Page 2 of Fae Crown

He grunted a brief, regretful laugh. “If I knew howto do that, I wouldn’t be so worried about how I’m going to protect you from …her.”

As I lazily wove a leg back and forth across the deep, long tub, I could sense his disgust.

Her.

The blasted woman followed us around even when she—or her gruesome, disembodied body parts that acted as her spies—weren’t present.

At her court, there was no escaping her. I feared there might be no evading her anywhere in all of Embermere.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said softly, gingerly. I’d spent all my life training to be a warrior capable of my own defense. And yet, before such a formidable adversary, I wasn’t certain I’d survive without him.

His hand splayed over my stomach like it belonged there. “Concerning practically anyone else, I’d agree. You’ve defied my expectations at every turn, my love. But when it comes to her…”

I sighed, raising my toes to splash at the surface of the water. “Yeah, I know.”

“The magic of the trials might no longer allow her to kill you directly. But…”

When every one of her subjects inevitably bent to her will, I was far from safe.

“Iknow,” I repeated. “We’re up a dragon’s tail with no easy way down.”

“She’s going to do her best to wedge distance between us. Now that she knows we’re mates?—”

“Seems like she always knew … somehow.”

At that reminder of her seeming omnipresence, Rush glanced toward the ceiling, where I’d told him her spies tended to float. His chin swept across the crown of my head with his movement.

“There’s nothing there. For now anyway. She never stays away for long enough though.”

A fact he understood all too well without my reminder.

“You’ll have to leave Saffron behind,” he said of the dragonling who still slept on a chaise in the neighboring room.

I groaned. “He won’t like that.” But it was so much worse than his preference for sticking to me like glue. He was young, only a few months old. Even so, he should have been at least twice his current size. His many traumas caused by the queen had stunted his development.

“He definitely won’t,” Rush agreed. “But you won’t want to remindherof his existence any more than necessary. She might be threatening him to keep us from freeing the other dragons, but you know she doesn’t need good reason to kill him if she wants.”

Before her father’s reign, the dragons had been revered in the Mirror World. Since then, his order remained in effect: kill any and all dragons on sight.

“Besides,” he added with a caress to my thigh that felt as though he’d been touching me like this all my life. I’d never experienced such marvelous adoration. “The Nuptialis Probatio’s no place for him. Thosefemales…” He shook his head behind me, his long hair swirling through the water around our combined shoulders, then shuddered. “They’ll eat him alive.”

“I thought you didn’t know what the queen had planned for this trial?” I asked, rising to peer at him over my shoulder. Instantly, I missed all the points of contact with him I’d just lost, and nestled back against him. His arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me more tightly to his body, making his cock twitch with alertness.

I felt myself smile before realizing I had it in me. So this was what love felt like … to be in the middle of a veritable shitstorm and still find reason to smile.

“I don’t know any of the details,” he answered. “Not specifically. But when she warns it’ll be as brutal as the Gladius Probatio, you know she means it.”

My smile drooped. The Gladius Probatio had delivered literal beheadings.

“How can a matchmaking event even be lethal? The females don’t train with weapons.” A fact I’d been reminded of dozens of times since my abrupt arrival in Embermere. In so many ways, I was the odd one out.

“I get that they’re catty and vicious and conniving,” I added. “That they’ll stab a ‘friend’ in the back without a moment’s hesitation if it’ll serve them somehow. But short of them stabbing a mofo with an icicle again, I don’t see how it can be worse than anything we saw in the arena.”

“Regardless, I fear that it still will be.Herimaginationfor the darker aspects of existence seems to know no bounds.”

With a thumb, he drew circles beneath the water against my hip. My body, which had felt boneless just minutes before in the aftermath of the appearance of the possible map, stirred with interest.

The only thing better than having Rush inside me five—or was it six?—times in a matter of hours was to have him inside me at least once more.

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