Page 22 of Fae Reckoning

“I know,” she snapped. “I get it. Totally do. I won’t try for long. Just give me three minutes. That’s it. If I can’t get them linked to me in that time, we’ll leave them—but only for now.”

Before any of us could do more objecting, stepping over bones and decaying appendages, she stalked over to the black dragon.

I was going after her before I registered that I was moving. Xeno was right behind me.

Elowyn had assured me that Xeno wasn’t going to try to interfere with our union, that she’d explained to him what I meant to her. But Xeno was a strong, objectively handsome man who seemed to be obsessed with my woman. The savage beast inside me I’d only recently discovered wanted to challenge the beast inside him. He was, after all, a changeling. Mybeast wanted to challenge his dragon and duel to the death.

I turned on him, unsure what I would do, if anything. When his stare remained fixed behind me, his eyes widening, I whirled back around.

My lungs squeezed. My stomach churned. My heart leapt into my throat.

“By the Ethers, El!” But my complaint was purposefully quiet. I wouldn’t risk interrupting her, distracting her for any reason.

My mate—my courageous, fucking incredible mate—was facing down the largest, fiercest, most formidable dragon I had ever seen.

I sent my lumoon racing over to illuminate the scene, and once it did, a shiver racked the length of my spine. Bravery was one thing, but this…

Atop the bones of dragons the queen had led us to believe were extinct, with a dragonling clinging to her back, Elowyn Xiomara Ashira, ever so obviously the fucking rightful heir to the throne of Embermere, bowed her head to the massive black dragon.

And even though I’d seen her do the exact same thing with a dragon in the throne room, my breath hitched in my chest and my heartbeat thundered.

Without conscious decision, and without wanting to hurt a dragon, but willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to save her, I drew the blade I’d given Gadiel, and my two throwing knives. Against a dragon, they might as well have been darning needles. Regardless, Iclutched them and drew as near as I dared without distressing the animal.

I waited as the dragon studied her with the huge, dark, glittering eyes of a predator.

I waited as he scented the air far above her head.

Waited while he ran his tongue across teeth so sharp and so long I feared they could crunch through my mate in a single chomp.

Waited as he peered behind him into the darkness toward the cells that imprisoned his kind.

Waited as he stared at Elowyn some more, my breath straining in my chest.

Waited and waited andfucking waited.

Xeno drew up beside me. His every muscle was so taut, their lines bulged in the dim glow of my lumoon.

Ever so slowly, as if time were of no importance, as if Elowyn hadn’t allotted herself just three minutes, and as if the queen weren’t a cruel cunt of a bitch who might at this very moment be on her way to this hellhole of a pit?—

The black dragon lowered his head, inch by torturously slow inch.

He bared his teeth. I leaned forward. So did Xeno.

He closed his lips. I waited some more.

He puffed smoke from his nostrils. I exhaled sharply.

The entire time, Elowyn held still. Resolute, graceful, empowered. Stunning as fuck. She knelt on a bare patch of dirt-covered stone, her neck exposed to thebeast above her that could kill her faster than I could intervene.

His neck was apparently the longest fucking thing in the entire Mirror World, because he was still craning it downward, closer to my love.

And then … when I couldn’t take it another second. When I bounced on the balls of my feet about to charge toward her. When Xeno bounced on his feet too…

The black dragon dipped his crested crown toward Elowyn.

His head was the length of her entire body. And yet the massive creature pressed his forehead ever so gently against hers.

8.MAGICAL IN-FUCKING-DEED

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