Page 24 of Fae Exile

I scanned her small, slender body. Her gangly limbs and drab frock were covered in dark gook, and her black dragon feet all but disappeared in the thick gunk she stood in, but she otherwise appeared unharmed.

I raised my brow in silent question when I spotted none of her green blood anywhere.

She shrugged. “I told you, Mistress ... Elowyn, we goblins have our secrets.”

“Now seems like a great time to share some of them.” Mindful of the direction of his scales, I rubbed a soothing hand down Saffron’s spine, between his trembling wings, over and again.

“I’m more interested inyoursecrets right now,” Finnian said as he tore off the hem of his tunic to wrap around a thigh. His britches were torn, and a raw, angry slice of red flesh peeked out from the grime that coated the rest of his skin. “They’re what’s keeping us safe right now.”

He tightened the tourniquet and gasped. Fresh blood pumped from the gash for several pulses before the flow stemmed.

The monsters closest to him stirred and hissed.

“I command you to stay,” I told them as sternly as I could, but my glow was already diminishing.

Turning in place, I found Roan clutching his ax and Reed tightening the strap of his quiver across his chest. So I sidestepped the pile of creatures ahead of me, careful not to crush any of their many outstretched, oscillating tentacles solely so as not to set off any retaliation, and stalked beyond the reachof the fire in the direction Xeno had last been, between us and the horses. The menace of the holding—and watching—wall of inky horrors followed me.

My glow dimmed further. “I’m the rightful heir of the royal magic,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. “I command the land.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it like that, lassie,” Roan piped up in his usual gruff rumble. “Ya can choose to command power and magic, but never the land itself. Only if she wants ya to.”

Dragging his dirty sleeves across his face to clear his eyes, nose, and mouth of the black gunk, Reed added, “Think of the land as you would yourself. She’ll want respect and partnership, not to be told what to do. She helps only when she wants to.” He spat dark spit onto the ground. “Or so I’ve heard.”

Narrowing my eyes to see beyond my remaining glow, I scoffed. “I’m sure that’s not how the queen does it.”

“No, she surely doesn’t,” Roan said on a huff.

Please keep us all safe, I thought instead, before calling out, “Xeno? Where are you?”

A dragonly groan rose from my left. It was too soft, too muffled.

My heart sped up again, and I jogged toward the pained grunt, no longer mindful of what I stepped on.

“Xeno,” I said again, hearing the squelching footfalls of the others behind me. Saffron whined close to my ear, and I instinctively cooed at him. “Xeno!”

He moaned, and I whirled toward sharp movement within the sea of trees. Towering over a clump of fallen horses, Xeno’s large silver dragon caught the faint glint of the moon for an instant before he wobbled.

In the moment it took him to crash to the ground, he flared his magnificent wings wide.

They were shredded to tatters.

10.IT’S ALL ABOUT DENYING YOUR INSTINCTS

~ RUSH ~

“Am I the only one thinking maybe we’re heading in the wrong direction?” West asked from directly behind me.

In the many tunnels that wove within the palace walls, there was only enough room for the four of us to travel single file. Each of us illuminated our path with a lumoon that floated above our heads and kept pace with us. We’d been creating the glowing orbs of light since we were children. They required only the most basic of power, that which was largely innate to faekind.

Hiroshi, Ryder, West, and I’d already climbed down several floors beneath the throne room level when the narrow passageway shook. The floor tipped and sent me sliding into a wall, before tilting a bit less in the opposite direction, and then finally settling in a series of smaller quakes that reverberated up my legs and into my hips.

Silt rained down from the low ceiling in a fine powder, causing me to cough as I rubbed the shoulder that had taken the hit.

“I’m not feeling so hot about being stuck in a tunnel when the ground’s shaking like this,” West added. “When I die, I plan on going out doing some heroic feat that’ll have some awesome purpose—shit, maybe they’ll compose songs about me—not withmy face buried in Rush’s ass, which is exactly where it’ll end up if we’re crushed right now.”

“Why not?” Ryder asked from behind West on a snort-cough. “There are worse ways to go. We all know Rush’s got a fine ass.”

“Yeahhhhh, no. If my face is gonna be buried in anyone’s ass, it’s gonna be pretty, plump, and smooth, and belong to an equally pretty, plump, and smooth female.”

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