Page 28 of Fae Reckoning

My friends held hands, arms, feet, legs, whatever appendages they could reach. They weren’t letting go.Good.

“I’m so relieved Her Majesty is here,” Braque called out loudly from just beside the stairwell as he pressed both hands to his waist around his potions satchel and started picking his way toward his precious queen. His dainty pointed shoes crunched on bone shards, and he cringed as he walked. Perhaps a hundred feet separated him from the queen.

Her glare, however, shortened the distance to nothing. “What are you doing here?”

And by scorching sunshine, holy shit … she dismounted in a swirl of skirts, her heel catching on Azariah’s wing. He gasped in pain. Her boobs nearly popped out of a gown that wasn’t made for riding, or for much beyond looking like a wicked seductress atop a throne, for that matter, but then she was on her feet, smoothing the skirts of her dress. The gold of her crown was warm in the glow of the lumoons. As usual, it was affixed perfectly in place.

While his queen was distracted, Ivar’s stare zeroed in on me.Fabulous.

Her eyes narrowed, the queen stalked evenly toward Braque, as if she walked atop the polished floor of her Hall of Mirrors instead of dirt and stone littered with carcasses—magic, undoubtedly. The hem of her dress didn’t so much as hitch as it skimmed above the detritus. Braque’s own approach slowed. His cheektwitched as if he were suddenly unsure of his precious monarch. Nervous, even.

“Why did you bring guards down here?” she barked. “You know this place is a secret. Now I’ll have to”—she skirted a glance at the men—“deal with them.”

Coming from her lips, painted in a hue that appeared nearly black in this light,deal with themsounded exactly likekill them.

Several of the guards took a step back toward the stairwell.

Pru was still standing next to me. So softly that I prayed Ivar wouldn’t hear, I murmured to her, “Link with Azariah.”

Her eyes widened as she looked up at me. Then she nodded. When I next blinked, she was gone. As a goblin, if she didn’t want anyone to notice where she was, they wouldn’t. I prayed her ability to vanish amid her surroundings would be enough to protect her.

Ivar’s eyes narrowed in blatant suspicion. He commanded his horse toward us.

I clamped down on a sense ofRush. My map flared to a bright crimson beneath my fighting leathers so that a glow slipped from beneath them. Red lines of light traced along the backs of my hands, likely my neck too.

I slid my hand beneath the top of my leathers to a point at my sternum I recalled from Rush’s diagram. Sunshine willing, the map hadn’t altered since then. My palm was already pressing to the spot along my solar plexus—a new one to which we hadn’t yet traveled—when several things happened at once:

The queen clapped. The rope that linked me to Rush burned at its center in a flare of red magic, severing completely.

Ivar’s eyes widened in realization. He leaned over his mount to grab onto Azariah’s tail.

And the putrid dungeon that held so many dragons captive vanished.

9.SPLENDOROUS SHINY FUCKBALLS AND EVERY OUNCE OF GLORIOUS MERCY!

ELOWYN

The dungeon disappeared in a nauseating swirl. This time I lacked the luxury of falling apart. With more strength than I believed I possessed, I ignored the overwhelming sensations that implied my body was disintegrating. I focused only on three actions: bringing Rush with us, allowing the magic of the map to proceed uninterrupted, and ensuring I wasn’t going to land on the sensitive little dragonling who’d been wrapped around my back when the dungeon vanished.

The duration of our travel was at once much too short and far too long. Pru’s rope that had linked me to Rush was severed. But Rush and I were connected to each other regardless, weren’t we? Sure, our mate bond wasn’t a tangible, physical manifestation such as the rope. But it was very real nonetheless. I felt it, and Rush felt it. According to lore, mates were two parts of a greater whole. Their destinies were inextricablyintertwined.

And so I did my best to hold on to Rush and my love for him—his love for me. I envisioned myself casting my own cord to my beloved. Our connection was greater than the physical world: itprecededit. We were forever bound, his essence tied to mine. All Rush had to do was know it—and hold the fuck on.

Next, my stomach heaved, and I was plummeting into darkness. I turned to my front, landing so hard my chin slammed onto the floor, snapping my teeth shut around my tongue. Pain flared with the tang of blood. I groaned. I hadn’t been able to twist completely, and I was partially lying on one side with my knee bent. I hoped to the rising sun that Saffron was all right, but I couldn’t move to check. My tongue was stinging like I’d bitten it off instead of merely clamped on it. By a dragon’s claws, I hoped I hadn’t actually caused lasting damage. I had too many wounds to keep track of without tacking on new ones. I lay there just breathing, waiting for the pain from my tongue and every joint that had gotten jolted to pass, for my wits to settle into place and the nausea to recede.

“Uuuuuuugggghhh,” a male grunted before coughing raggedly. “Please tell me we’ve never got to do that again.” It sounded like Ryder, or maybe West.

Our new surroundings were musty and dim. The smell of mildew and stale bodies suggested we’d arrived in another of the queen’s power-draining sites. When no one answered Ryder or West, I guessed the trip had been as hard on them as it had been on me. Longseconds passed before more groans and pained moans arrived, along with my renewed alarm.

Rush!I attempted to call for him, but what slipped out around my still throbbing tongue sounded more like a death rattle than his name.

“By the Ethers,” a man rasped. “My sword almost ended up in my ass.” It was Ryder, definitely Ryder. “Notthe way I intend to go.”

More groans, and then West said, “Still better than what the bitch would’ve done to you if she’d gotten her hands on you.” He grunted. “She wouldn’t have stopped till she’d managed to”—cough, cough—“turn your ass inside out. Andthenshe’d ram a sword through it.”

“Thank-s for the pr-etty picture,” Ryder croaked, his voice stronger despite the breaks in it.

“Rush,” I tried again. This time it was intelligible but too faint.

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