Page 114 of Fae Reckoning

Then he lowered his lips and kissed her. Amid theews and other disgusted protests, it took me several moments to realize that he wasn’t actually kissing her. With his lips pressed to hers, he was chanting.

He was casting a spell, or activating one already cast!

By the time Rush and I were running toward Braque, he’d dropped Talisa’s head with a thud.

He grinned a dark, victorious smile that chilled my very blood.

Blindly, I gripped Rush’s arm.

Myriad small …chunksof dense shadow scurried from Talisa’s open mouth and severed neck. They skittered and wriggled like bugs, covered the distance between the former queen and her royal alchemist in a too-fast stream. Then they were climbing up his stupid, pompous shoes, up his bulging, stockinged calves, the damp bloody knees of his breeches, over his bulging potions satchel and along his bloated belly, chest, and jowls?—

To stream in through his parted mouth, his lips smiling around them.

35.THE FAE OF THE MIRROR WORLD ARE READY FOR PEACE

RUSH

With El’s hand clutching my arm, careful of the bare sword it held, I positioned myself in front of her. Immediately she sidestepped me so that half her body was exposed to … what, exactly?

What looked like skittering bugs skimmed the floor between Talisa’s body and Braque’s without leaving tracks or smears of blood, which was everywhere. As if they were solid, the insect-likethingsscrambled over chunks of glass and sliced-up parts of several dead snakes. Their edges, however, were undefined. Despite their dark color, they were translucent.

They were made up ofshadow—fucking shadow. It shouldn’t be possible.

My glare bored into the portly alchemist who’d clearly lost what little good sense he’d possessed. Over my shoulder, I told El, “Pleasestay behind me. It’s dark magic.” It had to be. And it was spewing from Talisa, who’d been darker than anyone, far worse in the endthan her father, King Erasmus the Bloody, whose legacy was one of devastation and the near extermination of dragonkind.

My El had battled the most powerful dark magic wielder this land had ever seen, and won—she’d kicked Talisa’s motherfucking nasty ass. My core was still shaken from the sight of Elowyn and Talisa locked in a ferocious battle of magical powers, when Talisa had spent her life mastering her abilities and stealing those of others, and my El was so new to the ways of the fae. There were a few times there when Talisa had come much too close to robbing me of my mate, a loss I didn’t think I’d be able to bear—my love for El was an integral part of my existence, my very essence.

“What … the fuck…?” Ryder muttered under his breath from where he’d appeared at my other side, pulling me from a lingering terror that served no good purpose. El had succeeded where none had before. That was all that mattered now.

Ry chewed the inside of his cheek as he joined me in staring at Braque and the little shadows squirming into his mouth, open in welcome. “That’s some nasty, crazy shit, bro. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”

“No.” My lips pressed together as the last of the not-bugs disappeared into Braque’s mouth. It had taken at most only a minute or two for whatever darkness had possessed Talisa to consume him.

The many fae gathered around gaped, glowered, or growled deep in their throats in a mixture of disbelief,disgust, and fright. Our blades, claws, and teeth were lowered as we examined the unanticipated threat in our midst. The way of the fae was one of magic, aye, and great magic at that. But not this. Whatever darkness this was, it felt foreign, wrong. We’d been taught no defense against its ilk.

“By the Ethers, Braque,” Hiroshi exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Braque’s lips sealed the shadow inside him. He turned toward my brother, who stood next to Ryder, between him and West.

Braque’s eyes, which I remembered as an unfriendly, unremarkable dark hue, darkened until the black of a deep, moonless night consumed the whites of his eyes, and what looked out from behind them was pure menace. The male I’d so disliked—but much preferred to this persona—was gone.

Holding her close, Edsel embraced Pru, who trembled in the aftermath of her dispatching her abuser. The wizened goblin granddoody called out loudly, “My gran’gobbler”—his voice hitched with evident pride—“only just finished off the evil queen. What are ye doin’ now, takin’ up her fight? Don’t ye got better sense than that? Surely ye musta been frightened of her much as the rest of us.”

“Exactly,” said a visdrake of Potesantos. His hair, usually pulled back in sleek, perfect plaits, stood here and there in tangles around his head; he’d joined the fight. “Allow the terror to end, already, Lord Braque. The fae of the Mirror World are ready for peace.”

“Peace,” Braque repeated in a voice that was too unfeeling. His lips pressed into a smug, cold sneer. “There will be nopeacccce,” he hissed, sounding so much like the many snakes in the hall that, had my eyes been closed, I might have mistaken him for one of them.

“Don’t do this,” I begged of whatever controlled him. “We want the hurting and the killing to be over?—”

Severalayes confirmed the sentiment.

“—but that doesn’t mean we won’t fight you to the death if we must.”

“Aye!” someone yelled.

He grinned, and from between his teeth, shadow writhed. “I am death,” he said in that voice so cold, so impassive, that I believed him.

Ivar stalked around a dragon, whose keen stare followed each of the advisor’s steps. He adjusted his grip on his cutlasses, which I’d returned to him, and spread his legs shoulder-width apart. Blood spattered one side of his face, and his sandy-blond hair was several shades darker and flat from the gore.

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