Page 31 of Fae Crown

Though readying Rush to have sex with her hurt as badly as him fucking stabbing me through the heart, I couldn’t abandon him to her. The desire to cause him awful pain brimmed in her eyes as she examined his limp dick—like it was a lever he could push up or down, for fuck’s sake. As if attraction should have nothing to do with sex. As if sex shouldn’t be lovemaking.

I’d leaned into the fog of the drug and pretended only he and I were on that bed. I was drawing his focus to me not to get him hard to perform forher—fuckingyuck—but to make love to me.

Had my heart not squeezed and spasmed and clenched so hard it stole my breath, I might have been able to believe the lie.

But I hadn’t. I’d suffered and endured.

Just as Rush had.

His mind hadn’t remembered me, but some part of him surely had. Even free of its usual focus, his eyes found me over and over and over again.

Perhaps I offered him at least some small part of the salvation he fought to secure for others.

I waited until Ivar and Braque had dragged him away. By then Rush had been largely unresponsive, clutching on to me like I was a raft and he shipwrecked in a churning ocean. Completely naked, the soldier and drake who never faltered stumbled as they led him from the room.

I’d tried to follow, but my feet were similarly clumsy. Next thing I knew, I found myself in another bed, the faint murmurings of Octavia Lily Rose filtering through my haze.

Feeling only the presence of the timid scaless, I’d soon fallen into a fevered, restless sleep. Rush’s face, blank and broken, had haunted me until my dreams had filled with him making love to the queen, all the while whispering my name to her.

I blinked away the vestiges of my nightmares, the fever gone but for a dull thump of a headache, and strained to listen. It was too still, my instincts warned me, and I was careful not to move.

Gauzy curtains were drawn around my bed—Octavia’s doing, I guessed. I’d chosen a bed near a corner of the vast communal chamber. There was room around it to advance from all sides, which was far from ideal, but if necessary I could back myself into the corner and defend myself from fewer directions. Behind, double doors led out onto a giant balcony, but they wouldn’t open to me. It had been one of the firstthings I’d tried. Octavia had claimed the bed beside mine.

I listened and waited. When no significant sound came, I slid silently up my pillows. The hushed snores of twenty-one other sleeping women filled the space.

Despite the evidence, my body refused to believe I was safe. Soundlessly, I reached for the sheath I’d strapped to my thigh. It bound my skin uncomfortably, but when every damn person but me could wield magic, a dagger beneath my pillow still felt too exposed. In truth, every defense for magic I had seemed insufficient.

I focused on my breathing, attempting to release the squeezing pressure in my head, until I finally heard something. A faint scuff. So quiet it might have been imagined.

Sliding the dagger out from under the sheets, I gripped it and slowly crawled to the center of the bed. My covers were soft and decadent, and didn’t crinkle.

Crouched on one knee, I was facing the direction of Octavia’s bed when a movement beside my pillow caught my eye. The curtain was fluttering.

Something slid … somewhere, sounding like a soothing, long-drawn caress.

And then I saw it. A dark rope as thick as my arm coiling across my pillow.

From the darkness, the rope coalesced into parts: first, a flat head. A slim tongue darted out, tasting the air.

A snake.

Winding toward me across my bed. Where I’d been sleeping only moments before.

The remnants of the drug and my fevered sleep vanished as my focus trained on my attacker.

The snakes in Embermere were unfamiliar to me. I had no idea how this one might strike, only that it would. How close would it draw before it lunged for me?

If only I’d bunched the covers in front of me, I could have thrown them over its head to protect myself from its bite?—

The snake struck. So fast my thoughts didn’t register the attack before my body was moving.

I dipped to the right, lunged forward onto my other knee, and reached for the snake with my free hand.

I managed to grab it, but too far from the head. Fangs bared, it jerked them toward me, writhing as it tried to shake my hold.

Despite all my training, I gasped, then whipped the snake at the bed, its head bouncing against it. Again and again, I whipped the upper half of the snake onto the too-soft bed that caused it no real damage.

Its body undulated as it thrashed, so I kept hitting it against the bed. Eventually it would tire, and then I’d stab it.

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