I owed none of them anything.

“Don’t you dare say goodbye,” Rush snarled. If he’d been a dragon shifter, I would have said his beast wasriding close to the surface. His eyes blazed like flames of moonlight.

“Is that what you’re so mad at me about?” I asked, chortling morosely when I realized how defeated I sounded.

I’d likely been as good as dead since the moment the queen laid eyes on me. When she realized her husband had been unfaithful to her and decided to punish him for his adultery. When she understood that, without a formal crowned heir, no matter that her bloodline wasthe oneand the king’s a far second, I became a possibility as a successor.

I’d been living on borrowed time. When Malessa let Dougal take me without a fight, she’d condemned me to death.

I’d been a moron for not seeing the inevitability of my circumstances sooner.

“No, that’s not what I’m mad about,” Rush seethed. “Okay. That is what I’m mad about, but it’s not the only thing.”

“Then what?” I asked, tilting my head up toward him, no longer certain I cared what his answer might be.

“How could you…?” He glanced all around us, not snagging on the disembodied body parts in our midst, and pressed closer to me, whispering harshly. “How could you touch me like that?”

My brows went up again. “This is all about me barelygrazingyou?” I snorted. “Seriously? Seems likewe’ve got much bigger problems than me imposing on your ‘modesty.’”

He growled, and in such close proximity, my insides flip-flopped before my core tightened. The closest ear zipped nearer, floating just three feet above our combined heads.

Hetsked. “That’s not it,” he breathed, as if sensing the eavesdropper though he couldn’t see it. “How could you…?” He shook his head, the long silver strands scarcely moving in response, as if they, too, were already defeated. “How could you awaken things in me only to…?” Once more he trailed off, and the ear jetted to the end of the hall to listen to Hiroshi, West, and Ryder, whose impatience was likely louder than our whispers, based on thehurry the dragonfire uplooks they were casting our way.

“On your way out of your rooms, you touched me like…”

“Like what, Rush? Spit it out. I don’t have much time to spare, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Like we’re together. Like we ever could be together. Like the entire idea of us isn’t as pointless as what you’re making me do next.”

“I’m not making you do anything,” I snapped, though I kind of was, at least a bit.

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