Page 8 of Fae Reckoning

The reminder surprised me, but it was true. Or at least it felt like it was. The queen had ordered me to kill four innocents, and then suddenly a dragon, or perhaps several, was shaking the throne room as if it were theirplaything. Who or what had actually answered me, or if it had been mere timely coincidence, I didn’t know.

Please save us, I thought intently, projecting my plea outward. Of all people, I understood how private thoughts might be heard. I’d been entering the minds of others since my power first manifested when I was a boy.

If there’s a way, any way at all, please spare my sister and me. And if you can’t save both of us, then please save Larissa. And if you can reach Elowyn, wherever she is, please, by the Ethers, please, save her too.

Larissa was already racing down stairs that swept around in a tight spiral when I took the first.Step, step, step. Run, run, run. She’d breezed over the landing and entered another spiraling staircase when I caught up with her.

“We’re heading for the dungeons,” I whispered, concerned my words would carry back to the guards, whose shouts to “hurry” confirmed we couldn’t tarry.

Larissa’s shoulders twitched with surprise before they disappeared behind another turn of the stairs. “The dungeons?” she hissed. “We’ll be cornered!”

Yes, dammit, we might be. But my body urged me forward without hesitation, as if it were tuned into some instinct that bypassed the natural outcome of this path we were on.

“Just keep going,” I insisted.

Without question, Larissa took halls and stairs and turns until the last one led into the dungeon dedicatedto the humans. When Larissa lunged as if to enter the prison, I pulled her back into the stairwell.

“Down to the fae dungeon,” I told her. “We’ll have to be very quiet now.”

She grimaced but nodded, and continued down another level. The stairwell’s air grew dank and foul, the stench of unwashed, stagnant people and creatures assaulting us. I extinguished my lumoon and waited for Larissa to do the same. When she was lined up behind me, I peered around the corner that led into the fae dungeon.

The scene was similar to the last time my brothers and I had been here: dim, miserable cells lining the walls with a corridor between them large enough to be considered a courtyard had it been above ground. This time around, however, the prison guards were at their stations.

A pygmy ogre sat slumped atop a bench, leaning his back against a damp wall, so close to us that he might have scented us if the odors down here weren’t so pungent. Naked but for a loincloth, his body was as much fat as muscle. Rolls cascaded down his belly, which was round and large, protruding amply in a visceral reminder of how large the pygmy ogres’ appetites were—and how they best liked to satiate them: with meat, the bloodier and fresher the better. There was a good reason their teeth were blunt stubs designed for grinding bones. A club the size of my thigh rested against the bench within his easy reach.

A second pygmy ogre lumbered along the courtbetween the cells, his frame highlighted by the faint overhead lighting. Two of me could fit inside his body with room to spare. Larissa peeked around my shoulder and went utterly still against my back.

The footfalls of the chasing guards were faint but undeniably in pursuit. It wouldn’t be long before even the dull-minded pygmy ogres realized something was amiss. It was now or never.How fresh, I thought miserably. The threat of the queen’s wrath had been catapulting me toward desperate ideas and certain danger since I first laid eyes on her. Even twenty years ago, she’d worn her darkness like a finely embroidered cloak.

I pressed Larissa’s shoulder into the wall behind her in a silent,Stay here and don’t move, and then stalked into the prison.

It took the nearby pygmy ogre several beats to process I was there, long enough for me to notice the second guard was harassing a prisoner, jeering at some poor sod in their cell. When the seated pygmy ogre turned his large, bald head my way, I was already upon him, waiting.

He blinked heavily—and met my eyes. A grunt of surprise died on his lips before it could alert the other ogre. With as stupid as the pygmy ogres were, I took instant control of this one’s thoughts, implanting my own.

Urgently, I attempted to anticipate all facets of the upcoming scenario. What might I have forgotten?

There was surely more preparation I could do, but I couldn’t think of it. The other pygmy ogre was chanting into the cell, in a disturbingly infantile voice, a taunting, “Queenie’s gonna lemme eat you. Queenie’s gonna lemme eat you. Yum, yum, yummy, yum, yum. Queenie’s gonna lemme eat you.”

The steps of the pursuing guards had grown loud—way too close, practically upon us. Holding the ogre’s stare, dim in this light, I projected,

I released the grip my power had over his mind, and the ogre blinked groggily, dully. But, then, his kind tended to do that anyway.

Without delay, I checked that the other guard’s back was still to us, grabbed Larissa by the arm, and darted with her to crouch behind a large, load-bearing column dense with shadows. I felt the stares of inmates on us but kept my eyes on the ogres.

“Cambo!” the ogre called out on cue, grunting as hestood and picked up his club. “We got intruders on the stairs. Queenie don’t want ‘em here.”

At the mention of their preciousqueenie, Cambo lurched toward the entrance. His heavy steps shifted his giant body from side to side, rattling the stones beneath us.

“We can’t let ‘em in, no matter what,” continued the first ogre. “Queenie won’t like it. She’ll be mad.”

“I don’t want queenie mad,” Cambo said, already halfway across the prison.

“No mad queenie,” said the first. “No mad.”

“Let’s eat ‘em,” Cambo said with obvious delight. “No one hurts queenie.”

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