Page 54 of Fae Reckoning

She pushed away from the tree, untangling from it. Training her gaze on her feet, she asked, “Is he, ah, taken?”

“Taken?” Of course I understood what she was getting at. How could I not? But it was too cute to see her all flustered like this.

She looked at me. “Does he have a partner? A-a romantic one?”

I let my smile shine through. “Nope, he sure doesn’t.”

“Oh! Really? I would have thought someone like him would.”

He didn’t because he was waiting for me…

I ran my teeth along the inside of my lip. “I’m happy to put in a good word with him about you.”

She dipped her head for a moment, tucking her hair behind her ears. “That would be nice. Thank you, Elowyn.”

“My pleasure. Now, you’ve gotta tell me, why in a dragon’s nest do you have blood across your boobs, of all things? And are you wearingtablecloths?”

Frowning, she glanced down at herself. “Yeah. I am. We were on the run until we got here, so there was no time to fix any of it before now, and then there was Ramana… But I have to get the piercings out. I don’t want to get stuck with any reminders ofher, and I can feel my body trying to heal around them. Which is actually really weird because my body isn’t good at healing. That’s the whole problem.” Her blush receded as her shoulders slumped. “It’s why Rush has had to do whatever the queen’s asked of him for so long. Because of me. It’s all my fault.”

I blinked a few times. “There’s a whole lot to unpack there. What do you mean you have to get the piercings out? What piercings, and out of where?”

With a regretful sigh, Larissa quickly recounted the whole story: how the queen summoned her to the palace for her usual healings with Braque, how she ordered Larissa “dressed to entertain” instead, which turned out to be entirelyundressedsince I sure as shitwasn’t counting trufy feathers as fuckingattire. How Rush had charged up the stage to save her, and when the queen had ordered him to entertain instead of her, he’d refused. They’d escaped into a tunnel, where she’d nabbed the tablecloths, and they’d been on the run from the queen and her guards ever since.

When she finished her story, I had so many comments—mostly expletives—but I had to wait for my throat to loosen and my nostrils to stop flaring like sails to be able to speak. Once I did, the words came out in a stilted staccato whileI’m so gonna murder the bitchkept repeating in my mind on a loop.

Einar showed up to say, but I didn’t answer whatever it was he even meant.

Spitting madhad nothing on my levels of righteous fury. “Let’s start with the piercings. We get them out first, then Edsel can help heal you.”

Larissa drew closer. “I’d appreciate that. I think it will be easier if you pull them out than me.”

“We’ll do it fast,” I promised around the hard line of fury that was my mouth. After positioning her back to Edsel, Pru, West, and the others, and looking to see that other than Einar, Azariah, and Bertram, everyone else was in the cabin, I carefully swept aside the edge of the tablecloth.

My gasp stuck in my throat at the sight, which was the only reason I heard another tinier gasp from a couple of feet to my left. I spun my head in its direction. “Zafi,” I accused.

The little fairytskedas if annoyed at beingcaught.

“You know it’s not polite to eavesdrop, don’t you?”

She sighed with anothertsk.I could actually picture her rolling her tiny eyes despite her invisibility.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see you.”

In the next instant, there she was. Her wings buzzed in a blur behind her as she glared at me.

I arched my brow at her.

She slapped her hands against her sides. “Fine.Sooooor-rrrryyyy, okay? Is that what you want to hear? You wouldn’t have even figured out I was here if her boobs didn’t look so bad.”

As if registering what she said only after the words were out of her mouth, Zafi jerked her head toward Larissa. I did too.

Larissa smiled sadly. “It’s okay. Let’s just get this done. Now that I’ve seen how it looks, I can’t stop thinking about how much it’s going to hurt.”

I lifted the cloth to peer at her nipple again. It was red and swollen; a dark yellow pus oozed from around the metal ring. The feathers were an iridescent indigo that reflected a golden shine wherever the dappled sunlight hit. Ordinarily I would have found them stunning. Crusted with Larissa’s blood and the queen’s influence all over them, they were hideous.

“Damn her,” I spat under my breath. Then, to distract Larissa, I asked, “So, what do you mean your body doesn’t heal?”

I wiped my hands on my leathers, then gripped either side of the ring, and waited for her to look me in the eye and nod.

---