Page 92 of Fae Reckoning

I cautioned.

“It’s not working!” Reed grunted, his face puce from effort.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Einar’s on his way to deal with them. We should go.”

Reed let out a breath. “I can’t. My magic requiresme to be with the corral for it to work.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. “Well … maybe they won’t follow once we leave the room?”

Einar said while Ivar added aloud, “They’ll follow. Talisa would have made certain of it.”

Reed’s eyes squinted from strain. “I’ll stay.”

“No, Reed—” I started.

Hiroshi interrupted, “I’ll remain with him.” The drake withdrew a second sword and stalked to Reed’s side. “He may need protection.”

“But…” I said.But what?We couldn’t very well focus on the false queen when we had a battalion of her undead chasing after us.

“We’ll stay too,” Azariah offered.

“Az?” I asked, unable to conceal my surprise. “Are you sure?”

His tail twitched nervously, his nostrils quivered, and his thick lower lip visibly shook. “I’m sure.” His voice squeaked before he cleared his throat. “Bertram will stay with me.”

Bolt and Ivar’s horse clopped closer.

“And Bolt and Niran, too.”

“I’m going with you,” Xeno told me.

“And me too, obviously,” Rush added right away.

“And me!” Zafi’s squeaky voice announced from the air behind me.

In less than a minute, my friends had divided themselves up: Hiroshi, Roan, Azariah, Bertram, Bolt, and Niran—Ivar’s steed, apparently—would remain withReed to keep the undead locked in their pen. Rush, Xeno, Ryder, West, Pru, Edsel, Zafi, and Ivar would come with me.

“We’ll join you as soon as we can,” Hiroshi said, but the somber way he was studying his brothers suggested he was considering the very real possibility that he might never see any of us again.

With the handle of his battleax, Roan tapped the bridle around his head. “Give ’er the furious fire of an entire clan of angry dragons for us, won’t ya? You especially, lass. Make her regret ever hurting a single essence.”

“You got it, Roan,” I said with a confidence that wasn’t exactly warranted but that I needed to do whatever came next. “For Rompa-Romp and everyone else.”

“We’ll see you very soon,” Rush told those we were leaving behind with a heavy solemness that sounded too much like a promise I wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep.

From beyond the double doors on the opposite side of the hall, heavy, shaking footfalls suddenly thudded. Brutish, rumbling shouts, “For queenie,” attached them to pygmy ogres.

With a foreboding grimace, I drew a pair ofsais. They weren’t my personal blades from Nightguard, but they were better than Dougal’s dagger or anything else I’d gotten my hands on since Talisa first ordered my weapons confiscated.

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