Page 87 of Fae Crown

“Well? Are you just gonna look at me all night or are you gonna say something?”

“I’m thinking,” he grumbled.

“I didn’t realize you were this freaking slow at it.”

I expected irritation at my sass. But he only looked up at me with more of that earlier awe.

He rubbed his chin, scratched a callused hand over his short hair. He shook his head—more of that awe.

And finally, “Ye can save the Mirror World.”

The exhaustion that had begun abating again pushed across my body, sinking me more deeply into the bed.

“The dragons. The bloodline. The land’s magic,” Edsel muttered with constant incredulous shakes of his head. “Mate magic, even.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

But he didn’t look at me, deep in thought. “It’s how ye survived the stabbing to the heart,” he mumbled, as if partially to himself. “The scar that hasn’t healed. I’d been wondering ‘bout it.”

So much for my sole secret…

“Willing to make blood oaths with a goblin,” he went on. “And scaled, too. Chosen by the dragons. By the land.”

After all that shaking, he finally nodded. Stood. Shuffled toward the head of the bed. Took my hand when he never had before unless it was to treat a wound.

“I’ve been waiting for ye and didn’t even know it. Been wondering why I wasn’t ready to die. Why my body kept ticking past its time, and on these rickety wompa legs too.”

He patted my hand. “I’ll find my gran’gobbler and then I’ll join ye.”

“Join me for what?”

“Ain’t itobvious?”

I frowned. “If it had been, I wouldn’t’ve asked.”

“If we’re to take down the queen at long last, then ye’d better believe ye’ll need an army. We need to come at her with everything we got. Knowing her, we’ll only get the one chance, especially now that she’s been doing all that blood magic, going ‘round thinking she’s immortal.”

“Immortal,” I eked out, but it was too thready for him to hear, even standing next to me.

I tried again. “She can’t be immortal.”

“No, she can’t. No blood magic I ever heard of gives ye that. But it might come pretty damn close.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Dashiell. Apparently the queen called off the Fae Heir Trials. Said she doesn’t need heirs anymore since she’s gonna rule forever.”

While I reeled from that news and its many implications, he tapped my hand again. “I get my gran’gobbler and then we get ye an army.”

The burden of the savior role he was shoving onto me sat on my chest like a fat dragon too happy with its lot in life to ever leave me alone. I could scarcely breathe through the weight.

But I did. I managed it. And I said, “Okay. But I’m coming with you to find Pru and everyone else with her. They’re all my friends.”

He released my hand, frowning so severely he opened deep grooves beneath his cheeks. “Ye can scarcely walk.”

“You’ll need me to get through the Sorumbra.”

Hehmmphed. “Fae’ve been going into them Wilds an’ surviving them since King Spiro created the damn Mirror World.”

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