Page 30 of Fae Crown

Involuntarily, I groaned, closing my eyes as comments buzzed from our audience.Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, drowned out the specifics.

When Elowyn pulled as much of me into her mouth as she could, I grunted and braced myself on the queen’s knee.

She growled in warning, causing Elowyn to pull her mouth from me to tell her, “It’ll be worth it, Your Majesty. I’m working on it.”

My eyes flew open at that. What the devilry was this?

But then Elowyn’s mouth was back on me, and I felt myself hardening beneath those sensuous lips. That hot, hot tongue. That perfect suction. The way she caressed my balls as if she and I were about to make love.

The hazewhooshedmore intently around me, until I felt as if I were deep underwater, the pressure both too intense and welcome at the same time. There,beneath the water, it was just she and I. Her touch and no one else’s. Her kiss. Her murmured comfort whispered beside the shell of my ear so no one else might hear it.

At some point, there were too many hands on my skin, too many tongues and mouths. But through it all, there they were, her eyes that swirled an odd mixture of gray and violet and that somehow still felt like home.

Likesafety, when I understood despite the haze that I was deep in the dragon’s den.

Elowyn’s hands tangled in my hair and clasped around the small vial. Her eyes were wide with an unspoken question when they flew to mine. When her lips murmured next to my ear again, “Will it kill me?” I shook my head, my movements sluggish.

“Will it take away the pain?”

Had the umbrac poison taken away mine, or had that been her? Either way, I nodded, my eyes drunk with her as she consumed my sight. As she erased the others around me.

As the stranger I’d only just met filled every void and soothed every jagged crack.

Laughter and moans and gasps were a constant in the background, behind the endlesswhooshing. They weren’t hers, and that was all I cared to know.

Her. Elowyn. Only her.

When I finally collapsed on the bed beside her, I noticed the vial was gone from its hiding place.

Her eyes were closed to me, to whomever else was on the bed with us.

I shook her but she wouldn’t look at me.

Others called my name, seductive growls and whispers. The air was musky with the scent of too many women.

I wrapped myself around Elowyn and clenched my eyes shut, ignoring every call that followed.

Even the queen’s.

Especially the queen’s.

I didn’t open my eyes again until I woke to a bed entirely empty save for me and my shame.

8.I KILL THINGS TOO

ELOWYN

With a start, I woke to sweaty sheets and a dark, suffocating quiet.

Whatever the tincture was that I’d discovered hidden behind Rush’s braid, it still gripped me in its clutches as unforgivingly as the queen had just hours earlier. My thoughts crept past me with agonizing slowness. Whenever I reached out to clasp on to them, they only ever drifted by without a backward glance.

That had, of course, been the entire point.

The tonic’s bitter taste tugged at my memory. This feeling of being unable to escape a force overtaking my body was familiar. It had been years since I’d experienced a fever, when I’d woken to find Zako praying over me—the only time I’d ever heard him beg anyone for anything. I might not have known what substance exactly the tiny vial contained, but I could guess at its effect. Rush, forever sharp and alert, was neither. His movements were awkward, his gaze faraway, and hehardly spoke when he should have had more to protest than usual.

Rush had barely been in his body.

I’d wanted that, and desperately. When I’d had to watch him go down on the nasty queen while she moaned and came, I’d wanted out of my body too. And when I’d recognized how angry she was that he wasn’t aroused like she was, moments from punishing himfor not enjoying his public violation, I’d had no choice but to intervene.

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