Page 29 of Fae Exile

“Then we have to leave him and get you away from here,” Finnian said.

Instinctively, my hand on Xeno’s side clenched, and he groaned. Grimacing, I relaxed to run my fingers soothingly along his battered flesh.

As I petted both dragons, I told Finnian, “I understand you barely know me. We met when you were helping abduct me, for sunshine’s sake. We literally come from different worlds, and after what you did to Sandor, I see that our ideas of loyalty are very different. So I won’t hold your suggestion against you.But… there isn’t a chance in all the fuckery of both our worlds that I’m going to leave Xeno like this, hurt and unprotected.”

“You have to.”

“No, I don’t. In every situation, there’s always a choice.”

“So after all Rush sacrificed for you, you’d throw that all away?”

I felt my nostrils flare, but then I could only smell the stench of dead and dying umbracs all the better. Anger, frustration, and a despondent sense of helplessness surged all at once, mixing into a pungent cocktail. “Last I checked, I’m the one who ended up with a blade through the heart, not him.”

“There are many different kinds of pain, lassie,” Roan offered.

I ignored him and his unusually gentle tone. “Rush chose to stab me and practically kill me. Finnian, you chose to let the queen torture Sandor, knowing how awful it’d be. And I choosenotto abandon my friend, who, by the way, took an arrow to the heart trying to save me from Embermere, fromyou.”

I felt Finnian’s stare on me like a searing brand, but I didn’t look away from my friend.

“We fight as one in the light and die alone in the darkness,” Finnian said to the chorus of chittering that had wormed its way under my skin. “I didn’t choose to let Sandor die. I chose to do my part to free Embermere and the rest of the mirror world.”

“There must’ve been another way,” I said, mostly because I was busy praying a solution would magically appear that didn’t involve me holding vigil all night next to a collapsed Dragon Xeno in a circling swarm of our vicious enemies. “There’s always another way.”

“Don’t be so naïve, Elowyn,” Roan said, using my name for the first time I could remember. “This life is about sacrifices, and when you’ve lived in the shadow of the queen’s darkness as long as we have, you understand that sometimes the sacrifices are almost worse than what we’re fighting against.” He grunted and stood. “But that doesn’t mean we stop fighting. ’Cause if we stop...”

“There’ll be no one left to fight her,” Finnian completed. “And whatever light is left in the mirror world will vanish forever. This is a fight much bigger than any one of us or any one of our friends.”

Roan told me, “You must not realize how big a deal ‘tis to find your mate. Most fae don’t ever, and when ya live as long as we do ... well, let me just say that’s a long-ass time to do without the person who’s a mirror to your very essence.” He pushed onto histiptoes as he peered into the night beyond Xeno’s fallen form, seeking out the horses, I imagined. “Rush gave that all up to save you.”

“But hestabbedme,” I retorted right away, though my protest was softer than I’d intended it. “From what you’ve all told me, I was carted out of Embermere strapped to the back of a horse like a corpse.”

“Yah, lassie, you were supposed to look like a bloody corpse,” Roan said. “Else the queen woulda realized Rush was only trying to save ya ‘stead of what it looked like.”

My hands still fluttering across Xeno’s and Saffron’s scales, I opened my mouth, but eventually closed it without saying another word.

Finnian faced the umbracs as if anticipating they’d attack again at any moment. I rose, preparing to pass Saffron back to Pru. If I was going to have to figure out how to glow more, I didn’t want to accidentally hurt him. As if the dragonling knew what I was thinking, he climbed farther up my torso, scrabbling and scratching at the many cuts that already stung across my skin.

I bit my lip to keep from crying out. My injuries were nothing compared to Xeno’s, compared to what I’d already survived.

Finnian’s voice was resigned and unwavering when he next spoke: “Elowyn, if you can refuel your power and hold the umbracs off a little longer, I can attempt to speed up Xeno’s healing. Perhaps the goblin will help me?”

When Pru hesitated, Finnian added, “You don’t need to reveal your secrets. But I’ve seen some of what your kind can do. You could help.”

Pru didn’t answer for several moments, then, “I’ll think about it.”

I spun toward her. “Pru!”

But the goblin, often meek and too often subservient, met my disbelief head-on before encompassing everyone else with a turn of her head. “You’re trying to save the mirror world. I want that too. But my duty is to protect the goblins’ secrets so we can saveourkind. Do you think the nobles will remember us when they’re setting everyone else free? No, of course not. They don’t even notice us when we’re standing right in front of them, not even when it’s off with our heads. The nobles see what they want to see, nothing more. Never us.”

After more unnerving chittering and thehooo,hoooof Reed waving the torch at the umbracs, I held Saffron out toward the goblin and said, “I’d never forget you, Pru. We’re friends.”

She stared back at me, her pupil-less eyes glinting in the light of Reed’s flame, before extending her arms to receive Saffron. He only clung to me harder.

She sighed.

I tucked Saffron better onto my hip and bent so my eyes stared straight into hers. “Even if we weren’t friends, if I knew you were in trouble, I’d try to help. But that doesn’t matter, because wearefriends, and I’dneverwalk away from you without fighting for you.”

Pru’s lower lip trembled, but she tilted up her chin defiantly. “Mistress, there’s only one of you. Nobody’ll fight for my granddoody if I don’t.”

---