Page 22 of Fae Crown

Rush unlaced his boots and kicked them off to more appreciation, but when his hands traveled to the waist of his pants, naturally framing the muscled V that pointed to that magnificent bejeweled wand that was meant only for me, Malina let out a breathy, “By dragonfire, Her Majesty is the most incredible queen ever. I could do with some ofthat.”

“Iwilldo with some of that. If Her Majesty wills it, of course,” said Natania.

I passed my goblet to Octavia Lily Rose with a silent, “Hold this,” freeing up my right hand—and elbowed Natania in the throat.

6.DELIVER ME FAR AWAY FROM HERE

RUSH

A startled, garbled grunt rose from my seated audience.

Hope, that ever perilous emotion, swelled in my chest before I could quell it. My hands stalled on the waistband of my pants as gasps skimmed across the two rows of contestants like the opening notes of an orchestra. My ears perked for whatever would come next.

Curiosity wove around my head like a band, urging me to peer through the dimness to spot the cause of the commotion.

But my instincts, those I’d honed over countless hours of training, held me steady. My attention never left the worst danger in this room.

On all fours atop the bed, the queen had stilled in the way predators did when they’d sighted their next meal and were a breath from pouncing.

“Youbitch,” one of the females wheezed before coughing hoarsely, her voice unrecognizable.

The queen jerked her head toward our spectators so violently that her body whipped along with it.

A snake. She was like a snake, her body arcing behind her in a single line.

Though the bed was lit and the rows of seats weren’t, the crown-princess hopefuls didn’t appear to notice that our murderous queen was doing nothing to hide her animal nature.

“How dare you hit her?” one of the females snarled. It sounded like Malina, the contestant who disgusted me most. She leered at me as openly as the queen. “Her Majesty will have your head for this, you know.”

“Natania, are you all right?” another asked more gently, though her tone held similar accusation. This one sounded like Coretta, the female who endeavored to smear her voluminous tits all over me as often as possible.

“Our queen will most definitely kill you for this,” added Malina in a tone cruel enough to be worthy of invoking our terrible monarch. “Finally.”

The queen seemed to tense, to coil in preparation for her strike. But I was watching her closely, and she hadn’t moved at all.

My hands slid from my waist to my hips, where any number of my usual blades should have been sheathed. But of course, my weapons holster was absent, forbidden in this smoky den of depravity, where the wounds still to come would undoubtedly slice far deeper than any knife.

The queen hissed, and had I not been following herevery slight move, I might have guessed it was an actual serpent instead of a woman. The coils of enchanted smoke that wrapped the base of the bed writhed and shuddered around her.

My muscles twitched, preparing for a confrontation I wouldn’t be allowed to fight. The queen had effectively emasculated me even as she expected me to perform like the virile man she knew me to be. She’d ensured I was incapable of protecting those I’d sworn to defend by any means other than giving my body to her.

If only I could kill her here, right now. If only I could rip her head from her body with my bare hands.

But of course, the woman couldn’t die by ordinary means. It was the curse that plagued an entire mirror world. If I were to try, I’d only secure the death of everyone I cared for in this damnable kingdom instead.

You’ve got to relax, I scolded myself.Ignore whatever’s going on over there and get the fuck out of your head. Don’t do anything that’ll cut the numbness. You need the numbness.

Umbrac poison was very difficult to come by. This far away from the Sorumbra, it was also costly. But administered in micro doses, it would disconnect my thoughts from my body. That would be worth the quail-egg sized ruby, a valuable heirloom of Amarantos, I’d traded for it.

I’d already drunk one small vial of it. A second awaited, secured to the back of a braid concealed at my nape, for whenever the queen would force me. If shenoticed the tiny glass bottle, she might kill me for the offense of drugging myself to fuck her.

The umbrac poison only lasted at most twenty minutes. If I didn’t get the chance to take the second dose, I’d remain far too aware of what I was doing. As it was, the two together might not even be enough to ignore whom exactly I was being forced to fuck.

The woman had been the cause of my every torment for as long as I could remember.

Ifolvidiandidn’t interfere with erections, I would have happily indulged in its legendary bliss instead. Apparently, riding the high of olvidian, you soared free of your body and didn’t feel a thing.

Anything not to endure what was coming next.

---