Page 103 of Fae Reckoning

“What could be worse than death?” a male’s dismayed voice asked from the crowd.

“Stick around and you’ll probably see,” Ryder muttered grimly.

El continued as if they hadn’t spoken: “If you stand in my way of killing this false queen?—”

Talisa’s hands slapped the armrests of her throne with matchingcracks that silenced even the snakes and their continuous hissing. She catapulted up from her throne. “I am nofalse queen.” Her voice was a guttural, animalistic denial. The red glow was back, enveloping the stretches of her bare skin. Her neck was long, the tendons straining against the smooth skin that no longer held any sign of El’s strike.

El ignored her interruption too. “If any of you interfere … if that’s the path you choose, well, it’s the fucking wrong one, and that’s the pure truth. But if you choose it regardless, I suggest you leave now and in a hurry. If you want to join us in the fight to take her down, and that’s definitely the right choice, welcome to our army. We might be small, but we’re fucking mighty. It’s time to return the light to the Mirror World. It’s time to banish the darkness from its borders. It’s time to become the true mirror of Faerie this land was always intended to be!”

Several shouts rose to agree. Hope dared to flutter in my chest. I searched for those new allies as eagerly as Talisa did. Her eyes were sharp, like those of a raptor soaring through the skies, selecting its next meal.

When my attention skirted across Lennox Heath and some of his cronies, Selwin Hewett, Breccan, and Junius, all of them dressed for battle with weapons at their belts, I called out, “Your rank will not protect you. We fight as one whole, for the entirety of faekind. We are all equals.”

Lennox, Selwin, Breccan, and Junius scowled in unison, appearing more similar than usual with their varying skin, hair, and eye colors.

I added, “Whether we’re small as a parvnit or large as a dragon, we are all part of this land. We all deserve a land of peace and light. You’re looking at the true queen of Embermere and the Mirror World.” I glanced at El. “The land itself has chosen her. The dragons have chosen her. And if you stand against her, you stand against all of us. Every one of us inside this hall. Everyone attacking the palace’s exterior. Everyone who has the courage in their hearts to do the right thing and stand with us.”

Ryder glared at Lennox and his bully friends. “Just give us reason to kill you. Any will do.”

“Yeah,” West said, pointing with his sword at Breccan. “Pleasecome at me. I beg you.” Breccan was the one who cut off Hiroshi’s arm in the Gladius Probatio.

Talisa scoffed, but before she could respond, a scream ripped from Dashiell that seemed to tear fromhis very essence. His eyes red and glazed, he cradled the body of his king, rocking it. The bells that capped his braids tinkled with a melancholy song of the deepest loss.

“You were the one to poison my king, weren’t you?” he accused in a sharp, ragged cry. “It was no noble from court. The flare of your magic, the darkening of the sky, that was all a show, a distraction. You were never upset. It was you all along. What were you up to? Why put my king through so much pain?”

When Talisa didn’t immediately reply, he added with a sibilant hiss, “You’ve always been asssnake.”

“Hey!” protested a female who must be aserpunta, a snake changeling.

Dashiell was unapologetic. “I warned my king, many times, I did. But he saw the best in you at first, and then you held him in your thrall. Didn’t you?Didn’t you?” he shouted in hysterics. “You’ve been using your magic against him from the start. He had no chance, not even when he tried to love you, before he realized he truly couldn’t. You’re nothing like Odelia Catalina Corisande.Nothing.”

“You forget your place,attendant,” she snapped. “You overreach. You may not question me.”

“It is because of you that my king mourned his son. Because of you that Zako had to leave me to protect our king’s daughter. Now my king lies dead in my arms when he was a fae a thousand times more honorable and better than you ever stand a chance of being. Everysingle action you take is for your own interest, not that of the fae of?—”

Before Dashiell could finish his justified tirade, Talisa’s hands flashed red. In a blur of glowing crimson, her index fingers sliced the air in front of her?—

With a final chiming of his bells, Dashiell’s head toppled from his own shoulders to land morbidly in the lap of the king he hadn’t finished grieving. The bells that capped his braids silenced.

My breath stalled in my lungs. It had happened too fast and too far away.

In tacit agreement, Xeno and I urgently pushed Elowyn behind us and backed her up toward the doors. This fight wasn’t over, but if Talisa could kill so easily and with so little notice, this wasn’t the approach we needed to take.

Shuddering cries and hiccupping gasps merged with the disquieted hissing that buzzed through the hall. More thunder rolled outside, so violent it felt as if it might pierce the walls to shake us.

For once sparing us her theatrics, Talisa yelled, “Dragons! Snakes! Serpuntas, sneakles, and feethles! Guards!” She growled. “Where are my pygmy ogres and dead?” she demanded on a frown, thentskedand shook her head as if they had failed her instead of the other way around. “Great and minor nobles of the court of Embermere! It is time to fulfill your vows to me. My servants too, you are to use your powers in my defense. You are to defend my honor and my crown, as is your duty. You are to aid me in crushing theseunderhanded usurpers. It is I who is the rightful ruler of this land, chosen by its very magic, by the bloodline of King Spiro the Second of the royal elves of Faerie and his son, Prince Borromeo, founder of this realm. It is I—and only I—who have the right to wear this crown.” She tapped the pristine golden diadem that wrapped her temples. “The throne is mine and mine alone.”

My tattoos flared brightly. I begged them to retreat around my face at least so I could see properly. They obeyed instantly, receding.

The red that enveloped Talisa glowed more softly, pulsing rhythmically as if in beat with her heart. “Well?” she growled with a baring of bright teeth. “What are you waiting for? If you’re worried about them killing you, know that not only will I kill you if you betray me, but I’ll bring you back to life to serve me for as long as I live.” She grinned, those teeth appearing sharp as my blades. “And I will live forever.”

Several of our audience wheezed and choked on their breaths.

Nude but for her jewels, crown, and glow, she stalked toward us. Everyone in this damned Hall of Mirrors but she, Elowyn, Xeno, my brothers, and I seemed frozen by shock or indecision or maybe just pure, undiluted terror.

Talisa sissed louder than any snake under her command, the tendons bulging in her neck. Her steps unnaturally sinuous, she cried out as she prowled, “My defenders: may your ancestors cheer you on from the Etherlands, and may you draw first—and last—blood.”

“Run,” I barked at El as Talisa drew closer. “Run!”

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