Page 55 of Fae Reckoning

I yanked the ring apart. She whimpered. Zafi gasped again, her little hands flying to cover her mouth. Larissa’s knees knocked before she locked them in place.

“You okay?” I asked, still holding her stare.

“Yes,” she said, but it trembled. “Do the other one.”

I flung the piercing and feathers to the ground, and circled to her other side. “So?” I prompted.

“So I’m sick, really sick. My body doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Without Braque’s treatments…” The next came out as a whisper: “I’ll get weaker and die.”

I yanked out the second piercing. Her eyes went blank before refocusing. She sucked in a ragged breath. “I just want to get to see Ramana alive and well before I go. That’s all I ask for. And then at least Rush will be free to live his life without sacrificing for me all the time.”

“I’m sure that’s not how he feels.” After examining the second piercing, and Larissa’s blood caked on it, my flaring nostrils were back. “I’ll go get Edsel. He’s the best healer there is. Maybe he can fix you up all over.”

“Thanks, Elowyn, but no. Braque has already tried. It’s no use.”

“Hmmm,” Zafi said in a high-pitched squeak over my shoulder, and just as I was turning toward her, Edsel started barking orders loudly and urgently at Pru.

One of the dormant fae was thrashing violently. His teeth were rattling, his dirty, clumped hair bouncing.Then he clenched, every muscle going rigid, arcing his back off the ground.

I allowed the piercing to drop as I sprinted across the short distance, skidding to my knees next to Edsel with a double twinge of pain along a healing slice to my knee on one side, my shin on the other leg.

Ignoring it, I asked, “What can I do? How can I help?”

“I don’t know, dammit,” Edsel snapped. “He’s dyin’, ain’t he? And I ain’t got a blasted idea how to save ‘im.”

17.AN ASSHOLE WILLING TO STAND BY WHILE THE WORLD BURNS TO ASH

RUSH

Ivar was a loyal fucking bastard, I’d give him that. In practically anyone else, no matter their beliefs, I would have admired his level of dedication. But with him I couldn’t. At best, he’d witnessed the queen’s brutality far longer than I had. At worst, he’d partaken in it.

He sat tied to the sturdier of the two chairs we found in the sparsely furnished cabin. Ryder had been the one to bind him to it, wrapping Pru’s rope tightly enough to interrupt his circulation. Ivar’s hands were bound to the armrests, their skin swelling around the rope, unnaturally pale or mottled depending on the degree of blood flow. I relished the thought that the same effect was taking place all over his body.

Like archers nailing him with arrows, one after the other in fast succession, Ry, Hiro, Roan, and I hit him with questions about the queen. He refused to answer. So I attempted to infiltrate his thoughts. The bold fucker brazenly met my eyes, knowing full well what Iwas about to do. Within moments I understood why: I rammed into a steel door as unyielding as the one the queen kept between her mind and mine.

Hiro went next. Careful not to loosen Ry’s bindings, he transformed Ivar’s intestines into a half dozen angry, hissing snakes. The serpents were no illusion as they burst through his flesh to snap lethal fangs at the advisor. Blood and gore dripped from their bodies onto his clothing.

Hiro was the calmest among my brothers, the most levelheaded. Never once over our many years of friendship had I seen him perform a transformation even remotely this gruesome. Like the time he’d given Braque chicken legs and a beak, he tended to use his magic to comical effect. But not now, not with the male at least partially responsible for the untold suffering of an entire species that faekind was supposed to revere. Ivar likely hadn’t ordered the dragons tortured, but his unrelenting alliance with the queen meant he shared the blame.

At the sight of serpents writhing inside his abdominal cavity, Ivar went starkly pale. He gulped so that his throat bobbed, unable to conceal his dismay. Then he tore his scrutiny from the snakes and brought it up to Hiro—and didn’t say a word.

Next, Roan hovered Ivar, turned him upside down, and shook him so violently that I feared his neck would snap before we got anything useful out of him. Roan flung him to and fro, crashing him against one of the walls at considerable speed. Ivar crunched to theground in a crack of wood but didn’t even let slip a grunt of pain.

When it was Ryder’s turn to get Ivar to talk, we decided against his use of illusion magic in case it might alert the queen. As far as we knew, illusion was only forbidden on palace grounds, but the skill was rare enough that we didn’t want to risk tripping some kind of notification. So Ryder, careful of the vicious snakes, which were interested exclusively in Ivar, punched him across the face with a ferocious crack. Ivar’s lip split in a bloom of blood. I knew firsthand how hard Ry could hit. Ivar’s cheek would bruise, and a throbbing ache would be flaring in his jaw. Yet when Ryder pushed Ivar to betray the queen and any plans she had, the advisor remained stubbornly, stoically silent—the fucker.

Ry drew his arm back for a second blow, but hesitated before releasing it. “We should untie him.”

“Why in the dragon’s ass would we do that?” Roan asked gruffly.

“‘Cause beating him up when he can’t defend himself makes me feel likeher. I wanna hurt him for all he’s been part of, for helping her all the time, for licking her fucking asshole like it’s the best thing in this cursed world. But I won’t be the kind of guy who beats on innocents.”

“He’s not innocent,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, I know that. ‘Course I do. But if he could at least defend himself, then I can beat the crap out of him without feeling like a slimy shit about it. ThoughHiro, you’re gonna have to turn him back. I can’t with all the snakes.”

“It’s a good one, isn’t it?” Hiro asked, a punishing gleam to his eyes.

Ryder shuddered. “Unnerving as fuck. If it hasn’t made him break, me beating on him till he passes out probably won’t do it.”

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