Page 97 of Fae Reckoning

But all I did was watch the life fade from her eyes. The blood stopped spurting and slowed to a gurgle, spreading around her head and shoulders, soaking into her bodice, then skirts. The concealed serpents kept trying to reach the woman who’d imprisoned them with sharp, pounding thuds against the glass floor.

“What have you done?” Braque demanded breathlessly with a hand blindly clutching the chest of his tunic.

“What needed to be done.”

A glance at Talisa’s guards revealed their gaping mouths and slack grips. They wouldn’t be attacking.

I turned and stalked toward the doors. My friends might need me.

As I was about to exit, Rush and Xeno barreled into me at full speed, both jerking their hands out to catch me before I could fall. Ryder, West, and Ivar raced in just moments after them. Blood splattered their faces and clothes, and coated the weapons they clutched. Otherwise, they appeared unharmed.

My shoulders drooped with relief.

Zafi piped up in an invisible squeak, “Elowyn killed the stupid, ugly, foul queen!”

The males’ stares jumped from me to the scene behind me.

“Oh no,” Zafi said on a horrified inhale.

I spun to look too.

“What the…?” I mumbled. “That’s not possible.”

With a helping hand from Braque, Talisa was very slowly and very carefully leaning up onto her elbows. She looked down at herself, seeming to take into account the blood that drenched her and her fancy dress.

While my mouth dried up so as to become its very own desert, she ran a finger along the rapidly suturing gash across her throat … brought it to her mouth … and licked it.

Her grin came next, and when it did, it was the worst sight I’d ever seen in my entire life.

“By a dragon’s essence…” Ryder uttered.

“Shit,” West whispered. “We’re so super fucked.”

“You want to play?” she called out in a creepy singsongy tune. “Then let’s fucking play. Dragons!”

31.THE ONLY ENEMY I SEE HERE IS YOU

ELOWYN

So many things happened next and in such quick succession that they distilled into simple points of action, assaulting me from all sides so that I couldn’t properly digest any one of them.

Dragons surged up through the floor of the Hall of Mirrors, cracking open the dense glass that imprisoned hundreds of squirming snakes.

Zafi squealed. The guys grunted. Pru began muttering a frantic chorus ofit’ll be off with our heads, off with our heads, off with our heads—and after how far she’d come too. My friends and I carved out space between us and them, backing away.

Einar—or perhaps thunder from the storm Talisa conjured—shook the walls and their mirrors without ceasing. One nearby mirror cracked a jagged line across its surface. Plaster dust rained down on our heads, making me cough.

More dragons squeezed through the floor. One punched up directly beneath West, toppling him over so that he was left scrambling to regain his feet. Dragons roared, so freaking loud in the enclosed space that my ears hurt. Mirrors vibrated with a steady, audible hum.

I backed up and spun in place. There were so many dragons, in so many colors, I couldn’t count them. They hissed and gnashed their teeth and thumped their barbed tails, overturning or crushing delicate tables pushed against a wall waiting for the next fancy party. Around shadow manacles, their claws scratched deep gouges into what remained of the glass floor.

At their center, Talisa stood tall, her crown perfect, as if she hadn’t just died, or almost died. The enchantment that normally protected her from becoming soiled was evidently absent. Blood stained the corners of her mouth, her neck, bare shoulders and arms, dripping down onto her long, elegant black dress and encrusting her red ruby rings.

Her hideously macabre spies—dismembered ears and eyes—zipped into the room to bob above me as if she didn’t want to miss a single one of my reactions—to her truly fucking mind-blowing immortality, presumably.

Anticipating her order to attack us, her guards were closing in behind her, casting wary glances at the dragons, who were rumored to be people eaters and currently making the cavernous room feel cramped.

Zafi, still invisible—the smart little MISO—whispered next to my ear, “Ivar says if he can touch one of the dragons’ shadow-chains, he might be able to undo the magic that controls all of the chains, even the ones on the dragons in the dungeons.”

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