Page 46 of Fae Exile

Finnian and Roan exchanged a look that was as loaded as the umbracs had apparently been with poison.

“What?” I pushed.

“We’re not certain,” Finnian replied a bit too quickly.

I arched my brows at him, Roan, and even Pru, who eventually offered, “It’s the mate bond, Mistress ... Elowyn. We think it’s the mate bond that’s unlocking your power.”

I smiled, but only at hearing her speak about herself as important as anyone else.

The expression quickly fell when she added, “That’s why Pru was worried about Her Majesty discovering that Drake Rush Vega and Mistress are bonded.”

“And she didn’t?” I asked, as if it weren’t absolutely absurd to consider that the man who’d essentially killed me was my bonded pairing.

“If she had, I doubt she would have allowed him to make the deal he did with her,” Finnian said. “She wouldn’t have trusted even him, not then. The mate bond between two fae is rare, so rare that its magic isn’t wholly understood.”

“It seems to change too, dependin’ on the couple,” Roan offered. “Plus, fae’ve been keepin’ secrets from the royals for as long as there’ve been royals. With the mate bond, even more so. Mates can become ferally protective of each other.”

“With what we’ve seen lately,” Finnian said, “I’m thinking Elowyn had a binding cast on her before the king sent her away to live with the dragons.”

“And that the mate bond activating broke the spell,” Roan filled in.

“Exactly. Hence her fae nature fully revealing itself in the physical form of her ears. Maybe in other ways too.”

“Like what?” I asked Finnian.

“You tell me.”

Well before I was finished getting the information I needed or the complete understanding I craved, and before I could turn the issue over in my mind even a little bit, I found the declaration spilling from my lips.

“We can’t hide out at the coast. We’ve got to go back.”

“Yes,” Finnian agreed right away. “Now that we see your power, we have no choice.”

“There’s always another choice.” Xeno slid forward to perch at the edge of the log as if he were about to propel himself on top of me to shield me. “Isn’t that what you were just saying?” Xeno asked me, accusingly.

Then to the others, “She’s not going back there, not ever. It’s way too dangerous. That queen won’t stop till she’s dead, for real this time.”

I recognized what should have been my reasoning when I heard it aloud, but it wouldn’t make a difference. I already knew it. Deep in my gut where I wouldn’t fight the realization, I knew what I had to do.

What I didn’t know was how I’d survive it.

17.THE WORK OF UTTER DARKNESS AND THE SHIFTING OF TIDES

~ RUSH ~

In my many decades of life, I’d witnessed situations that had made my essence shudder and recoil more often than I cared to recall. Even in Amarantos, as its drake, I hadn’t been able to nullify the queen’s influence. Her reach, like insidious tentacles, slunk all across the mirror world, poisoning everyone and everything it touched.

Once she forced me to live at court, her many horrors were inescapable. Everywhere I looked, her influence tainted her subjects and the land, her putrid touch just beneath the surface of whatever pretty picture she orchestrated—never sufficient to fully conceal the stench of her involvement.

I’d considered myself immune to shock. There was nothing she could do that would surprise me anymore.

How wrong I’d been.

This, this was so much worse than anything I’d ever imagined she’d do.Thiswas worse than death, a cruelty only a person without heart or essence could carry out. This was the work of utter darkness.

Hiroshi, Ryder, and West were as stunned as I was. The four of us stood together, gawping at the myriad cells the dragon’s fire illuminated. When the beast ran out of breath, neardarkness settled around us once more, barely interrupted by the power of my lumoon, which was like the light of a single candle compared to the beam of radiance provided by the dragon.

“There are so many of them,” Ryder uttered softly. “How can there be so many of them? How could we not’ve known?”

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