Page 37 of Fae Reckoning

he said.

I growled in my thoughts as an entire treetop came crashing down. It was bushy with full leaves and hit the other side of the clearing that was growing smaller as the dragon clogged it with tree parts. At least it was the farthest spot from the cabin.

Einar was saying as if he weren’t trying to bring down the forest with his bulk, actively making all of us down here glaringly aware of our vast differences in size and might.

I tamped down thehow?as he swooped lower as if to cut down more trees.

As calmly as I could manage, I told him,

“Mistress.”

I spun to discover Pru had snuck up on me. Her ashen face was drawn, her hands wringing her dingy frock to reveal spindly legs and knobby knees. With my wide-eyed attention on her, she amended, “Elowyn.”

I smiled at her correction. “Yes, Pru?”

“Mistress is speaking with the dragon?”

I had no idea how she’d know that, but Pru had a knack for surprising me. I nodded.

“Dragons are stubborn creatures,” she said.

I hummed. “Yeah, no kidding.”

Einar interjected.

I left out the part where the goblin had been nervous since I first met her, the queen’s threats a constant pall over her.

Einar said.

“The dragon will keep flying until he tires,” Pru was saying. She scratched Saffron under the chin, where his scales were still soft, and the dragonling closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. “Then he’ll land on all of us.” When I didn’t remark at this possibility, she added, “Pru’s heard the stories, Mistress.”

“Hmmm,” I said as I tipped my stare back to the sky, where Einar was banking for another flyby.

“It might be better to suggest a … direction,” Pru said, “than to tell him what to do.”

I faced her again. “Go on.”

As if she suspected Einar could hear her, she lowered her voice to a rough whisper. “Make him think it’s his idea.”

I nodded encouragingly. “Okay, okay … keep going.”

“We need him to land safely. But there’s no such thing as safety, not with a dragon, and not with the queen. It’s always off with our heads.”

I pursed my lips to keep from agreeing with her, pressing a kiss to Saff’s cheek instead.

She leaned forward. I crouched to meet her head-on. My knees crackled as I bent, one of my thigh muscles burning prematurely. A monster had sliced it open in the doorway. I swallowed my grimace andwaited for her to continue, making myself ignore the panicked yelps rising from the others.

“Pru thinks he could take down the trees on purpose.”

I felt my brow furrow. “What?” That was … insane.

She nodded; her limp hair barely bounced. She wrung her hands until the knuckles paled. “He could take down the trees away from the cottage. Then he can land.”

Pursing my lips, I considered. It was a dubious plan. A whole lot could go wrong with Einar intentionally ripping down trees.

I watched as he smacked an enormous wing into a tree canopy—possibly on purpose—and it snapped in half. It fell but clung to the trunk, hanging precariously from it, waiting to fall: a death trap.

“Thanks, Pru,” I told her without turning. “Good idea.” Not the best, surely not, but also not the worst.

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