Page 4 of Fae Exile

Drakess to Rush’s drake... The notion was ludicrous, and I would have argued that Rush doing his damnedest to kill me negated anymatedragonshit.

But we had bigger problems. Once my usual alertness returned, I didn’t need anyone to point out the dangers that surrounded us within the Wilds. I could sense the many perils as a constant tautness across my skin, a prickling up and down the entire length of my spine, as if someone—or something—were always watching us. Invisible observers far more brutal than the queen’s severed eyeball spies took note of our every move. I was certain of it.

“Does anybody see anything?” I prompted again, this time my voice in a hush, more cognizant that despite the fact that most of us were trained fighters, that Pru and Reed were survivors, and that Saffron was a freaking dragon, in the Sorumbrawewere the prey.

Dense thickets merged into even thicker copses of old, wide trees. Occasional fields, ponds, and swamps interrupted them. But despite our efforts to skirt the shadows and remain out of sight, nothing we did was secret, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were trespassing.Unwanted. That we should turn right around and head back to the danger we knew instead of all this unknown lurking just beyond the next bend.

I hadn’t witnessed any of the ferocious monsters that had Finnian and Roan so uncharacteristically tense, but my every instinct warned me against what prowled these endless stretches of woods.

I’d only managed to sit upright in the saddle for two days now, but if something attacked I’d defend with whatever strength I had. Out here, the line between life and death was tangibly thin.

“Just a spotted armacoon,” Reed announced as he emerged from behind a mass of thorny bushes. The spotted armacoon, I’d learned, was very much like its cousin the spiked armacoon, in that both animals were the size of a sneakle, encased in impenetrable hard shells, with long snouts, wickedly sharp teeth, and piss-poor attitudes. The spotted armacoon sported rounded nubs instead of the hand-long spikes that made its cousin the more lethal dance partner.

Reed clutched his bow, but his arrows remained in the quiver across his back. “An adolescent,” he said by way of explanation for his otherwise empty hands.

Reed had turned out to be quite the hunter. Before heading to the palace in search of a better future for himself, he’d lived—half wild, I was gathering—in the forests between Embermere and the clans. An orphan after his mother died young, he’d fended for himself, catching and foraging for his food.

Out here, we ate whatever we could find, and Reed did much of the finding. Unlike the queen, however, he abided by a moral code for killing. Even with the beasts that tracked us, constantly seeking our vulnerabilities, Reed refused to hunt any young or pregnant or nursing females.

He had none of the queen’s “precious” pedigree, and already he’d proven himself to be a thousand times more honorable than she.

A hiss came from the underbrush, and Reed chuckled, though the amusement didn’t reach his tight eyes. “Let me amend that. Avery angryadolescent spotted armacoon.”

Xeno drew to stand beside Bolt and me. As a dragon shifter, he’d completely healed in the time it had taken my body to simply suture together a wound three fingers long. There were no remaining signs of whatever torment the queen had inflicted on him while holding him prisoner in the fae dungeon beyond the constant shadow that darkened his otherwise light eyes.

“If there’s a young one,” Xeno said, “there’s likely at least one parent around.”

“Not always,” Reed answered, a sadness pulling at his lips I suspected had to do with his mother’s death. “I think this one’s solo, probably why it’s so angry.”

Xeno rubbed an absent touch along Bolt’s neck. The horse was a stunning animal with a shiny black pelt and a single, jagged silver line that sliced across his flank. Strong and muscled, he’d been the one to bear me all these weeks before I could sit upright.

Xeno looked at Finnian, who as always was at the front of our group. “How much longer till we stop for the night?”

Finnian’s jaw was hard as he scanned the path up ahead—a too-narrow gap between brambles. There were no easy, worn trails through the Wilds. Not many people came this way, and when they did, they didn’t want others knowing what routes they took.

Traveling with me wounded, and little Saffron still shell-shocked, we were too conspicuous. There were too many of us, and we moved too slowly.

Finnian ran the back of his sleeve across his sweaty forehead and switched his machete from one hand to the other. “We should be within a few days of the coastline by now. We can stop and make camp for the night at the next clearing we reach.”

“No, no, no,” Pru muttered, and I turned the other way, gentler on my still aching wound this time, to find her standing next to Roan, astride his pony.

The goblin was shaking her head as fervently as if she still feared the queen’s retributions. “No, Lord Finnian, not yet,” she pleaded.

“Why not, Primrose?” Roan asked.

When I’d come to, I’d shocked everyone, including Reed, by calling the goblin not only a given name but also an endearment.Roan had been the first to take to calling her by her true first name.

Pru peered up at him with those big, black eyes. “Not here, Lord Roan.”

“Just Roan, remember.”

I snorted at the memory of how long I’d insisted she call me by name, and how rarely she still did.

Pru twisted her fingers together nervously, clutching at her dingy frock, now a more ready match to everyone else’s clothing. There’d been no baths since we departed.

“Pru doesn’t feel good about it here, not good.”

Pru hadn’t once felt at ease about any spot we’d stopped.

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