Page 121 of Fae Reckoning

Elowyn reached for my lips again, and just as I was about to give in to the lure of her and our joined power to end this, the monsters shrieked—their nightmarish cries echoed into the mirrors this time. Their arms stretched forward and bulged. Their thighs grew larger too, pulling against their bindings that appeared to be made from the same shadow that had conjured them. Their mouths opened impossibly wider, locking open, and their screams rippled along the mirrors at their backs. In unison, the monsters took one gargantuan step.

My breath stuttered.

They took another.

I had to kiss Elowyn! Before they could bite off any more heads. We had to merge our power again to end the mirror bastards with our light.

But I delayed—just a few fucking, miserable seconds, needing to see the fate of those who’d stood at my side for long decades secured.

Several things happened at once—too quickly.

Lennox appeared, a dagger raised against Elowyn. Liquid smoked from the edge of his blade, a telltale sign of sängmortarán poison, rarely used in open attack since it was so vicious that it betrayed its nature.

She jerked her head around toward the new danger, reaching for her own weapons belt. I released a hand from under Elowyn and pulled one of my throwing knives. Lennox glanced away for a split second, right as I buried my throwing knife deep into his chest. Then I followed where his attention had gone. Jolanda had been yelling at him—not to attack us, it seemed. Her eyes widened in horror at the blade protruding from her son.

A sizable serpunta, a male, based on the nubs of horns to either side of his head, bared fangs, dripping with poison nearly as lethal as the sängmortarán’s, leapt and sank them into Lennox’s thigh. Lennox’s eyes rolled back.

Xeno’s dragon stomped into my line of sight, bellowing loudly enough to vibrate the ceiling, raining down more plaster.

A deep, masculine scream had my attention whipping the other way, scanning for more danger. I couldn’t very well kiss Elowyn if someone else was going to try to stab her while I couldn’t see beyond our light.

Hiroshi, Ryder, West, Roan, and Reed linked arms, forming a wall against the monsters’ advance, standing between them and us.

“No,” slipped from my lips. My arms shuddered around Elowyn.

“No,” she whispered.

Our friends, the goblins, the parvnits, so many creatures … they snarled and grunted and beamed what magic they could.

“Come on, Rush,” Elowyn urged on a hitched breath. “We’ve gotta do more.”

I started to turn my face back to hers?—

A monster reached two meaty arms toward West.

With Elowyn in my embrace, I started moving toward West, stepping over Dashiell’s legs, or maybe someone else’s; I didn’t glance down.

Hiroshi freed his arm from Reed’s to lunge in front of our brother.

But Ryder was already there.

He leapt in front of West just as the monster’s arms would have closed around him.

The monster’s hands clamped on to Ryder instead, gripping his shoulders so hard that his leathers, hardy material from the wompa tree, punctured around the fingers of swirling, roiling silver darkness.

Ry had the chance only to grunt in pain before the monster was tossingmy fucking brotherover his head and into the mirror.

I skidded to a stop a step before barreling into the others, my cry of despair melding with theirs.

Ryder’s wide eyes and mouth were there one moment, in the mirror behind a line of monsters, and the next … he shrank to the size of a twig, then to a dot, and then … then he was gone.

Panic, desperation, and utter devastation jumbled together as I considered what the fuck I could do to save him now.

I should have seen it coming. Really, I should have. We weren’t brothers by blood; our bond was even stronger.

As my heart spasmed, urging me toward action, something, anything, to save him?—

Hiro sidestepped the grabby hands of two other monsters and dove into the mirror after him.

---