Page 96 of Fae Reckoning

In my mind’s eye, I pictured myself expelling her with a hard shove.

She grunted and physically slid back several feet. Her eyes were wide.

My lips itched to smile at my small victory, but I wouldn’t risk betraying the meager advantage I currently had.

She was quick to hide her dismay. “Someone’s been teaching you some tricks, I see. Ivar, I’m certain.”

Yeah, sure … ‘cause it was impossible to believe I might figure something out on my own.

“Ivar, my queen?” Braque asked.

Talisa’s nostrils flared delicately in irritation at being interrupted. “Yes, Braque,” she answered without turning. “Ivar has betrayed me.”

“I always knew he wasn’t to be trusted,” Braquesaid with a triumphant smirk Talisa missed. The plump alchemist was probably already fantasizing about becoming his queen’s one and only bestie.

“Ivar betrayed you only because he found out you’d betrayed him.” And why was I defending Ivar? A few days of good behavior didn’t make up for his long list of wrongs, including standing by while Talisa forced Rush to her bed.Damn, now I wished I could take what I said back.

“I’m the queen of Embermere,” Talisa simply stated. “I do what must be done for the greater good. I don’t need to explain myself or my actions to anyone, least of all you.”

“That’s right, my queen,” purred Braque with best-friend-stars in his eyes.

“You don’t have any true friends,” I told her. “Only people and creatures who are terrified of you.”

“That is how it should be. That is how a monarch is supposed to rule. We don’t need friends. We need only power, and of that I have more than I’ll ever need, even with you cutting off some of my supply. Oh yes, I know about your little escapades. You’ve stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong, freeing my … sisters.” Her mouth contorted into sour lines. “I don’t need them anymore though.”

With annoyingly slow, artful steps, she closed the distance between us. I could feel her breath on my face, and despite my desire not to reveal my fear, my pulse bounced in my throat so that even I could feel it.

Her glinting eyes, so much like those of a predatorydragon, trailed my face and landed on the jumping vein that betrayed my flagging courage. She grinned, skimmed a finger along my collarbone, my shoulders, along my back as she circled me, then returned to stand before me. With a manicured fingertip, she tapped my collarbone hard. Despite my leathers and all the steel I wielded, I felt naked before her voracious stare.

In that moment, she was the predator.

I was her prey.

In the next, my sais were in my hands.

I sliced with one across her neck.

Her eyes bulged in shock.

With the second blade, I slashed from the other direction.

Blood spurted from the deep cut opening her throat, spraying onto my face. I held her gawping eyes as the blood pumped from her body to drip down mine.

“No,” Braque rasped.

Several of her guards gasped.

The false queen sagged, then crumpled with a crinkle of gossamer skirts. Her head slammed against the floor, her golden crown clinking against the glass. Serpents banged against its other side with their fangs bared. Their teeth deflected harmlessly off the glass. Her crown remained affixed to her head with regal perfection while bright, beautiful, vividly scarlet blood pooled under her head, gradually concealing the vipers and their stunted attacks.

She deserved a death so much more brutal, as hideous as those she’d herself delivered over and over,time and time again. But Talisa was too great a danger not to take her out however I could.

I leaned over her. “Oh. Yeah. Your magic doesn’t work on me anymore. I wasn’t lying when I said the land has chosen me to be the queen.”

“No!” Braque shrieked. His shuffling footsteps raced toward us.

I didn’t recall exactly what was said in moments of death, but I got close enough for my purposes. “May your essence burn forever in the Igneuslands. May you experience every second of pain you’ve ever caused anyone else. May you suffer until you understand exactly how evil you really are.”

I wanted to kick her, stab her, to slice her up until her body was a bloody, pulpy mess that looked nothing like my aunt, the woman who resembled me so closely.

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