Page 97 of Fae Crown

Run!was all that kept coming to me.Run, run, run! Fucking run!

But there was really nowhere to run to.

Perhaps the answer was not to run but to die, to offer Larissa a swift death and then deliver my own? But what kind of solution was that? And what of Elowyn? And my brothers? Of the realm I’d vowed to save before I’d understood the magnitude of that burden?

The queen rose.

Larissa’s nails dug into my shoulders as she clutched me with the same desperation as when I’d held on to Elowyn.

“The Fae Heir Trials are over,” the queen announced in a clear voice full of authority. It had been a long time since she’d been denied, I was sure of it. “Which means I can now kill you. The magic won’t…”

But I could no longer listen. I could barely stand, let alone hold up my sister.

My tattoos surged in pulses, revealing the queen, then concealing her to a fog of my light. Revealing, concealing, over and again.

All whileElowynflooded my thoughts, my memories—my heart.

The first time I ever saw her, opening the door of her chambers to me, when I thought I’d never seen anyone or anything more beautiful in my entire life. Her fighting in the arena as the commoner Zinnia with the skill of a man and the ferocity and bravery of several. Her almost dying in the coliseum before the land’s magic saved her. Her, holding my eyes as I stabbed her through the heart.

Making love with me. Telling me she loved me. Calling me hermate.

A glowing map revealing itself across her skin, perhaps a possible way to weaken the queen.

“Rush.Rush.” Larissa’s plaintive voice rammed through the onslaught of all the moments the queen had stolen from me.

My arms had gone limp around Larissa. She was trying to hold me up now. “Are you okay?”

No, I’m not okay. Not even a little fucking bit.

I relived myself leaving Elowyn’s bed to answer a summons from the queen. That fucker Braque blew a potion over me from behind. When I whirled toward him, he chanted a spell and got enough of it out before I could stop him.

And then Elowyn was gone.Poof. Everything about her … erased.

The dragons, so connected to her, had been stolen too. They’d been enduring deep beneath this very palace while I forgot their torment, even when I’d promised them I wouldn’t.

Just like I’d promised Elowyn I’d never, ever,everforget her … only to do exactly that minutes later.

Saffron arrived next. The dragonling Elowyn protected as if he were her own.

Elowyn, in the queen’s bed with me,forme, to ease my torment, as devastated and pained as I was. For her, watching me … do what I’d had to do … would have been an experience worse than enduring a slow, agonizing death.

Elowyn needs me.

Wherever that darkened doorway that swallowed her led, I’d find her.

Now, I had someplace to runto. Nay,someone.

“Rush!” Larissa said, an urgent plea.

I forced my eyes open wide. Willed myself to be in the here and now. In the clusterfuck of the present moment.

“I’ve had enough,” the queen snapped. “Braque. Kill them both. Guards, help.”

Braque was a short, roundish shape moving toward the stage through the light shining from my body. Several brawny figures emerged from the dimness beyond my light to give chase. Fuck, I hadn’t even noticed the guards’ arrival.

Dizzy, queasy, lightheaded—yet more determined than ever—I scooped my sister into my arms and bounded off the back of the stage. I wobbled so perilously I thought that might be the end for us both—but then found my footing.

I half stumbled, half ran in the opposite direction. Toward the tunnels I knew to be hidden behind a life-size painting of Erasmus, the queen’s mother, and a baby Odelia in her arms.

---