Page 40 of Fae Exile

“Okay. But what the fuck? Don’t get closer!” Incongruously, West slotted the words into a happy tune.

The dragon relaxed by a fraction.

I tiptoed toward it but stopped when I reached the edge of where I needed to be to escape its fire breath. “I want to help you, but you can’t hurt me either. I’ll unchain you?—”

“No, you can’t,” Ryder interjected. “What if?—?”

“I have to,” I interrupted.

“What about Larissa?” West asked. “For her sake if not yours, you can’t endanger yourself like this.”

“That’s right,” Ryder said, agreeing with West in what was probably one of only a handful of instances in the previous decade. “She’ll murder us if she finds out we let you do this without stopping you.”

“Larissa wouldn’t murder a fly,” I said, without moving my eyes from the dragon’s. Dark and pupil-less, they reflected my light orb.

Another step forward and I was past the safety zone. The dragon eyed me and my upheld hands.

Pausing, I asked, “Will you hurt me if I help you?”

West scoffed and sang, “You can’t be serious right now.”

He and the others weren’t following.Good. They didn’t need to endanger themselves. If this went badly, at least one of them could become king and have a chance at fixing this bloody realm.

“Rush, wait,” West insisted. “Come back. Let’s think this through. We can come up with a plan and then return to free it.”

“This is probably our only chance down here and you know it,” I said. “Already, we’ll be lucky if she doesn’t figure out it was us.”

“Some feethles survived,” Ryder said. “She’ll know.”

“Then it’s definitely our only chance, and I’m not leaving anyone down here chained up like this.”

“You left Gadiel,” West pointed out in a sharp barb.

“I did.”

“Wedid,” Ryder corrected.

“Yes, well,” I said, “I’m going back for him. But it’ll be easier to get into the fae dungeon than here.”

“At this rate, we’ll end upinthe fae dungeon, right next to Gadiel,” West said, his tone a mixture of sullenness and desperation. He wasn’t altering his tone anymore.

I inched closer, and West added, “Their kind ravaged the mirror world, killing fae left and right. It’s why Erasmus hunted them down. They’re ferocious and have a taste for fae.”

“Hmm, that’s what we were taught, yes,” Hiroshi said. “But consider the source, West.”

“And El,” I added. “She grew up around them. Hell, she fought to save Saffron, wouldn’t leave without him.” Or the dragon shifter either, but I didn’t want to think too hard on Xeno or how he, instead of me, now got to share the rest of Elowyn’s life with her.

“I’m going to free you of these chains, okay?” I told the dragon, a part of me wondering if I’d lost my mind along with my heart, and if I were moments from my death.

“I’ll help,” Hiroshi said, his voice too close.

I didn’t turn, didn’t make any sudden movements. “Hiro, no. Don’t take the risk.”

But Hiroshi appeared next to me, his hands also in the air. “There are some things worth taking risks for, and I’m looking at one of them right now.”

Beatific, as only Hiroshi could be, he smiled up at the beast, who now studied my friend.

My gut twisted uncomfortably. These men might not be my brothers by blood, but I loved each of them as if they were. I couldn’t stand to lose any of them.

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