Page 12 of Fae Reckoning

“Thanks.”

Xeno met my stare as if he’d been waiting for it all his life. His eyes gleamed with intensity. “Always.”

I forced myself to smile before looking away. He was my friend—mybestfriend. I’d already explained that I loved Rush. That Rush loved me. How we were mates. When I faced Hiro and the backs of West and Ryder, however, I had to resist the urge to turn back toward my friend to assure him again that I loved him, yes, but not in that way.

“She’s awake,” Hiro finished, and I slid between the bodies of the three drakes to the bed in front of them. All I could make out were Ramana’s legs: so thin beneath a blanket they couldn’t possibly belong to an adult. They were unnervingly motionless.

Absently, I ran a hand along Saffron’s back, caressing the length of his spine, and stretched my neck away from his tongue. He wasn’t easily dissuaded, and continued to lap up the droplets of my blood while I inched closer to the bed. Once I could see around West’s back, I froze; a gasp slipped past my lips.

“Holy razor-sharp dragon claws,” Xeno breathed on a shocked exhale. Only then did I register his usual protective presence looming around me like a stone wall.

Holy razor-sharp dragon clawswas spot on. Ramana sat up in bed, her back ramrod straight. She appeared not to be moving at all, and I had to study herchest for several moments to make sure she was breathing. By sunshine,her face! I steeled myself with a kiss to those still-soft scales on the crest of Saffron’s head.

Her eyes were finally open; I instantly wished they weren’t. I had no idea what hue her irises might have ordinarily been; they were now the red of fresh blood, so dark they might have been black, her pupils and the veins that snaked across her eyeballs the same. Both her eyes glowed that same eerie shade that instantly brought to mind the queen. Her skin was sallow, its pallor accentuated with how the veins along her face meandered down her neck and across her collarbones. A blanket and dingy linen nightgown concealed the rest of her body save her hands, which lay limply atop the covers. More of those dark veins traced morbid paths across the backs of her hands, conjuring unwelcome comparisons to the glowing crimson map that would sometimes surge across my skin. Her hair hung in long, greasy strands around her bony shoulders to pool on the bed. If her hair were clean, it might have been a bright sapphire blue. At present, it was the nearly black-blue of a raven’s wing.

“This is more than the queen draining their magic,” I said in a haunted whisper, glancing at the other four fae, all females, prone in their beds. Their appearances were as unkempt and devastating as Ramana’s. At least with their eyes closed I could pretend they were sleeping.

West turned toward me. His features were so hard, so furious … and so terrified for Ramana, if the queen were to arrive the drake might just find the way to kill the woman, no matter what claim she lay to immortality. He’d hack her to pieces until either she died or he did.

“It’s so much worse,” West said, his voice breaking. His fists clenched at his sides. “Can you help her?”

I startled. “Me?”

Ryder faced me too, so that all three of Rush’s closest friends were looking at me with raw hope gleaming in their troubled eyes.

So as not to look at them—or worse, Ramana—I spun around. Roan and Reed studied me with a similar hope loosening their faces, arching their brows. I guessed that made some sense, since they’d been with me in the Sorumbra and witnessed me saving us from certain death through a connection to the land I still didn’t comprehend.

Pru had been there too. She’d barely left her granddoody’s side since their reunion; or perhaps it was the other way around and Edsel had scarcely left hers. The two goblins stood so close to each other as to share a shadow. Pru regarded me not with hope, exactly, but with faith—Edsel too, as if they believed I would find the way to save not just Ramana but every single creature in the Mirror World.

Zafi sat on Edsel’s shoulder. Her legs were crossed as she slumped over them, picking at her tiny cuticles. Her wings, however, betrayed her artful nonchalance. They kept stiffening as if of their own volition beforerelaxing.

I glanced next at Bolt and Bertram. The horse was Rush’s steed, a warrior’s steady companion. His large eyes were nervous, his head quick to jerk toward any movement. Bertram, at least, offered me an impartialwaaawaaaa, which could have meant anything. I released a nervous chuckle that caused Saffron to pause mid-lick and tilt his head to one side to better study me with those curious eyes of his. I tutted and looked away, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze.

Without looking at the beds or their occupants, I waved a hand in Ramana’s general direction. “You all can’t seriously think I know how to fixthis? Why would you thinkIcan do anything to help?”

My traitorous gaze slid up, up, and still farther up. With a clear sky as his backdrop, the black dragon met my gaze as if he understood everything I said and had been waiting for me. Was that possible? I didn’t know. After my telepathic conversation with the sapphire-blue dragon and the way Saffron seemed to comprehend what I said when it was to his advantage, I had to admit my connection to the dragons was deeper than with most.

“You’re looking straight at one of the reasons,” Ryder said, reminding me sharply that he, West, and Hiroshi had been in the throne room with Rush and me when dragons had surged up through the floor at the queen’s command—and I’d communed with the sapphire she-dragon.

“My connection with the dragons, whatever it is,doesn’t help me dismantle the queen’s magic,” I argued while the black dragon’s eyes continued to hold mine.

“How do you know that?” West asked, his voice thready with his hope. “I’ve never in my whole life seen someone do what you do.”

Xeno stepped closer so that now he and I shared a shadow too, and said, “Neither have I, and I grew up where all we have is dragons.”

Though surely nothing about our current predicament was my friend’s fault, I glared at him as if he were betraying me by taking their side. I quickly recalled how Malessa had allowed Dougal and his men to take me from my then-home against my will, and how Xeno and Saffron had been the only ones who’d protested. Xeno had taken an arrow to the chest, practically the heart, in my defense.

I dropped the glare and scowled instead. “What does my … whatever … to the dragons have to do with the queen draining others of their power and presumably keeping it for herself?” I asked of everyone while the black dragon chuffed, causing Zafi to squeal and jump—before slumping back into her affectedI’m totally relaxedvibe.

“It’s not just the dragons,” Ryder said. “It’s the map too.”

I bit my lip. That one was a bit harder to dismiss.

“Your map brought us here,” Ryder added though they all already knew it. “To Ramana and the others. And before you used the map to find Odelia.”

Clearly they’d been talking amongthemselves when I hadn’t been privy to their conversations. Edsel had forced me to rest to better continue my healing, and even now I sensed his disapproval from the threshold, tracing the fresh cuts upon my face.

“The land saved ya from death in the arena, lassie,” Roan said. “And in the Sorumbra it saved us all.”

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