Page 120 of Fae Reckoning

My dick throbbed, pushing against my leathers, straining to break free and feel her from the inside. And even then it might not be enough. I needed more, more, more, and fucking more!

But…

But … there was something pressing we had to do beyond the two of us. Wasn’t there? Dazed, my eyelids fluttered open.

I couldn’t see her face, and by the Ethers Ineededto gaze upon her face. Her beauty was like magic, like the enchanting, melodic song of woodland fairies, the tinkling, burbling of a brook that delivered instant satisfaction.

Where I should have gazed upon her visage, there was only light. So much light, I couldn’t even discern her eyes, and I had to see her eyes.

She glowed.

I glowed.

There seemed only to be our combined light.

It shone as brightly as if the sun and moon had joined together as one.

My tattoos were alive, shining along the entire length of my skin. Beneath my leathers, my skin tingled as they arced over my body.

And Elowyn … my love. I sensed her body as easily as I felt my own. Her skin was covered in a sign of her connection to the dragons. With the other few, selectscaledfae in our history, the glowing dragons’ scales had faded after their initial bond to the magical creatures. But not with Elowyn. Her skin pulsed with luminescent scales—a mixture of Saffron’s golden yellow, Einar’s black, and a sapphire-blue from the she-dragon. And lighter, softer, almost imperceptible, green and burnt-orange scales glowed too. They blazed along her skin and mine, from the dragons I’d bowed to in the dungeons, I realized with a burst of shock.

She and I were so intrinsically bonded that what dragons I’d attempted to connect to had also connected with her.

Then there was my handprint pulsing between her breasts, above the scar I’d sliced into her precious skin that she called the Kiss of Death, all concealed beneath her own fighting leathers. All trace of the map that signaled Talisa’s abuse of the fae was absent.

Joined in our embrace, Elowyn and I shone.

It was magic.Shewas magic.

Our combined power would bring down the darkness that lingered beyond Talisa’s and Braque’s deaths. My clever El, she’d known our greatest power lay in our mate bond. In our love. She’d guided me through it. I didn’t dare loosen my hold on her by so much as afraction. With our chests pressed together, our hearts beating against each other, I craned my neck to one side to be able to make out anything beyond our glow. Our diffuse light made the room hazy, like looking through wispy clouds, but I could see enough to make sense of our circumstances.

The monsters were still there—shit. My heart stuttered, as did El’s.

They currently lurked at the edge of the mirrors that had spawned them though. Okay, okay, that was progress. The dragons joined the warriors and some courtiers in pushing them back amid pulse after pulse of Elowyn’s and my light.

With their physical weapons and dragon breath useless, the fae beamed their own power—substantial certainly, though compared to ours they were like sparks from a bonfire while we were the raging flames.

Still, fae glowed and pulsed and pushed. The mirror monsters backed up, more of their kind lined up within some of the mirrors as if still anticipating joining the others in the fight.

“It’s working,” Ry yelled behind us. He laughed, a bit manically. “It’s fucking working.”

“Don’t ya let up now,” Roan added, also from wherever Ryder was. “Keep going.”

Buoyancy burbled up my chest.Hope, is what it was. I laughed and bounced El in my arms, her ass landing heavily in my cupped hands each time. Faith burgeoned, renewed. We were doing this. Talisa wasalready dead, and all we needed to do now was finish off the last pieces of her.

Elowyn’s responding laughter was a balm that soothed my battered heart. Her lips were lowering back to mine when an instinct I’d honed during countless hours of training and battles niggled at my nape. Her fingers, clasped around it, only made the instinct scream louder.

My mouth whispered along hers as I turned my head past them to search for my brothers.

An even greater number of monsters hunched menacingly at our backs. My brothers and our friends were trying to protect us with their insufficient defenses. Their own magic glowed brightly. My brothers, they were incredible, their loyalty and companionship unrivaled.

But the monsters … our combined magic was forcing the darkness from their bodies and into the mirrors at their backs. Like vines whose thorns would stick to flesh at the barest graze of it, threads of black tugged on their roiling, silver bodies, not letting go.

Reed had an arrow sticking through his shoulder he hadn’t stopped to break off, yet he joined Hiroshi, West, Ryder, and Roan in beaming light at the monsters. Ivar stood beside them, uncorking potions, sniffing them, and then hurling select ones at the mirrors, which swallowed them up. I couldn’t decide if they were helping or not, but Ivar kept going, pulling potions as quickly as his hands could handle without risking dropping the thin, delicate glass vials. Dozens ofgoblins, led by Pru and Edsel, formed a line to one side of our friends, adding their own light, mostly orange or green, to the fray. Parvnits shot beams of their magic into the mirrors like little jagged bolts of lightning in all colors. And from the other side, I thought I recognized the bellow of Xeno’s dragon. From beyond the walls, thunder rumbled in what I’d begun to understand was Einar fighting with us.

More creatures and fae than I could take the time to recognize battled with us, erasing senseless divisions Talisa had done her best to carve out between us. We weren’t foes standing on opposite sides of a conflict, but fae joined against a common enemy.

And yet my instincts squirmed.

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