Page 7 of Fae Reckoning

“For now,” I told Larissa, my mind racing as fast as my feet. It had only just finished returning from thoughts of Elowyn.

For several crippling moments, back in the Great Salon of Delicacies, I’d felt my mate so suddenly, so intensely, that there’d been nothing but her—and an awareness of all the queen had attempted to rob from me. Now there was no time for anything beyond survival. I willed away any lingering wooziness and disorientation that realization of my mate had delivered like a blow to the back of the skull.

“Down the tunnel. Follow them! Go, go, go!” commanded a voice that was singsongy despite its curtness, signaling its speaker was from Forzantos. I recognized Arno, thecentumowho led the queen’s most dedicated guards, the ones who had the most to lose at her hands.

Boots pounded at our backs, the footfalls distorting as they wove through the winding passage to reach us.

Alarm pinching her brow, Larissa glanced back at me. Her bare toe snagged on stone and she stumbled, and I lunged to catch her, righting her quickly. “They’re going to catch us.”

“No. They aren’t.” I had no idea how, but I wouldn’t allow it. No one was taking another sister from me.No one. My tattoos, dim now, surged in a brief flare of twisted, vining light.

We passed doors on both sides and sprinted on. The doorways led into rooms in the palace proper, but I could think of only one way to lose the guards, one place they were likely never to have visited. Unless they’d ever stopped to ponder where the pygmy ogres the queen never allowed outside might live, the guards probably weren’t even aware of the prison that festered beyond the human dungeon, past the even bloodier fae dungeon.

The dragons, and the fetid cells where the queen kept them, were her closely held secret, hidden behind an illusion of Braque’s crafting. Ryder had been able to break through the alchemist’s enchantment so that he, Hiro, West, and I could walk through it.

Ryder was presently off searching for Elowyn at my behest. If he hadn’t crafted his illusion to allow me through at any time—and why would he?—I’d end up trapped in the fae dungeon. And if his magic hadn’t counteracted Braque’s in such a way as to allow Larissa through the false wall along with me—and again, why would he?—then she and I were once more ensnared.

It was an awful plan. It practically wasn’t a plan atall. But I could think of no better one, no other place to go. No other single chance at escape, not now that I’d committed us to this path.

As the floor began a steady downward slope, the guards’ swift footfalls were a monotone thumping that merged with my heart. I couldnotbe leading Larissa to her doom,I could not. I didn’t even know if Elowyn still lived, or if that dark doorway of the Nuptialis Probatio had stolen her from me forever. Whatever had awaited my mate on the other side of that threshold had been of the queen’s design, and the monarch had been trying to murder Elowyn since she first laid eyes on her.

Larissa and I zipped past a few more of the doors that lined the tunnel. The doors here were plainer, smaller, and in some cases no larger than a goblin, servant entrances into the palace’s many chambers. One was painted a dreary black that blurred as I ran on, and I wondered,Should we try one of them?

The servants, surely, were no allies of the queen. But like with the guards, she leveraged threats over all of them. As prevalent as the stories were of how terribly the queen punished nobles who disobeyed her, there were also many stories of servants who had dared to look at her wrong.

There was no telling whom we’d run into on the other side of any of these doors. Any delay could bring about our immediate capture. Downward, ever downward, at least there I knew what to expect.

Yeah, a dead end, you moron, snarked a voice of doubt, perhaps even of intelligent reason.

“Keep going,” I encouraged Larissa. “Faster.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” she muttered, her breathing heavy now. But Larissa had been as sprightly as a fawn since she was a child, playing chase with Ramana and me, who were far too old for such games save for our baby sister. The three of us had bounded across practically every inch of our family’s vast estate. With her long legs, the passing years hadn’t slowed her down.

“Good thing…” she said on a pant, her stare fixed ahead as she whipped around a bend, dipping her head as the ceiling shortened. “…the queen got a message … when she did.”

Had Ivar not rushed into the great salon at the precise moment he had, Larissa and I would be dead by now, and if we weren’t, we’d probably be wishing we were.

Whatever magic the queen had been doing lately—probably blood magic, the darkest among the fae—it had made her too fast. Not even my deer-like sister would have been able to outrun her.

“Yeah,” I grunted while ducking low. The guards’ footfalls seemed to press in on me, making my back itch as I was forced to slow my pace. At least they would have to crouch too.

“Thank the Ethers,” I said before belatedly wondering if I had true reason to be grateful. After all, I hadn’t stuck around to find outwhatIvar’s message was—and the queen had sent him after Elowyn. Did he interrupt to inform her that he’d located my mate? Hadhe found her alive … or dead, destroyed by the monsters Ivar himself had earlier recounted had ripped chunks from her beautiful body? Flesh and hair, a toenail, even? My heart thudded all the more frantically until I forced my thoughts away from Elowyn.

For a mere instant, Larissa hesitated before her lumoon zoomed up ahead, illuminating deeper into the tunnel.

“What?” I barked, quieter now that the shaft pressed in on us, though the guards would have no doubt as to where we were.

“Stairs.”

“Take them down.”

When I’d discovered the queen intended to hold the Nuptialis Probatio in the Great Salon of Delicacies, I’d explored the hidden exit we’d taken. But though I’d entered the tunnel behind the wall-sized painting that concealed it, I hadn’t traveled much of its length, assuming I’d never need it.

Butdownwas where the dungeons were. Despite obvious faltering logic, the faith that embraced me earlier—that I suspected came from my connection to my beloved—urged me forward.

Even though I had no greater plan, my faith did.

Something answered your silent prayer.

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