Page 60 of Fae Reckoning

“Or…” I looked around, pinning Ivar in an empty stare. “Or I’ll kill Ivar.”

I didn’t even bother approaching him. Ivar’s eyes didn’t blaze with fear. He saw my bluff for what it was. So long as the queen didn’t…

“Fine. Kill him,” the queen said.

When a full minute passed and I added nothing, she laughed, a cold and wicked rattle. “You don’t have the guts to do what it takes to beat me. I will find you and I will kill you. I won’t give you the chance to grow strong enough to become a threat. I’ll kill my pets myself.”

“No,” I yelled, and I wasn’t the only one.

She laughed again—like a frozen, dead branch scraping against the hard snow of a barren tundra landscape. “Don’t worry about me, my pretties. There will always be more willing subjects. But there will be none for you to steal power from. I’ll find you soon.”

“No, tell us…” I trailed off. Ramana’sbody had once more gone limp in West’s arms. Her eyes were closed, her lips sealed.

The queen, however she’d come, was gone.

Every fae she’d drained who was still alive began to tremble violently. Their extremities straightened rigidly. Their eyes clenched shut against the force spearing through them to end whatever life the queen hadn’t yet stolen from them.

19.A FORCE OF LIGHT AND JUSTICE

ELOWYN

Our communal panic was an oppressive force, discomfiting as nooses tightening around our necks. Most everyone but me bolted into immediate action. Rush and Larissa sprinted to their sister’s side while West resumed rocking her in his embrace as if she were a ragdoll, her body relaxing to drape limply over his arms. Her head dangled from her neck, her hands dragging along the ground, rustling the grass with her shaking—as if now that the queen was gone there was nothing left but a death rattle. I feared Ramana’s body might already be an empty shell. West trailed trembling fingers along her greasy hair, her hollow cheeks, her cracked lips … her closed eyelids, as if he were picturing what it would feel like never to see light behind them again.

“Stay with me,” he begged his mate in a voice I scarcely recognized as belonging to the strong warrior drake. “Don’t leave m-me again.” When he began acontinuous chant of, “Please, please don’t go,” his pain pierced my heart like a poison-tipped arrow.

Rush was bright with thorny vines of silver moonlight crawling along every inch of his exposed flesh, his eyes glowing as intensely as the sun that was about to dip below the tree line. His brows were low, his beautiful lips a devastated line, his stare jumping from me to his sister and back again. He was warring with his instincts, I suspected, the bonded part of him demanding to be at my side to protect me from the invisible threat the queen posed.

“Stay with her,” I mouthed, the commotion loud around us. Recognition registered in those glowing, swirling eyes, but his attention continued to jump from me to her. Perhaps I should go to him, to settle the bond inside him? But my feet were rooted to the spot, something I hadn’t yet identified brewing within me.

My other companions, including Zafi, who was back to being visible, huddled around Edsel, asking urgently for instructions from the healer on how to help, when I understood there was nothing that would make any real difference. The fae who’d already suffered so greatly at the queen’s hands would only have to endure a little longer, then they would be free of their mortal torment. The queen, at least, wouldn’t follow them into the Etherlands.

Absently, I caressed the length of Saffron’s back between his wings, but I had no soothing assurances. The queen wouldn’t rest until she’d used us all to fuel her newly immortal life. The little dragonling vibratedin my embrace as the others cried out their desperation and became more frantic, despondent.

The fae captives thrashed and grimaced against what appeared to be unspeakable torment. My friends’ hands flittered around their shaking bodies. Even those without hands to hold or comfort—Azariah, glued to Bertram’s side, and Bolt and Ivar’s horse, who now wore bandages around a fore- and hind-leg—edged closer, as if also seeking a way to halt the tragedy unfolding in such awful throes.

A crackle of branches and leaves drew my attention upward. Einar was craning his neck low to study the scene. His eyes, stunningly large and dark, glittered with a sadness so profound it made me wonder if he’d felt the decimation of his kind at the command of the royals of Embermere, if he’d perhaps experienced each of the fuerins’ deaths as viscerally as he was those of the fae among us now.

I asked him. At this point, anything was worth a try.

Edsel was looking at those nearest him, grimly shaking his head in a silent pronouncement, the goblin’s expression as deeply sad as the dragon’s.

Einar sighed a regretful exhale that was a gust that tickled the strands of my hair that had come free of their plait. Several others glanced up at him, the alarm they’d previously shown the giant dragon absent. Despite his size and ferocity, there was no threat to us greater than that posed by the queen.

I considered seeking a way to summon her here again. But that would only risk everyone else. If she found us, it was unlikely any of us would make it out alive.

I turned toward Xeno, who’d been the only one to remain with Ivar. He was buck naked and barefoot again, meaning he’d expected to call on his dragon. His hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles of his dominant hand bloody. One of Ivar’s eyes was newly swollen an angry pink. A cut sliced open his brow, and blood dribbled from both sides of his mouth. The snakes that wove from his abdomen, while hideously shocking to see, were calm, swaying as if awaiting the directives of their charmer. A glimpse of Hiroshi cradling one of the dying fae possibly explained why.

“Get anything helpful from him?” I asked my oldest friend.

Fury raced across Xeno’s features. “Not yet. I’m gonna shift. I’ll scorch him till he does.”

“Don’t bother. There isn’t time.”

“But—”

“There isn’t, X. Just trust me.”

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