Page 135 of Fae Reckoning

My mother was gone.

“Mom,” I whispered anyway.

She didn’t so much as twitch, her hand limp in mine.

Edsel patted me on the back again. “It’ll be painless. She’ll go in peace, free to be with yer father likeshe wants.” He didn’t ask, but I heard the question in his statement anyway. How could I not?

“There’s so much more to existence than these bodies,” he offered. “The Etherlands is a beautiful place.”

“How can you know?” I asked, my heart clenching.

“Same way we know anything.” He thudded a closed fist over his chest. Did he mean with our hearts? With faith?

I couldn’t tell exactly, but I didn’t think it mattered. Whichever he meant, he was right.

I sat for long minutes, Edsel pretending to fuss over his assorted ointments, potions, and other healing accoutrements. I memorized the curves of her brow, nose, cheeks, and lips, so much like my own, though it was hard to be sure when her face was so gaunt. Death had been vying to claim her for a very long time.

Finally, when the sun began to inch toward the horizon beyond the windows, I pressed a kiss to each temple, then to the bridge of her nose, to both cheeks.

Against a cheek I whispered, “May your memory live forever. May your essence voyage to the Etherlands.”

I considered invoking her ancestors, who were also my ancestors, but most of them were turning out to be corrupt, power-mongering shits. “May you find the mate of your heart.”

“That’s real nice, girly,” Edsel said, his own voice thicker than usual. He sniffed.

I brushed her hair, too fine, from herface, took in her face one final time, and pressed my forehead to hers.

“I love you, Mom.”

I turned on my heel and walked out without looking back, knowing Edsel would take care of her. My mother was better off wherever she was going.

Feeling the stares of the others trailing my retreat, I swung through the doors of the healing ward, daring to hope it would be the last death I’d have to mourn for a long, long while.

The shadow cast by Talisa’s legacy was shrinking by the day.

Rush and I wouldn’t cease until it was gone entirely.

41.BECAUSE I KNOW YOUR HEART

RUSH

I couldn’t resist a smile when Elowyn lifted her skirts just enough to see beneath their hem. She wiggled her bare toes, digging them into dirt. Sensing my attention, she glanced up, returning my smile with an endearing pink blush.

“Promise me when we’re king and queen we won’t let it change us,” she said softly enough that only I would hear, and not the crowd that had gathered around us in the largest clearing we could find in the forest beyond Embermere’s outskirts.

We could no longer delay our crowning—the fae needed the stability in the aftermath of our coup—but neither El nor I had wanted to do it at the palace. While few visual reminders of its previous monarchs remained, as intent as all of us had been to scour the grounds free of them, there were still too many. Better to begin our reign wholly separate from the previous,and connected to the land whose magic we sought to honor.

I took a step closer, also enjoying the coolness of the earth against the soles of my feet. I dipped my head toward hers. “You must know it’ll change us.”

Her immediate protest was so vehement that her hair slid from along her back to hang over her shoulders in silken sheets of a black so dark it shone with blue highlights. Her eyes flared with a faint glow, its violet now a constant expression of the vast power that brewed continuously inside her.

“No, Rush, no. We can’t let it.”

“I’m sorry, El, but rulingwillchange us.”

Her mouth opened again, but I swept her hair behind her shoulder. “It doesn’t mean we’ll become anything like them.”

Several weeks had passed since the deaths of the former despots of Embermere. Their names were rarely mentioned, and whenever they were, it was in a nervous hush and equally nervous glances to ensure they weren’t a curse capable of conjuring their bearers.

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