Page 58 of Fae Reckoning

18.THE SHADOWY PALL THAT FOLLOWED US WHEREVER WE WENT

ELOWYN

I released Ivar’s head with a jerk that snapped his chin to his chest, drawing the hissing attention of the snakes that writhed from his insides—weird shit, that—before stalking hurriedly to Edsel’s side. I peered down at the fae male, who was no longer seizing against the force that had been stealing his life. His veins were unnaturally dark as they bulged beneath his skin and trailed from the corners of his eyes to fade out along his temples and cheeks. His flesh was eerily pale, as if death had taken him long before now. I laid a hand on his—icy cold.

With grim determination and a craggy scowl, Edsel leaned over the fae’s chest, searching for a pulse he might have missed, a breath … hope.

“Anything?” I asked.

He plopped back onto his butt, shaking his head. “Damn the queen,” he muttered quietly yet viciously. “Damn her.”

I sighed and glanced over my shoulder. Rush’s tattoos were as bright as starlight, his lips pressed into a fierce line as he gripped a dagger and what looked like Ivar’s cutlass. Ryder, Hiroshi, and Roan wore similar murderous expressions. And Xeno looked upon Ivar and his snakes with narrowed eyes, an expression I’d seen many times before. Xeno might not wait for me to ask before scorching the idiotic advisor.

I didn’t know what magic caused serpents to occupy Ivar’s body, but right then I was glad for the gruesome sight. Ivar could have stopped this fae’s death. He chose to let the man die. How did that make him all that different from the cold-hearted queen bitch?

“This is wrong,” spat a steely voice I hardly recognized because it was normally so gentle. Larissa knelt beside the dead man, studying him as her hands shook—from anger or grief, I couldn’t tell. She peered over at Ramana and West, who clutched his mate with white knuckles, naked fear glistening in his fevered eyes, as if the might of his will alone could keep his mate clinging to life as she was.

“She can’t do this,” Larissa continued, referring as we always did to the shadowy pall that followed us wherever we went.

Edsel grimaced. “If only she couldn’t.” He stretched his wompa legs out in front of him with a sigh that sounded too much like defeat.

Pru sat next to her granddoody and petted Saffron, who pinned me in his sights, struggling to break freeof her embrace. “Shhhh, silly little dragon boy. You’re fine with Pru. Elowyn isn’t finished yet.”

“I’m not?” I asked. The inside of my chest felt hollow.

“Well, Mistress Elowyn,are you?”

I had already opened my mouth to ask her what in sunshine she meant by that when West gurgled in shock.

“By a dragon’s horns … she opened her eyes,” he breathed, barely seeming to believe it as he stared down at her. Rush and Larissa ran toward him and their sister when West winced. “They’re … by the Ethers, her eyes … I can’t get used to them like this.”

Like thismeant her irises were red, glowing that same bloody crimson, dark veins snaking along her eyeballs.

“By the Ethers,” Larissa breathed as she gaped at their sister. “How could the queen do this to them?”

Scarlet eyes vacant, Ramana’s mouth began to move. The voice that emerged from her dry, cracked lips wasn’t hers.

“So there you are,” purred the queen.

Zafi, who’d been flying close by, vanished even though the queen wasn’t physically there. Saffron leapt from Pru’s lap, scurried the few feet separating him from me, and jumped into my arms. I received his weight with a mutedoof.

“I’ve been hoping one of them would die sooner rather than later so I could find you. Sinceyou commandeered Azariah, you’ve been remarkably difficult to locate.”

My entire spine was rigid as Saffron scrabbled up my torso as if I could save him from the specter he couldn’t see. Rush drew to my side.

“What, no answer? Who’s there?”

I looked at Rush. What the sunshine were we supposed to say? Should we answer her at all, or would it somehow give us away? His tattoos dimmed and pulsed, dimmed and pulsed, his eyes a swirl of stormy moonlight.

Einar said into my mind.

he asked sharply.

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