Page 45 of Fae Crown

I felt more than saw more monsters lunge for me.

Blade first, I ducked low and spun. My dagger connected with flesh while I felt the rushingair of a swipe precisely where my face had been moments before.

I cut through tissue, a satisfying whine telling me I’d caused real damage.

Squinting out at the others, I couldn’t make out a damn thing beyond a mass of too-sharp, too-deadly appendages, heads, and their teeth crowding me.

It was too bright! Unbearably so. By scalding sunshine, how was I supposed to see anything?

But of course, that was the point. The queen had stacked every odd in her favor so I wouldn’t emerge from this one. She’d gone for overkill so there’d be no chance of my survival.

Whatever loophole in the protective magic she’d discovered, she was seizing the shit out of the opportunity.

Perhaps it was mere instinct, but I felt the momentum of a paw before it connected. I shot to standing, jumping as I moved—straight into a mass of gelatinous tentacles. They wove across my chest in a tight band, yanking me down, while the blur of furry paw, larger than my head, batted at empty space.

The tentacles suctioned onto my bare skin, hooking barbs into me much as the umbracs had. Before it could get any worse, and without bracing myself for the inevitable sting, I hacked at a couple of the tentacles. A high-pitched screech swallowed my pained groan, and I wrenched free of their grip.

Blindly, I sliced in a wide arc around me, cutting a few of my attackers, but scarcely pushing any of themback. They weren’t afraid of the damage I might cause them. And why should they be, when I was so outnumbered and outmatched it was as if I were back in the Gladius Probatio, facing off with the fifty-four other contestants all at once?

Another ruthlessly sharp claw or tooth or barb cut through the open wound on my calf, and I stumbled to one knee. Though nothing appeared to support my weight, when I landed it was onto an invisible surface that cracked painfully against my kneecap.

Again, thanks to those instincts I’d honed over endless hours, first of Zako’s training and later my own, I yanked my head back a split second before what sounded like a whip but was probably a tail or tentacle or some other killer-beast part cracked through the space I’d only just occupied.

Overwhelmed, overcome, and with absolutely nowhere to retreat to, I screamed out my frustration at the top of my lungs while I struck with both arms at whatever attacked. There wasn’t so much as a single square foot of safe space—and a seemingly endless onslaught of monsters with a taste for Elowyn meat.

I grabbed and snapped limbs, sliced and diced whatever reached for me. But for every good blow I landed, they hit me with three, four, five times as many. I felt slick with blood, more of me burning with cuts than not.

Just as discouraging, the light had only grown stronger. My eyes watered from the strain of staring into it, trying to anticipate any movement that wouldhelp me prevent yet one more cut. They smarted too from the sweat that dripped into my eyes.

By sunshine, every muscle burned. Every cut throbbed and pulled.

Some surge of force made the light pulse even brighter, the monsters lunging for me all at once.

I had to close my eyes.

Instantly, my heart sounded louder still. The creatures nearer, I heard the drip of heavy saliva a moment before it plopped onto the crown of my head to slide down the back of it.

I was out of options.

In seconds, I’d also be out of time.

However she’d managed it, the queen had found the way to murder me while I competed in the trials.

In a desperate attempt to protect my head and vital organs, I curled in on myself, clutching the blade to my chest. Useless. A dagger was no defense against this. A dozen daggers would have been little better. I would need an army to walk back out of here alive, assuming I could even find the doorway again.

Blows rained down on me from all directions. Though my thighs were pulled tight to my chest, something sharp raked along the side of my abdomen, cutting through my bodice like it was soft cheese and opening my flesh beneath it.

A devastated breath left me, significant enough that I heard it above the chaos beyond me.

The queen had found the way to infiltrate the light withher darkness.

My thoughts were scattered, I could tell. The attacks and pain were coming from too many places at once. I couldn’t focus.

But there was one last thing to try. One last chance to survive. I had to do it.

As I’d done in the Sorumbra when we’d faced the umbracs, I sought the aid of the land.

Only here, wherever this was … apparently there was no land.

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