Page 140 of Fae Reckoning

Before I made myself pay attention to the meeting I genuinely was supposed to be listening to, I searched for Xeno’s dragon. After Edsel had healed his wings so that their capabilities were fully restored even if he’d forever sport scars from the umbrac attack, Xeno had flown nearly every day. I’d barely seen him without a grin stretching his handsome face. But lately I rarely found him in the skies. He wasn’t there today either.

With a subtle sigh—Come on, El, all you have to do is sit here and listen—I forced my focus back to Hobart,who wasstillmonologuing on the merits of allowing the humans Talisa had enslaved to remain in the Mirror World for as long as they wanted, granting them equal rights to the fae who’d been born here. Hobart was a viscount, the same snake changeling whom Eliana had sent to murder me during the Nuptialis Probatio. In the battle against Talisa and her forces, Hobart had been true to his dubious agreement to help each other, using his influence to convince the other serpuntas to side with us. Since then we’d become friendly, and then eventually trusted friends. But damn, was the male long-winded.

I glanced at Rush, found him staring blankly at a painting on the far wall of a mated pair of dragons, their wings extended, necks wrapped around each other in a gesture of love. It replaced one of Erasmus standing on the corpse of a bloody dragon. We’d given Máda the honor of burning that one.

Sensing my stare, Rush looked at me. His moonlight eyes brightened before he crossed them for a moment and stuck out his tongue.

I barked out a laugh before I could hold it back, hastening to cough into my hand to cover it up.

Pru, Ivar, and Morwenna, the white-haired parvnit, glanced at me knowingly. Hobart kept right on going.

“After what she-whom-we-do-not-name did to the humans, we owe them,” Hobart insisted, as he had many times before.

It was a sentiment I wholeheartedly agreed with,but we were doing things differently from our predecessors. Rush and I had appointed representatives of all kinds of the fae to the council, which had to agree via a majority on any significant issue. Short of it being a matter of grave urgency, Rush and I allowed the council to reach its own conclusions. While the council debated the issue, the humans got to remain in Embermere, with all their needs provided for by the crown. I figured they could debate for another year if that’s what it took.

“Aye, well said,” Azariah interjected smoothly from where he stood beside the large, round table immediately next to the dais that held our thrones. “Now, if that is all, Hobart, I have a matter of my own I’d like to bring to the council’s attention. The podralas and I would like to practice with the dragons.”

“Practice what, exactly?” Ivar asked.

Azariah tossed his expertly braided mane and fluttered his wings along Bertram’s back. As usual, the ranucu was nearby.

“Practice … whatever wepodralaswill decide to practice.” Since learning that his kind had possessed a noble name forgotten to history save for the long memories of the dragons, Azariah had latched on to it, dropping the word as courtiers did their titles.

I couldn’t help but smile as Azariah tossed his mane again and tipped up his proud head. “What we do, exactly, will remain to be seen. I now request that the council agree to my terms.”

Ivar sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands crossed over his flat stomach. “And what terms, precisely, are you asking us to agree to?”

It had taken time, but Ivar had proven to be a valuable addition to the council. Better than any of us, he knew how to facilitate happenings at court—and how to impede those who waffled toward the dark tendencies of before. When he’d relinquished Braque’s alchemical potions—powerful and dangerous—to us of his own volition, I’d understood he was ready to forge a new path.

Azariah snorted through his wide nostrils, his fluffy beard undulating. Beside him, Bertramwaawaaed amicably.

“I want us podralas to do what we want,” Azariah said.

“You alreadydodo what you want,” Ivar pointed out.

Rush’s hand reached across the space between our thrones to clasp mine. All too easily distracted when the council meeting was entering its second hour, I jolted. His smile was mischievous. He’d known exactly how dazed I was. I was used to moving, fighting, training … not sitting politely.

He squeezed my hand, leaned closer, and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

My brows lurched upward. “What? Now?” Hope drummed through my muscles.

He inched nearer. “Yes, now. We’ve been present at every meeting. Done everything required of us. Wedeserve a little private time together before tomorrow.”

Tomorrow we were leaving for our annual tour of the clan territories. It was why the council was meeting today instead of at the end of the month as it usually did. Talisa had ruled the Mirror World to the exclusive benefit of the royal court. The outskirts of Embermere had suffered deeply, and the needs of the clans and their territories had been subjugated to those of the court.

Under our rule, the clans enjoyed an independence organized beneath royal rule. That meant the clans could honor their own traditions, cultivate their own particular resources to their benefit, and develop their terrain as they saw fit. As was the theme of our rule, the clans had become abalancedpart of the kingdom as a whole.

The clans were thriving, and our yearly visit to their seats of power was our way of keeping abreast of their needs and their ways, of healing the disparate parts of our kingdom until they were back to one unified whole.

While waggling his brows, Rush urged under his breath, “We need to start celebrating our anniversary.”

I snorted a laugh, flicked a glance at Azariah and Ivar, and then at Hobart, who of course had opinions about the podrala’s request, and finally at Pru. The goblin sat on the council as representative of all her kind, but she was also the unofficial head of the council. Her big, dark eyes were onRush and me.

I uncrossed my legs and slid along my seat toward Rush. “But our anniversary isn’t until next month.”

“And are you telling me it’s too soon to start celebrating the fourth year since our mating ceremony?”

“No…”

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