Page 85 of Fae Reckoning

The land didn’t react in the slightest before we were running. With my wits back about me, I gripped a dagger in either hand, my head swiveling to spot any threat. Rush and Xeno flanked me.

The remaining gardens between us and the palace featured smaller, more delicate plants, offering practically no cover. They blurred past as we leapt over the flower beds and raced across the pebbled paths that bordered them. Long seconds passed while our heads, chests, and backs were majorly exposed. Those seconds morphed into eternal minutes as we sprinted toward the relative safety of the palace. How many freaking gardens did one royal family need, for fuck’s sake?

When the stone-encased ground levels—fucking finally—loomed solid, mighty, and—sunshinealmighty—close, we surged toward them in a burst of speed. Azariah bounded ahead of us, his wings pumping in short bursts to urge his legs to go even faster.

Though I dreaded them, no well-aimed arrows rained down upon us. And no brutish, carnivorous pygmy ogres toddled out to meet us. Their attention—along with the guards’—was focused squarely on our ragtag allies behind us. So when we slipped through a servants’ entrance, I couldn’t prevent the slimy-worm unease from seizing me again. That was definitely too easy, our losses too few, our advantage too pronounced when we were attacking what amounted to a fortress behind the pretty palatial fixings, occupied by the most terrifying enemy any of us had ever encountered.

Reed pulled the door shut behind us with a quiet thud, sealing us inside what absolutely had to be a trap—but that we had to traverse regardless. Whatever danger awaited us, we had no choice but to seek it out and face it.

“There’s a tunnel this way that leads down to the dungeons,” Ryder said, guiding us through the glaringly empty kitchens. Where were the myriad servants and goblins? The palace was always teeming with them…

“Let’s hurry,” West said. “My balls are trying to run in the opposite direction on me. I don’t like the feel of this one fucking bit.”

“Neither do I,” Rush gritted out.

Then we all went silent, even Azariah, who tended to chat when he was nervous.

Quiet as we could be, we padded and clip-cloppedthrough several hallways before crossing the servants’ quarters. When still no one appeared to stop us, we stepped through a tapestry-concealed doorway set into a stone wall and emerged into a tunnel large enough to accommodate pygmy ogres. All the way, I couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes trailed our every move. I kept glancing over my shoulder only to find my friends, all appearing as uncomfortable with our unchallenged advance as I was.

It was frighteningly obvious: the false queen wanted us to go into the dungeons.But why?The dragons were contributing their power to hers, so why would she allow us to release them?

I clenched my jaw, released it, tightened it again. “Heading into the spider’s web,” I muttered quietly, sounding entirely too loud to my own ears in the empty, cavernous spaces that should have been bustling with fae resisting our attack.

28.I KNOW WHEN SOMETHIN’ AIN’T RIGHT, AND SOMETHIN’ AIN’T RIGHT

RUSH

Since I first moved into the royal palace nearly four years ago, I’d been searching for ways to escape it. I made a point of exploring every concealed tunnel I could find. Even when Talisa was still playing the part of seductive, alluring, charismatic queen, her darkness had shone through her brittle façade. I realized back then that I was a meal stuck in that very same sticky web Elowyn’s words had just conjured.

If Talisa was a spider, then she was asängmortarán. Though no bigger than my thumbnail, a sängmortarán’s venom killed its prey instantly, no matter its size, making it the deadliest arachnid in all the Mirror World.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the sängmortarán queen was herding us the way of her choosing, though I couldn’t fathom why. Logic dictated that she’d want to prevent us from dismantling her hold over her power sources. That we apparently didn’t understand herintentions had my nerves taut as a viola’s strings, and every one of my steps purposefully close to Elowyn’s. No matter what this day held for us, no matter what monster we might encounter, I wasn’t leaving her side.

I would not risk losing the mate I’d only just found. Above all else—aboveanybodyelse—I was saving her.

Elowyn followed Ryder through a tunnel. I stalked immediately behind her. When she flicked a glance over her shoulder at me, my lumoon illuminated the wariness all across her alluring face, tightening her eyes. Those eyes of hers, becoming more violet each day, were alert now, cataloging every detail. Tension I hadn’t realized I was holding released from my shoulders. Earlier, her stare had appeared dazed.

She faced forward again without so much as a smile, as if she couldn’t afford even that distraction.Good. She couldn’t.

Ryder slowed, then stopped. The lot of us piled up behind him.

“We pop out of this tunnel,” he said, “cross a single hall, and then we go into another tunnel that’ll lead us down into the dungeons.”

When Azariah squeaked under his breath as if someone had tugged on his tail, Ryder added in a reassuring tone that had to be forced, “We’re almost there. If the fortune of dragons continues with us, the palace proper will be empty this time around too. Just, let’s hurry into the next tunnel, yeah?”

“Aye,” Roan said with a grunt. “I know when somethin’ ain’t right, and somethin’ ain’t right.”

My friend’s dark beard, mustache, and eyebrows were bushier than usual, so that practically all I could see of his face were his dazzlingly green eyes. They were somber beneath what appeared to be a … horse’s bridle? He wore the wompa leather straps like a headband across his forehead.

“Rompa-Romp?” I found myself asking even though this wasn’t the time to confirm my sudden assumption.

Roan nodded stiffly. “My good, good boy … eaten by umbracs in the service of Dragon Queen Elowyn.”

Elowyn flinched at the use of the title. At least she was no longer denying her role but accepting it with a grace and fortitude that made me fall more deeply in love with her.

“Damn, brother,” I told Roan as Ryder, West, and Hiroshi offered similar sentiments. “I’m so sorry. I know how much that pony meant to you.”

“He was a strong, brave, kind pony,” Hiro said. “I will miss him.”

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