Page 28 of Fae Exile

Clutching Saffron close to my chest, my boots squished across the sludgy forest floor as I raced toward where Xeno’s dragon had fallen.

The moon was little more than a miserly sliver that scarcely illuminated below the dense tree canopies. Nothing about the Sorumbra was welcoming. I wanted to escape it with the same kind of desperation I’d wished to flee the queen. It was a bitter irony that this nightmare was the only place I might be safe from her.

There! A mound perhaps the size of half a dozen horses shifted on the ground.

Though he was the youngest of all the protectors in Nightguard, Xeno’s beast was formidable. It had to be for him to be one of the elite warriors tasked with defending the last surviving dragons.

I stumbled over what was either a fallen branch or a monster tentacle, lost my balance, but managed to swing an arm to catch myself and the little dragon in my embrace, and slid to an inelegant stop next to what I hoped was Xeno. His tattered wings were tucked in tightly to his body and he was curled in on himself. It was a position I’d never seen his dragon in before. Myglow was fading rapidly, and my terror for Xeno only seemed to dim it more.

Not fucking good.

The footfalls of the others slapped wet ground behind me as I reached a hand forward. The light emanating off my skin was now no stronger than that of a guttering candle, its wick on its last breaths. But under its fading light I could make out the elegant pattern of scales as it peeked out from beneath a thick coating of poisonous monster guts.

Tentatively, I ran my fingertips along what I thought was his clean side. “Xeno?”

He’d been my only friend in Nightguard, the only one of the shifters to really see me as more than a servant—to see me for who I was, and all that I might become thanks to my constant dedication and training.

Always amazed by the dragons, I’d studied his beast more than most. When his wings were spread, his dragon was large as a yurt that could sleep dozens, and his teeth and claws were crowning points to a perfect musculature and shape that should have put him at the very pinnacle of the food chain.

“Xeno,” I whispered again, trailing my fingers along what I was now certain was his side, just beneath one of the wings he crimped tightly against his chest.

In response, he groaned, muffled and brief.

Finnian and Pru arrived first, shoring up near me, then Roan, who crouched beside me, his expression grim beneath all that beard. The dim light flowing from my skin was just enough to cast his concern in sinister shadows.

Reed moved to stand beside Roan and pointed his blazing torch toward the dragon.

When the firelight flickered across Xeno’s back, I sucked in a gasp and couldn’t immediately let it go.

“Oh no,” I murmured. “Oh, Xeno, no.”

With him protecting his wings by folding them closed, I couldn’t examine the tears I already knew would be there, but I couldn’t miss the many gashes, large and small, that sliced his body.

Dozens of the monsters must have descended on him at once, overpowering him. Blood, violet in the flickering light, congealed across his cuts, where it mixed with enough poison to take down a whole den of dragons.

Xeno moaned and attempted to stand. He only managed to lift his head, wobble, then crash back down to the ground.

“He’s not goin’ anywhere like this, lassie,” Roan said.

“Yeah, no shit,” I snapped. “I can see that.”

Saffron squirmed in my arms, and Xeno released a shaky exhale.

I closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Roan. I didn’t mean to take all the shit I’m feeling out on you. My bad.”

“It’s all right, lass. You’ve been through a lot lately. Besides, just wait and see what I’m gonna do to these umbracs for hurtin’ my boy Rompa-Romp.”

One hand on Xeno, the other on Saffron, I faced the dwarf. “Is that what the monsters are? Umbracs?”

“Can’t be sure, but I’m guessin’ so. Never had the misfortune o’ seein’ one before, but met a guy once who’d fought one.” He scratched his beard, which was splattered in the putrid sludge. “Don’t think the man ever slept a full night again without wakin’ up with nightmares.”

“I can understand that.” I scanned the deep darkness that stretched toward us on all sides. The hissing that had erupted when Finnian tightened his tourniquet had subsided, but the chittering was so prevalent, so constant, that I feared I’d hear it long after we emerged from the Wilds.

With his torch, Reed pushed back the monsters so that I couldn’t make out their many eyes nor count their tentacles.I could, however, make out the writhing mass of black that stretched upward to meet the night. They looked like they were piling on top of each other, trying to get to us, held at bay by Reed’s measly flame and my failing power.

“They’re definitely umbracs,” Finnian said. “My grandfather lost an eye to them. Can Xeno shift into his man form?”

“I...” I trailed my palm up Xeno’s side and under his wing. He jerked away from my light touch. “I’m pretty sure he would’ve already if he could’ve. I think dragon shifters heal more quickly when they’re in their creatures. He may be worried his wings won’t recover properly if he shifts back right now.”

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