Page 96 of Fae Champion

The queen’s responding smile was blatantly reluctant.

Neither pygmy ogre seemed to notice as they pushed out their ample bellies. One swung a club the size of my thigh, the other leaned into his as I’d seen Roan do with his ax dozens of times.

On the dais beside the queen, Ivar sniffed the air loudly, his upper lip curling.

I had to resist the urge to rise to the defense of the pygmy ogres—they were obviously big, dumb brutes who couldn’t help that they smelled like pig slop. But they were also all but sparkling with their admiration of “queenie.” I kept my mouth shut.

Despite their somewhat dopey appearances, they must be fearsome to keep Hiroshi, Ryder, and West from resisting. Yes, those glowing chains that bound their wrists and ankles together had to be interfering with their powers, but the three men were warriors and drakes, used to commanding entire clans. They were fit, strong, fast, and lethal; I’d seen them fight, whether sparring or in the Gladius Probatio. Brutish oafs alone wouldn’t be enough to secure them.

I scanned the two pygmy ogres, searching for answers, but found none beyond an insistent curiosity as to whether they ever bathed or if their stench were caused by a lifetimeof filth.

“Yes, that’s good, Sundo,” the queen eventually answered the second ogre, as if every word pained her.

She then turned the brightness of those sky-blue eyes, which should have been warm but wasn’t, back on Rush.

“Kill Elowyn, or your friends die.”

Rush’s jaw worked, his nostrils wide, his eyes narrowed as Hiroshi, Ryder, and West all erupted at once.

“Don’t you do it,” seethed West.

Hiroshi echoed him: “You can’t!”

Ryder swore. “I’d rather die.”

The queen laughed, her glee painting her in the unforgiving light of an artist given over to fevered madness. Even her eyes appeared glazed, as if she were only partially experiencing the reality everyone else was.

“One young, inexperienced, bastard girl compared to the lives of three fine, virile drakes who command the respect of their clans…” She scoffed. “It’s not even a competition, and you know how fond I am of those.”

My own protests—that I wasn’t entirely inexperienced despite the fact that I was a fraction of any of their ages, my upbringing had been too harsh for that—faded on my tongue as Rush glared at the queen so intently that the twining tattoos that wrapped his shoulders crept up his neck, peeking out above the high collar of his tunic. Bright as Pru’s orbs of light, they slunk along his throat, his jaw; they wrapped his cheeksand shone, his eyes blazing like the embers of a thriving fire, though silver and deadly.

“Now, now, Rush,” the queen crooned as if she were his mother and he her petulant child. “You know you’ll regret using that sword at your back, for all the good it’ll do you against me.”

Rush didn’t look like he was thinking of using any of his weapons against her, but that he was picturing himself wringing her final breath from her body with his bare hands.

“Rush, it’s okay,” Hiroshi offered softly. His usually bright lavender hair hung limply around his shoulders.

“Like dragonfire it is,” Rush barked, moonlight eyes burning into the queen.

“Kill her and this will all be over,” she said. “You’ll forget about Elowyn and it will be like she never was. Our plans will continue.”

She had the gall to smile at him as if they were fast friends and she weren’t a mega-psychotic bitch.

Rush’s jaw clenched, the light of his tattoos pulsing, as he seemed to consider and dismiss the many things he wanted to say. Finally, “This isn’t what I agreed to.”

The queen’s friendly mask shattered; her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Yes, well, you weren’t supposed to”—she stuck the tip of her tongue between her lips as if trying to rid herself of a foul taste—“think you’d fallen inlovewith thegirl. Your promises to me come before her, before everything.”

Rush’s shoulders clenched as he raised his chin andmet her stare unwaveringly. “I never promised you anything by choice.”

The queen leaned back in her throne, waving a hand in the air before her, dismissing that nitpick. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re like my dear Saturn. Sometimes you need a helping hand in understanding what’s best for you.”

“Is that what happened to Saturn?” Rush asked. “You gave him a ‘helping hand?’”

If Rush had been trying to enrage the crazy woman with more power than sanity, he succeeded. The blue of her eyes ignited like a ball of arctic flame. I half expected rays of ice to shoot from them.

“You’re not to mention Saturn ever again. No one is.” Each of her words cut as sharp as any blade. “He’smine, no one else’s. I’m the only one who ever understood him.”

The man who was currently displaying more beauty and brawn than brains pressed: “He was my friend.”

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