Page 1 of Fae Crown

1.MY FEROCIOUS LITTLE TIGRESS, LEAD THE WAY

ELOWYN

Although the sudden onslaught of pain had been unbearable—like it would sear the flesh from my bones before it would ever end—it passed quickly and then shock clung to me in its wake.

Why was amap, of all things, traced along my body in glowing crimson? Was it even a map at all? And if it was, where did it lead? What had caused it to so abruptly surge across my skin?

Rush’s fingertips trailed water tenderly over one of my shoulders, sliding gently along the faded scars of dragon claw slashes, one of several physical reminders of my time in Nightguard—before nearly every aspect of my life had revealed itself to be a carefully crafted deception. I had been a prisoner of Embermere mere weeks and yet I scarcely recognized the woman I’d been before, in the frigid mountains guarding what I’d then believed to be the last of all dragons in existence.

Another lie. One of so,so many.

For the majority of my life, I’d believed I was a servant excluded from the worthy destiny of the dragon protectors with whom I’d grown up.

But I was no servant.

Turned out, I was fuckingroyalty. I was the true heir to the Mirror World.

How, exactly, was I to wrap my mind aroundthatupending revelation?

I was apparently destined to take down the all-powerful queen.

To banish her insidious darkness and return the balance of Faerie to these lands.

No biggie. It wasn’t like the queen had managed to all but kill me several times already.

How many times would I be able to claw myself back from actual death before there was no returning?

How wouldIbe able to defeat the woman who’d terrorized and brutalized an entire kingdom? I was the outsider here, the one playing catch-up to the ways of her court—and her brutality.

After the night shared with Rush, my first back at the palace after the terrors of the Sorumbra, I was sensitive all over. My skin, my nipples, the tender flesh between my thighs … my heart, oh, most especially my heart. A barrage of emotions swirled through me relentlessly, like punishing waves crashing violently against a craggy, rocky shore, over and over again.

Indeed, I was much too sensitive. And definitely far too vulnerable when the sunrise beyond mybathing chamber had just delivered yet another day when the queen would do her best to kill me.

And herbesthad proven to be far too fucking good to gamble on my continued life expectancy. Her courtiers had been giving me shitty odds of survival since they’d begun betting on the time of my death. Not a single one of them bet on my survival. To them, my death was a foregone conclusion—within no more than a month, according to the longest stretch of their odds.

In their view, there was no defeating the queen. Every one of them bowed to her. Pawns in the game she insisted on playing.

Hot water lapped across my breasts, then the fresh puckered scar between them, soothing the permanent sign of where Rush had shoved a dagger through my heart. Absently, I hummed at the soothing gesture.

Rush sat behind me, his strong, muscled legs bent to either side of my hips as I leaned back against his torso, my entire body limp. His cock rested along the swell of my buttocks. Though it was spent from how many times he’d made love to me during the previous hours, I couldn’t help but be acutely aware of every time its satiny soft skin shifted against mine in the water.

Thanks to Zako’s fixation on my maidenhood, a deception that turned out not to be at all about my actual virtue, this level of intimacy was new for me. Even so, I already understood that the degree of closenessI shared with Rush, and so quickly, was uncommon.

A special, incredible gift in a world so very filled with shit.

“A kiss for your thoughts,mate?”

Here, alone in my chambers, there was no need to specify to whom he directed his question. But since I’d admitted to also feeling the mate connection between us, he seemed to enjoy repeating the word, as if to convince himself the love that was so rapidly blooming between us was true. A force so powerful and pure that not even the long reach of the queen could steal it from us.

Languorously, I chuckled. “You’ll kiss me anyway. You should come up with better bargains.”

His torso vibrated beneath me with his responding mirth. “True.” He pressed his lips to the crook between my neck and shoulder, one of his favorite spots, I’d discovered. His lips dragged across my shoulder to kiss those same faint claw marks.

“Tell me what you’re thinking anyway?”

I appreciated how he omitted the reminder of how little time like this we had left together. If we had an hour before goblins arrived to prepare us for the Nuptialis Probatio, we’d be lucky.

“Why can’t I make moments like these last forever,” I murmured, “and shorten pretty much all the other ones?”

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