Page 57 of Fae Crown

“You mean to tell us…” Ry started, paused apparently to get his anger under control, then finished with, “You had to do it with the other females too?”

By dragonfire, I didn’t think I could say it aloud. Couldn’t admit to my greatest shame.

But they read my response on my face anyway.

While Ry and West reeled some more, Hiro smiled sadly at me and said, “Nothing is ever broken that can’t be fixed.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with him.

“We’ll get through it,” he added. “Together. Always together.”

Unless we’re apart. But I’d already upset them enough, I didn’t want to reveal exactly how difficult it was to endure what I had alone.

“So how’d you keep Elowyn from murdering the whole lot of them?” Ryder asked.

“Yeah,” West added. “Was the pain too great for her to move or something?”

“That’d be the only explanation,” Ryder answered. “No way would she not intervene somehow.”

How did they know I’d found myself unexpectedly reliant on her? That I’d found myself curled around her in the queen’s bed as if she were a raft in the middle of the ocean?

“She asked to joinherin the bed … with me.”

When I heard the words outside of myself, they seemed like they must be untrue. Like life wouldn’t ask me to shoulder a burden so awful.

Ry and West looked at each other yet again before Hiro asked, “Rush, why does it sound like you have no idea who Elowyn is to you?”

There it was again. That echo of something lost.

“Because he doesn’t,” Ry said on a stunned exhale.

Once more, a cool breeze unfurled across my skin,tracing the path of the endless vines that cursed me to reveal my emotions whether I wanted to or not.

“What in dragon’s veins did she do to you?” West breathed.Sheagain referred to the queen.

“Rush,” Hiro said. “Elowyn is?—”

“Don’t say it,” Ryder interjected urgently. “Not here.”

Hiro frowned at him. “I wasn’t going to.” His stare returned to mine.

I felt myself lean forward so as to catch every word he was about to say.

“Remember Donovan and Rylea from Leantos? We met them?—”

“At the gathering of clans four years ago,” I finished.

Donovan and Rylea were mates. That rare form of magic that only graced about one fae for every dozen. Donovan and Rylea had scarcely wanted to stand apart from each other, so strong was their bond.

Hiro nodded encouragingly.

“You’re saying,” I started before trailing off. “You’re saying Elowyn and I are … like them?”

Unwavering, Hiro answered. “Yes.”

My jaw locked before I got it to say, “How could I not know?”

Before any of them could inform me, I growled, “Interference. Braque,” I practically spat his name. I’d see the simpering smile ripped from the man’s jowls.

---