Page 125 of Fae Reckoning

An automaticsorryslipped to the edge of my tongue, where I reined it back. I wouldn’t apologize for the dragons sealing the mirrors. We’d all be dead if the monsters had been allowed to keep coming at us.

Rush scrubbed at my cheekbone with his thumb, dunking it into the water to keep rubbing whatever spot clean. We’d had to empty the tub of water once already after all the gunk that had dirtied us.

I offered my own sad smile before turning back around to face forward. An artful, colorful mosaic of a brook meandering through a copse of trees covered much of one wall.

“So now what?”

Rush kicked his legs out straight, causing the water to ripple, and his cock to bob against the small of my back. “Now we sleep for a few hours. By then, the healers will have made their way through even the less urgent wounds, and everyone should be accounted for. We’ll have a complete picture of casualties and any with severe injuries. Then, maybe the dragons can help us incinerate the dead. That’ll speed things up a lot with so many dead.”

I dropped my hands to his thighs, running my fingers along his marked muscles. “I can’t help but think there was something more we could’ve done. Something that could’ve kept so many from dying.”

His arms wove around my shoulders, pressing me to his chest. “I keep wondering the same, but in the end…”

“In the end, what?”

“In the end, we did the best we could, didn’t we?”

I hesitated before nodding, my loose hair a dark cloud floating in the water around our limbs.

“Well then,” he said. “Our best is all we’ve got. So it’s gotta be enough.”

“It still doesn’t feel like enough.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

We sat like that, lost to our own thoughts for severalminutes before he leaned forward to press a kiss to the crown of my head. “You were magnificent. You absolutely scared the shit out of me. I almost thought I lost you several times. Thank the Ethers and everything holy, you’re safe. You’re here.”

He pressed me hard to his chest, kissed my head again. “Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. We all owe our lives and our freedom to you.”

Ihmmed noncommittally.

“It’s true,” he added.

Eventually I said, “If it is, then I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”

“That’s ‘cause we’re mates.” What almost sounded like happiness sang through his declaration. “You and I, we’ll be together forever now.”

“You promise?”

His thighs and abdomen clenched behind me, and I knew he was remembering how he’d promised never to forget me, only to have Braque erase his memories of me that same day.

“I promise,” he growled—feral, fierce. “You’re mine. As I am yours.”

His cock stirred against me, and I found myself wondering if it was appropriate to make love so soon after such devastating losses.

“Elowyn Xiomara Ashira, queen of Embermere and steward of the Mirror World,” he said against my hair. “I fucking love you.”

A laugh bubbled up and out of me before I could wonder if such levity was allowed. “I fucking love youtoo, Rush Vega, king of Embermere, steward of the Mirror World, and drake of Amarantos.”

I spun in his arms to look up at him, my bare, wet skin sliding against his. “Wait. How’s that work? Are you still a drake if you’re a king or…?”

“I’m still a drake too.”

I’d glanced down to find his dick thickening and lengthening. Though grief still weighed me down, I waggled my brows at him. “So, those hours we’re supposed to sleep … are we allowed to do other things with them?”

The sorrow receded slightly from his gaze. “What kind of ideas do you have? Do tell,mate.”

After the horrors we’d endured, there couldn’t be anything wrong with makinglove, could there? With celebrating what blessings remained to us? Love was what this realm needed lots more of.

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