Page 20 of Fae Crown

Eventually, without so much as a friendly smile, he looked away?—

Toward Natania.

All I could do was watch as his face—that stunning, gorgeous face I already could conjure from memory alone—transformed into open adoration?—

For the wrong woman.

The passing hours did nothing to improve my outlook, especially since they were so idly filled. Apparently the queen intended to whittle away the time with her ladies and the kind of idle gossip that had me agreeing with Zako.

The only matters you should concern yourself with are your own. Don’t waste your energy on the actions of others unless they directly impact your own, he’d tell me when I’d show interest in the dramatic flares between the passionate dragon protectors with whom I’d shared Nightguard.

Gladly, Zako. Fucking gladly.

But I couldn’t have been more trapped by my circumstances. I couldn’t leave for fear the queen would punish those I cared for, and if she didn’t, the magic would kill me for abandoning the trials before their conclusion.

Though the queen could have summoned dozens of goblins to clean up the evidence of the magic’s earlier displeasure at interference with the natural order of the proceedings, the blood remained untouched, impossible to ignore when the curtains, tablecloth, flowers, and every other possible accent was an otherwise impeccable white. The message couldn’t be clearer: remain or suffer the—bloody—consequences.

Unbelievably, just the day before I’d been in theSorumbra facing down a dragon. Weeks of hard travel had separated me and my companions from the palace. I’d been fighting my way back to Rush—and the queen.

Now I was within reach of both, and neither wanted anything to do with me—unless torture counted.

Since the queen had decreed the first event would begin the next day, she’d ordered a luncheon for us to “celebrate each other’s company before we become bitter rivals.”

Though I’d tried very hard to focus on my blessings—among my friendships alone, I’d found several—I ultimately found nothing at all I wanted to celebrate.

While I churned with the desire to throttle Natania until my fingers left their mark upon her pale neck, she found endless ways to touch Rush. A coquettish swipe of a finger across his arm, a hand, a fucking thigh. A “careless” brush of her breasts, a good exhale from popping free of her corset, against one of his shoulders. A sweep of her skirts against his legs. Every time I looked, she was crowding him, batting her artificially lengthened lashes at him as if the act were a mating call. Thank dragons’ veins her hair had remained coiled atop her head through the magic’s upheaval or she’d have probably used it to rope him.

She giggled so often—sooooo fucking often—that my body had begun instinctively clenching each time. I developed a headache an hour into the event.

The other ladies were little better. If they weren’t competing with Natania for the chance to rubthemselves all over Rush like dragons in heat, then they wereoohing andahhing over super important facts, such as that Jolanda, the dowager countess of Etherantos and the mother of the backstabbing Lennox Heath, was “rolling around in the mud” by screwing a lord I hadn’t heard of, and if that was his choice in lovers, I didn’t want to. Or that Hiroshi had taken Malina from behind against one of the stables while an aroused stallion watched on, chuffing hotly—a lie of Malina’s, I’d wager.

That anyone there might believe this was what it took to become a crown princess of an entire kingdom said all the things that wentunsaid in the queen’s reign of terror.

While I tried very hard not to notice how Rush appeared interested in Natania’s advances, and not to be bothered by anyone else’s, I’d mulled over the facts as I knew them.

The queen had summoned Rush from my chambers to hers before the start of the Nuptialis Probatio. Afterward, he seemed nothing like the man who’d kissed me goodbye this very morning as if he wanted to imprint himself upon me. As if he never wanted to leave my side.

Braque was both the queen’s loyal lapdog and the royal alchemist. He’d cast a spell on me that had transformed my appearance so that I looked and sounded nothing like me. If he could do that, what else was the portly man with the dour attitude capable of? Could he have performed an enchantment on Rush that excised me from his memory? That made him believe Nataniawas the best thing to come along since weapons holsters?

Not only was it possible, I figured it was downright likely.

That didn’t make it much easier to bear the constant flirtations, the endless commentary suggesting Rush would end up with Natania or a choice few of the other hopefuls. I got scornful, sidelong glances from practically all of them, save Octavia Lily Rose, whose pretty face was twisted into a constant state of distress, reminding me of a skittish colt. I guessed she would have preferred my company to that of any of the others but was too afraid to do anything about it. I hoped she’d be disqualified from the trials quickly and painlessly and be freed from any more of the queen’s manipulations.

No amount of the fae’s golden wine, served in quaint, tiny glasses I wished were twenty times bigger, numbed my headache or the edge that ground at my nerves like a file. And when the queen finally released us to freshen up for the evening’s festivities, AKA Rush’s violation, we were led to shared quarters. Though the room was elegant in a way befitting of future royalty, and large enough for all twenty-two of us to have our own beds, partitioned off from the others with more of those same shimmering curtains, I recognized it for what it was: yet another prison. Only this time I was trapped with my would-be murderers.

The magic of the trials might prevent the queen from killing me directly, but Azariah had offeredno such assurances for the competitors. An insubstantial curtain wasn’t exactly protection. In addition to the torments I could easily foresee in my immediate future, I tacked on lack of sleep.

When, thanks to my new she-goblin, I found myself stuffed into yet another stifling dress, and then summoned to the queen’s chambers along with the other contestants, my many concerns—for Rush, for Saffron, Pru, Xeno, Roan, Reed, Finnian, Bolt, every other dragon and goblin at the queen’s mercy, and Rush’s sister Larissa too—distilled into only one.

Rush.

How could I save Rush?

Especially now that he appeared unaware he needed saving at all, the responsibility landed on me alone.

And yet … when a fairy half my size led me along two even rows of chairs to one in front, the one closest to the queen’s sizable bed, I sat. At the luncheon, the queen had directed me as far away from Rush as possible. Now, she put me nearest.

Without a doubt, that wouldn’t be good. In fact, I’d bet the kingdom it would be bad—very, very bad. The kind of bad I might never recover from.

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