Page 14 of Fae Reckoning

My affronted inhale was barely audible. That she would threaten such a magnificently magical creature was despicable. It was also not a surprise.

“No, Your Majesty,” assured Azariah’s shaky voice. “I’ll deliver us there post-haste. My magic is strong at the moment. Shall I bring Ivar too?”

I exchanged a look with Xeno that mutely said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,fuck! She can get here as fast as we did?”

“Yes,” the queen hissed. “Of course you will.”

“And his mount?”

“Azariah, I swear…” The queen’s voice faded out, as did the unisus’, his warning delivered.

Sensing our communal alarm, Saffron trembled in my arms as he attempted to burrow into my chest. My skin and muscles stung all over. The many wounds that hadn’t fully healed wept. I didn’t acknowledge their pain. I was already reaching for my link to Rush, praying I’d be able to feel him again. That no matter the distance that separated us, or whatever spell Braque had placed on him that forced him to forget me, that Rush’s love for me—our mate bond—would be stronger.

Waving my free arm in ahurry, hurrymotion, I gestured to all of them, making eye contact with the black dragon to confirm he was paying attention.

“Right the hell now—link up!”

This time, I didn’t have to remind someone to touch Bolt so he’d come along with us. In seconds, everyone,including the scary-looking Ramana and her comatose buddies, were connected to me in one way or another, directly or through someone else.

The very instant Rush responded to me, when I felt him close, as if his lips might alight on mine for a tender kiss, I opened my eyes that had closed on their own.

My skin was glowing that same eerie red I’d last seen in Ramana’s eyes.

“Hold on tight, everybody,” I muttered grimly.

Around Saffron’s body, I reached under my leathers and blindly ran my hand along my glowing skin. So long as I didn’t take us to the points along my abdomen or collarbone, we should end up someplace new—in theory.

I dragged my hand along my back until it was drawn to what felt like a significant point on the map. I pressed my palm to it. The shambles around us began to vanish?—

Along with the queen’s furious visage that hadn’t yet fully taken shape, yet was definitely there, tangible, in the cabin, in the process of solidifying.

She’d seen us.

Her bellow followed us through to wherever we were going. A dooming echo, it rang in my ears long after she and the hovel had completely vanished from view.

CHAPTER SIX: A Horrid, Dirty Little Secret of a Pit, Where I’d Be Stupid and Stupider Stew for Dinner

~ Rush ~

That intentionally induced dread, yet another weapon in the queen’s vast arsenal, didn’t abate even a little bit. If anything, it grew worse the farther from the wall Larissa and I moved. Like a large-game meat hook through the ribs, it did its damnedest to yank us back out of this horrid, dirty little secret of a pit—and oh how I would have loved to put the palace behind us, never to step foot on its accursed grounds again. Of course there was no turning back—not at this point, after the dubious choices I’d made were leading us farther down a route with no obvious escape.

With no urging from me, Larissa quickly crossed the terrifyingly narrow and unreasonably long stone bridge. Every one of my senses was on high alert, but the wall to the fae dungeon muted all sound, and I heard nothing to indicate pygmy ogres were heading our way on this side of it.

When Larissa and I finally stepped onto the perpendicular walkway carved from the bedrock, I whispered to her, “We’re going all the way down, as far as we can go. But careful, when we get there, they’ll be dragons.”

She whirled on me so fast her lumoon took a moment to catch up, casting her face in shadows until it shifted to float in front of her. “Dragons?Please tell me you’re kidding right now.”

I frowned. As if I thought there was a single thing to joke about here in the dungeons. My fingers flexing to reach for the blades I wore, I glanced in alldirections, relieved to find stillness, then looked at Larissa. “There’s no time for this. Pygmy ogres live down here.”

Her eyes widened. “Rush, what?—”

What the hell were you thinking?I guessed she was about to say. I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head.

“We’ve gotta keep moving. Down, fast, and lower your lumoon.” I softened the glow of mine too. “If they hear us…” Thewe’re fuckedwent unsaid, and that was before considering that the dragons had shaken the palace hard enough to demolish the throne room many stories above us once already.

Larissa swallowed visibly, nodded as if to steel her resolve, then faced forward. Her lumoon’s light dimmed so as to barely illuminate at all as she raced on bare, quiet feet across the walkway until rock rose on all sides to engulf it into a tunnel. She paused only a moment before continuing through it, eventually taking stairs that would lead us to the dragons.

All the way down I kept thinking how swiftly Millicent had died. How easy it was for a fae in Embermere to lose one’s life. Not only was I driving my sole surviving sister toward a dead end, but by running from the queen I’d also severed her access to Braque’s life-saving treatments. Her long-standing illness had been the entire reason my parents had given me to the queen in the first place. In exchange for my loyal service, the royal alchemist would treat my sister. There was no cure for her ailment, but with Braque’s intervention shecould live a full life with minimal discomfort. Without him…

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