Page 2 of Fae Reckoning

Xeno was jerking his head left and right, presumably looking for Saffron. My still heaving chest tightened.

His shoulders relaxed as he smiled softly. “He looks okay. Just dazed. I’ll check on him in a minute. You look worse than he does.”

I chuckled grimly, and it hurt. “Thanks,” I rasped.

“Worse, but still beautiful,” he murmured, maybe just to himself. “Always so incredibly beautiful.”

Uncertain what to say to the man who wanted something from me I couldn’t give him, I pushed up onto my hands, slowly this time. “Did everyone make it?”

Varied shapes that resembled bodies were slumped across what was most definitely a dirt floor.

Xeno joined me in studying the shadowed forms. “I don’t know who all was there with us. Everything happened so fast, and I was mostly focused on you.”

I glanced at him just to smile gratefully, but got back to examining silhouettes: Hiroshi, Ryder, and West weren’t quite as large as Xeno, but the three warriors were broader and taller than Reed. The three slowly shifting shapes looked like Rush’s friends, those he considered brothers, one crouched, one sitting, the other standing, their heads pointed our way.

A male a tad taller than I bent over a squat figure with as much hair on its face as on its head. Reed and Roan, then.

With their dragon feet, the two goblins were unmistakable as they hunched their heads together. The granddoody and gran’gobbler reunited at last.

The sizable frog-like shape hunkering behind them and emitting a wobblywaawaatold me Bertram had made the trip with us. I spotted Saffron behind him, his wings outstretched as if to steady himself. If the dragonling wasn’t bounding toward me yet, then Xeno wasright, and he was dazed. I’d make my way over to him as soon as I was sure I could stand.

“Zafi?” I called out, not seeing the tiny parvnit anywhere.

A protesting moan much too loud for her size rose from the area of Bolt’s head. “I’m here,” she squawked. “By a baby dragon’s slimy phlegm, whaddyou do to us?”

If she had the energy to gripe, she was well enough.

I muttered, “That’s everyone except for…” I looked all around. Some blocky shapes lined a wall farthest from us. I glanced up. The ceiling was darker than anywhere else, its surface irregular.

“Where’s the black dragon?”

In response, the “ceiling”—which turned out not to be ceiling at all—surged upward with a mighty unfurling of muscles and wings, and broke apart the roof with a terrifying crunch that sent wood and whatever else one built a roof out of hurtling in all directions.

It was a small yet significant bit of fortune: none of us suffered injury graver than some scrapes, cuts, and splinters, even though some pieces of shrapnel had lodged in what remained of the walls that surrounded us.

The debris had settled to reveal a large room thatled into an adjacent chamber. The black dragon stood half inside, half outside the structure, his huge wings extended over our heads in lieu of a roof. Despite the veined and leathery canopy of his wings, the sun was rising, and its rays snaked around the dragon to illuminate our surroundings.

Saffron once again cradled in my arms. It was, I was beginning to comprehend, the only place he felt truly safe. The queen had ordered him taken from Nightguard as leverage against me. It was entirely my fault she’d locked him in the fae dungeon and otherwise terrorized him. But maybe Saffron didn’t realize that, or maybe it was the intention he counted. The little guy surely knew I’d do everything in my power to defend him.

I kissed the crest atop his head that marked him as a male. Still soft, it would harden as he aged. “You’re such a smart boy. You knew to get off my back before we landed.”

He part grumbled, part purred, causing me to consider if it had been sheer happenstance that I hadn’t landed on him. With Bolt on top of me, Saffron might not have survived. The constant danger had stunted the dragonling’s growth. He was nearly six months old. He should have been as large as me, and certainly more formidable, not nestled in my arms like an infant.

Xeno hummed from beside us, likely also thinking that mere chance had kept any of us from getting hurt. He ran both hands across his hair to shake offthe dust and small pieces of wood, but quickly gave up, grimacing.

“I take it you haven’t had a bath since I last saw you,” I said.

“Nope.” His smile was purposefully too big, his eyes maniacally wide. “It’s been … fragrant, crusty, and fucking itchy living in my skin.”

I glanced at the others. While it was true the black dragon’s eruption upward had pushed the worst of the roof outside the building, we were all looking varying degrees of worse for wear. Even Zafi’s acorn hat was askew as she hovered in place, her wings a blur behind her and her eyes darting in all directions to anticipate any new danger.

“I know the feeling,” I commented absently. “I haven’t felt at ease in my skin in ages.”

Xeno took a step toward me. I was already walking away. Everyone was standing now, even Bolt. I followed Ryder, West, and Hiroshi as they stalked past more of the same crates that had been stacked in the first shack in which I’d accidentally landed after traveling via the map branded across my body. I’d been so very close to death then. I hadn’t known if I’d survive.

Many of the wounds, where monsters had swiped, sliced, clawed, and taken a bite out of me, still stung, but my body was starting to respond in familiar, more graceful ways. Thank sunshine for the advanced healing of the fae now that my magic was fully unbound—and for Edsel’s constant ministrations.

Cradling Saffron to my chest as he ran a sandpaper-rough tongue along my neck, I crossed an open threshold into the other room, to where the upper part of the wall was now missing. Hiroshi and Ryder were inside, standing stock-still in front of a line of beds. All five were filled with hauntingly motionless bodies. Thin blankets marked physiques too slight to be anything but those of children—at most teenagers. I swallowed down a sudden revulsion that pushed bile up my throat. It was the identical setup employed upon my mother. The queen must be draining these children as she had Odelia.

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