Page 89 of Fae Reckoning

ELOWYN

“Hurry, Reed, hurry,” I cried out.

He was almost finished corralling the undead. None of them had yet moved to answer the command of his magic, but they lit up like beacons when he pointed at them, and the paddock he’d delineated glowed as bright as lightning.

“Ignore the dragons,” I urged, though the suggestion was implausible. I’d grown up knowing exactly what an angry dragon who was about to pounce and rip your head off looked like—and I was now staring straight at two such beasts.

“Finish corralling the others,” Rush told Reed. “We’ll deal with the dragons.”

Only, how the sunshine would we?

“You can do it, El,” Rush told me next.

Mouth wide, I gawped at him. “Me?”

“Yes,dragon queen, you.”

“Uh…” I was about to tell him the obvious, that connecting with a few more-or-less kindly disposed dragons and speaking with them was an entirely different level of challenge from trying to discipline furious, murderous dragons who looked hangry enough to snack on all of us.

But no one else had even what scant experience I did with the creatures—save Xeno, of course, but the protectors revered the dragons in their charge, rarely communing with them how I had, if ever. None of my comrades had the backing of the land either. None had any chance of restraining the dragons beyond fighting them with blades or their powers, both of which we’d already proven to be ineffectual.

Could I even get undead dragons to obey me, when live ones weren’t disposed to do what I asked of them? Who the fuck knew? Saffron and Einar didn’t take orders from me. But it looked like I was going to be trying regardless of the odds. The one with dark orange scales was two-thirds the size of Einar, the other quite a bit smaller, only slightly bigger than Xeno when he shifted.

Instead of making my excuses, which I was really, really,reallytempted to do, I silenced, nodded to reassure myself, breathed, then took a step toward the two dragons. Rush and Xeno shot out arms to stay me.

I frowned at their hands on me and snapped, “How am I supposed to do anything if you won’t let me put myself at risk?” My gaze traveled to their faces—their very concerned, anguished faces. I gentled my tone. “I’ll be okay.”

I didn’t promise, however.

Rush’s brows drew together in torment but he released me.

Xeno did too with a growled, “You’d better be okay, Wyn. I swear I’ll fucking carve you out of their stomachs if you let them eat you.”

My smile was grisly. “They can’t eat me. They’re not alive.”

“Don’t remind me,” Xeno said with a deeply furrowed forehead.

Before Xeno or Rush could change his mind and reach for me again, I jumped forward, raised my hands to the dragons, and stopped in front of Tula, just out of her arm’s reach. Rush’s cousin, whom up until minutes ago I’d believed to be unharmed and alive, rocked from side to side so intently that her long, loose hair swung like a pendulum. Apparently the false queen’s edict that no female but she was allowed to wear her hair loose at her court didn’t apply once the female wouldn’t detract from Talisa’s carefully orchestrated allure.

“Dragons,” I called out, quickly cataloging their myriad injuries. The smaller green dragon in particular had more lacerations than smooth scales. The flesh of his legs and sides gaped open, sagging, and the barbed point of his tail was too small in comparison to the rest of him, as if it had been hacked off and then his body had attempted to regenerate. No doubt I’d discover more signs of his appalling abuse. The orange dragon, a female, had fewer outward signs of mistreatment, but she’d surely endured just as bad at Talisa’s command.

They only growled and gnashed their teeth, no less sharp than they’d been when they lived. The other undead were shuffling, one by one, toward Reed’s paddock.

“Fuerin,” I bellowed, trying the name they’d had before the creation of the Mirror World.

They didn’t react beyond their obvious desire to rend me to pieces.

I cast my voice through my mind into theirs.

They continued with their gnarling and snapping and hissing.

Wait, they were dead, or at least they looked dead. Surely they felt no more pain, right?

The green dragon’s sissing intensified. His muscles bunching, he began undulating, that stubby barbed point thumping against the floor—back and forth, back and forth, then back and forth again. He stomped his feet—rumbling the flagstone—an action that would have been incomprehensibly painful with the many deep cuts that opened his legs and haunches until I could see bone. But the dragon’s demeanor didn’tchange. He was animated by a force that defied every law of nature.

The orange she-dragon inhaled sharply, powerfully—as dragons did when they prepared to exhale fire—very lethal, singeing fire.

“El,” Rush yelled.

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