Page 70 of The King of Frost and Shadows

“Of course Seelie have wings. But that’s not what I’m referring to.” He pointed to his feet and rasped. “Look at this.”

I tore my gaze from my wings to see what he was talking about. He had his foot propped up on his leg, staring at the bottom.

The bottom of his foot wasn’t blistered anymore. It had a few faint scabs, but the severe injury was gone.

Holy shit.

“How did that happen?”

Then the platform we sat on creaked, the sound more rushed and frantic than the others.

He lunged to his feet. “Let’s get to the next platform.”

We hurried to the edge, and he readied to leap onto the next platform. I tried to move my wings, but they jerked, so we jumped together.

When we landed on the next platform, it made a popping noise and dropped with Lorne and me on it.

23

LIRA

As we dropped toward the gas, my hair flew into my face. I reached out and grabbed Lorne’s waist. When our bodies were almost submerged, my back muscles moved like a reflex, and my wings flapped, holding us steady despite the way my arms shook from his weight.

I glanced down to see that I was shoulder-deep in the fog. If I didn’t move us upward, the gas would engulf us, and we’d die.

My muscles tensed and ached, and I tried not to overthink it like Tavish and Finnian had coached me.

I was fae, and part of me knew what to do, even if I couldn’t consciously remember. I needed to focus on keeping hold of Lorne. If he fell, the momentum would take me with him.

“Hold on to me,” I gritted out, wanting my whole body to take the distribution of his weight and not only my arms.

He didn’t argue, wrapping his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist, putting me in the most intimate position I’d ever been in with a man. All it took was alife-or-death situation to get a man to cover my body with his.

Loud boos came from the audience, who were clearly not happy that we’d survived. I hadn’t heard any of their noises before, but I hadn’t been this high up in the coliseum. That had to be why.

But wow. The Unseelie were such lovely people.

“You’re going to have to do more than this to get us out of danger,” Lorne whispered.

He had to weigh twice as much as me, and my entire body was straining just to keep us at this level. My back muscles burned in ways I’d never dreamed of. “I … don’t …” With the amount of pressure from carrying him yanking on me, I struggled to say each word. “… know … how … to fly.”

“Focus on where you want to take us,” he huffed. “Your wings will do the rest.”

Yeah, I seriously doubted that, but I didn’t have the energy to spare to argue with him. So instead, I locked on the beginning of the monkey bars obstacle, and my wings moved faster, though the burn intensified and my back screamed. Lorne’s weight resembled an anchor trying to drag us to our deaths.

I clenched my jaw so hard that it cracked, and I tried to push through the searing pain. Between my feet and stomach burns and now this, I’d never been in misery like this before, and that was saying something.

With each flap of my wings, my back muscles became more tired, but our bodies lifted. After a while, the sensation didn’t feel quite as strange, and something inside me filled with faint joy.

Even though I didn’t remember it, a freedom that felt slightly familiar confirmed that I loved flying … without the extra weight.

Lorne clung to me, his body rubbing my raw skin, but I swallowed any complaint. Tears filled my eyes, and I refused to look down to see what little progress we’d made. I focused on the platform, desperate not to lose sight of it, fearful that my wings would stop moving. Sweat beaded my body, causing my skin to burn even more, and Lorne struggled to hold on.

“That’s it. We’re almost there,” he encouraged as we neared the bars.

I wanted to snap back at him, but I didn’t have the energy, every ounce of strength needed to push us higher. Then, my back muscles cramped and spasmed.

“Get on the bars,” I gritted out, fighting through the pain.

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