Page 83 of Fae Reckoning

I asked him as his shadow, muted and soft, stretched long in front of us. The sun was rising at our backs.

Rush, who’d by now learned to read the signs of my silent communication with the dragon, asked, “Everything good?”

Warily, I nodded.

He pursed his beautiful lips, the ones I’d kissed at every opportunity whenever we stopped to rest, but said nothing. He didn’t have to. We were all surely thinking the same thing: it was too quiet, too easy.

“It’s gotta be a trap,” I breathed, as if saying it any louder might make it true.

“Yup,” said Xeno with a flex of his shoulders that told me he was contemplating a shift soon.

Danger, though we couldn’t yet see it, was close.

“There’s nothing better we can do though, right?” I asked of all of them, even though I’d asked the question many times as we’d walked, considered—and ultimately dismissed—every suggestion, no matter how farfetched.

The drakes who walked with me had trained in the military defense of their clan territories all their lives—even though, in the end, the only true enemy any of the clans had was their royal ruler. According to the drakes,the palace’s defenses were bolstered on every side, the false queen locked within them. Azariah had checked to confirm on the hour, every hour. If we wanted to get her, we had to go to her.

“Nothing but to take her head-on,” Ryder said. “There are enough of us that she can’t take us all out. Some of us’ll make it to her.”

Some of us. My throat dried instantly, and I fumbled around Saffron for the small canteen hanging from my weapons belt. Rush passed me his before I could unlatch mine.

I smiled nervously. “Thanks.” I drank but my thirst remained; what truly ailed me wasn’t something so easily quenched. I sensedhernow just as I’d sensed her before. She waited as we drew near—a spider in her web anticipating her prey, her pincers eagerly clicking together as she salivated at the meal to come.

It wasn’t until the hundreds of us in our ragtag army had crossed the bridge and the snake-infested waters of the moat beneath that she sprang her trap. With all of us in her vast gardens, which spanned a couple of square miles, the bridge drew up behind us with a quiet hiss of magic. It pulled shut with a loud clang of finality.

There was no going back now. As history would later record it, the assault on the False Blood Queen Talisa Zafira Tatiana by the Dragon Queen Elowyn Xiomara Ashira had begun.

I said, immediately tellingSaffron, “You’ll be okay, boy. Be good for Einar. He’ll take care of you.”

Saffron was in mid-protest, as I’d known he’d be no matter how many times I’d explained what was going to happen, when Einar’s claw, as big as my body, plucked the dragonling from my back—causing my friends to dive out of its way—before the dragon beat his enormous wings and rose back into the sky. Rubbing around the fresh gashes along my shoulders thanks to Saffron’s panicked grip, I frowned with the premonition that this was just the first of innumerable things I’d have to do that I didn’t want to before the sun set on this day.

Rush grabbed my hand again, brought it to his lips, met my gaze. “May the fortune of dragons be with you, my love. I look forward to embracing you once this is all over.”

Wanting desperately to say something deep enough to be lasting, or important enough to survive centuries of memory, I locked up. Sure, Zako had trained me to fight, and yes, I’d trained relentlessly, honing my skills like a blade. But this was battle—true, life-or-death battle. My opponent was worse than nightmares, and everyone I loved would be at her mercy along with me. My heart stuttered and stumbled as all I could do was hold Rush’s eyes as they swirled and shone like the moon. His tattoos lit up, and I followed their twists, turns, and thorny vines as if it might be the very last time I ever traced their path.

I knew I should say something to him—my mate, the man I’d grown to love so dearly in such a short timeI could scarcely fathom what a long life with him might be like, how magical. Likewise, I knew I should say something to our friends, and to those I didn’t know by name but who’d chosen to take the ultimate risk for what was right.

I had nothing. My throat was as barren as the outskirts.

So I put all my love into my eyes and I gazed at Rush until unshed tears blurred his handsome face. Halfway through, I blindly clutched Xeno’s hand, and squeezed until he had to know how much his friendship meant to me, until he knew I’d meant it when I’d told him I loved him too.

And then, finally, long before I was ready—because,fuck, I’d likely never in my entire life be ready for what was to come—I nodded. Just once.

That was it. In my heart, the battle had begun.

And as if the false queen sensed me as much as I did her, it was in that precise moment that arrows rained from the sky with their telltale singing whistles. The first of the many screams to come arrived, announcing the newly dawning morning to be a bloody and terrible one.

27.THE MOST DANGEROUS OF DARKNESS CONCEALED BEHIND A VENEER OF BEAUTY

ELOWYN

It took scant moments for me to realize that the countless hours I’d spent learning to fight under Zako’s tutelage were woefully insufficient preparation for a battle of this magnitude. Not only had most of the fae allied with me already led lives many times longer than mine, they’d done so in a world where one couldn’t help but sense the ever-encroaching darkness. The threat of death was like a razor continually pressed to their throats and threatening their loved ones. The fae fought with a brutal savagery I’d never before witnessed, and I’d been raised among shifters who were literally part dragon.

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