Page 45 of Fae Reckoning

“I’ll keep at it with all o’ them.” He flicked a finger toward the twenty dormant fae alongside us, West still curled protectively around Ramana, with Larissa at his side, intermittently staring down at her sister with open relief and adoration.

“I’ll also tend to Xeno’s wings n’ Ivar’s horse, so ye know,” he said. At the question scrawled across my face, he added, “Rush asked me to.”

“Thanks for that,” I told him. “Pru, will you please take Saffron for a bit?”

“Of course, Mis—Elowyn. Come on, you silly, goofy boy.” She opened her knobby arms to him. “Come on,” she insisted when he burrowed against my chest. “Come to Pru.” He circled on my lap, which was far too small for him to do that, then plopped downwith resolve. Even tucked against his back, his wings flared a couple of feet off to either side of my legs. He was growing more slowly than he should, but he was still growing. “Pru will give Saffron a treat…”

His cute ears perked. On the run as we’d been for so long, and out in the middle of the woods fighting for our survival, I had no idea where she’d procure said treat—perhaps from her wonderfully enchanted kit. But it did the trick. When she opened her arms wider and beckoned to him, he unfurled himself from my lap, scratched the shit out of my hands, and leapt toward her.

She almost collapsed under his weight, then settled into it with a grunt. With his arms wrapped around her shoulders and his legs around her waist, he dwarfed her. Her face, cheeks already flushed from effort, peeked out to one side of his back. A beam of sunlight filtered in through the tree canopies overhead to glitter along his scales, making them appear golden.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with him?” I asked.

“Pru is stronger than she looks.”

“I never doubt that.”

“Saffron forgets he’s not a baby anymore. Pru will help him see himself for the strong boy he is.”

The sentiment took my breath away. The sting of tears was back. “That will be so wonderful if you can manage it.” Saffron deserved so much better than he’d received since the queen ordered him snatched from his home.

The goblin craned her head around his fidgeting tomeet my eyes. “He will heal, Mistress—Elowyn. Her Majesty has tried, but she hasn’t extinguished the light in our world. There is enough of it here to fix the goofy boy.”

My throat thick, I rasped, “Thank you.”

Shehmmed. “Elowyn has a queen to end and a destiny to fulfill. On with it.”

My eyes widened, my lips parted slightly. How did she know about mydestiny? I didn’t remember telling her what the sapphire-blue dragon said. Then again, Pru herself had once told me how much goblins observed from the shadows to which the queen had relegated them. “My, Pru’s gotten very bossy.”

“Primrose has always been bossy,” Edsel grumbled from where he bent over another fae. “Drink yer water, Granddoody. Oil yer stubs. Eat yer food. Get yer rest.”

Pru only chuckled, sounding so unlike the anxious, terrified goblin I’d first met in the royal palace. “Pru isn’t bossy. Pru’sright.”

With her arms wrapped around Saffron as far as they would reach, she pivoted and headed toward her granddoody, calling to me over her shoulder, “Einar. Then Azariah. Then everything else.”

I half expected her to snap her fingers to get me moving when I skirted the long edge of the clearing, wholly cramped by the enormous black dragon, and peered up at his face. He blinked down at me with huge eyes as if he had been waiting.

14.WONDERFULLY AFFABLE IN A WORLD FULL OF JERKWADS

ELOWYN

Einar’s deep, measured voice rumbled through my thoughts.

Truly, he was a magnificent creature, and so very magical. His pitch-black scales glimmered darkly in the open clearing. His legs, which rose up beside me, were corded with strong muscles. His claws were like lethal knives?—

I’d assumed he’d been simply sunning himself, towering amid treetops.

He snorted, causing someone behind me tocheep. Coils of smoke, as broad as pythons, rose from his nostrils to fade into fluffy clouds.

I waited for more. When it didn’t arrive, I asked,

his already low voice boomed deeper.

For fuck’s sake, I felt like an ant questioning a giant.

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