Page 16 of Fae Reckoning

“Maybe don’t mention her,” Larissa whispered as she peeked around the edge of the stairwell. “Be careful, Rush!”

“I promised the dragon before you,” I told the green dragon, “and I promise you too: we’ll find the way to free you all.” I bit my lip in regret as I realized it probably wasn’t the best idea to mention his predecessor when the burnt-orange dragon was almost certainly dead.

The green dragon hissed some more—again and again and fucking again. My nerves were strung tighter than a bow.

“He doesn’t look like he likes you,” Larissa added.

“Not helpful,” I told her out of the corner of my mouth. “And I wouldn’t like me either if all I’d ever known was pain and imprisonment.”

“Fair point.”

“Will you stop with all the commentary? I’m trying to focus here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

I raised my hands higher. After studying the dragon’s dark, pained eyes for several beats, I decided to do what was either extremely stupid or absolutely necessary. Slowly, as if moving too fast were the only danger here, I bowed my head to the dragon.

“By the Ethers,” Larissa wheezed, sounding more panicked than I’d ever heard her. “What are youdoing?” she whisper-shouted. “Don’t do that! The dragon’s going toeatyou!”

Indeed, the dragon very well might. I’d become stupid and stupider stew for dinner. But it was what I’d witnessed Elowyn do in the throne room. Yes, my heart had nearly given out when I’d seen her expose herself like that before an apex predator—such a senseless risk! But I’d also observed the blue dragon bow her head to my mate, something I would have struggled to believe had I not been there to see it.

“Rush,” Larissa implored. “Please don’t.”

But though my asshole clenched, and my feet seemed seconds from tearing off into the stairwell all on their own, I forced myself to keep my head down.Courage, Rush. If your mate can do it, so can you.

I wasn’t as sure as my pep talk. Elowyn was the most extraordinary fae I’d ever known.

“Rush,” Larissa pled with the start of a sob.

The dragon’s hissing ceased. I waited for several steadying breaths before I looked up at the dragon from under my lashes.

He was studying me, open curiosity seeming to dance across his eyes—a vast improvement overabout to char you to death.

My lips already parted to assure the dragon some more—and then presumably find an unlikely, miraculous way out of here for all of us—I snapped them shut as I felt Elowyn … tug on me? My tattoos flared to light as I sensed her so acutely it was as if she stood at my side. Dazed, I blinked, hardly able to keep myself in the here-and-now, aware that a very dangerous and very lethal creature stooped above me.

Larissa was saying something—but I couldn’t make out what. The dragon was maybe hissing again—or maybe it was the whooshing inside my ears.

Stumbling, I backed toward the stairwell, when a series of thunderclaps slammed into the stone and dirt around us. They shook the ground and knocked me to my ass, where I landed on hard protuberances that could only be the bones of the dead.

6.IT CAME WITH MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

ELOWYN

The scene was becoming a regrettably familiar one: we smacked against a hard floor—a painfully uneven one this time—landing in thudding heaps in a dark space that was much too small for the rapidly expanding lot of us.

I struggled to catch my breath—What is that awful smell?—while I simultaneously hastened to gain my bearings. Just because my map had led to the queen’s remote cabins the previous two times didn’t guarantee it would continue to take us to new such locations, where we might be relatively safe until she tracked us. The map was, after all, still largely unexplained, with no fathomable reason for why it had appeared on my skin, and so suddenly.

At least Bolt hadn’t landed on top of me again, and Saffron was nestled safely in my arms. The dragonling was snuffling against my chest. I ran a hand along hislegs, tail, and wings, clamped tightly to his body. Everything felt intact. Hearing several of my companions groaning, I clutched Saffron with one hand and pressed the other into the floor to push myself and my cargo to sitting—a sharp lump of something pricked my palm.

“Ow,” I moaned miserably. As if I needed any more injuries! Every part of my body, whether or not it had been shredded inside the queen’s doorway, ached with a pulsing throb. But it was possible any one of my friends might be in a worse position. Our group was so disparate in size that things could have indeed gone badly if, say, the black dragon, one of the largest I’d ever seen, had landed on hummingbird-sized Zafi.

Bending my knees so I’d touch the prickly floor as little as possible, I blinked into the darkness, hoping to make out the bodies of my fellow travelers. It wasn’t entirely dark, just much darker than the cabin where we’d last been, with its demolished roof that allowed in so much sunlight.

When more of my friends groaned, I croaked out, “Is everyone okay? Did everybody make it?”

“Can’t tell ifeveryonemade it,” Roan rumbled from somewhere. “Still tryin’ to decide if I’ve made it.” He moaned and coughed—the air was stuffy and dank, wherever we were.

“Elowyn?” came a voice that was thready, delicately hopeful.

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