Page 134 of Defy the Fae

Puck is hunching beside her, his features ashen. In the sky, Cerulean’s wings are swishing as he hovers, arrested in petrified shock.

He mouths the word,Father.

I hear Lotus shredding through the grass at an otherworldly pace he wouldn’t be able to muster without the Evermore Blossom. The reptile is moving so fast, he might as well be immortal. He’s baring his fangs, which are not venomous but capable of puncturing arteries to a fatal degree when suffused with the flower’s essence.

When the snake camouflages into the high grass and disappears, Cove cries, “Lotus!”

I clutch her face tighter. “Show me.”

Again, it takes her a moment to break from the spot where the snake had vanished. Her frightened gaze scans the area while narrating to me what she sees.

Cypress is mumbling a Fae incantation. From beside Cerulean, Moth is fluttering in a daze. And below her, Tinder is gawking.

Foxglove’s wrist is trembling as she fights to keep hold of her dagger. And Coral’s harpoon lance has seized mid-thrust.

A tempest of white hair is flapping around Lark’s wide-eyed gaze. With Juniper stationed away from the battle’s hub, Cove and I can only envision her stricken features. And as for their father, his split lip is hanging open.

The moment has suspended itself across the battlefield, humans and allied Faeries riveted and petrified.

At last, each world breaks into thunderstruck movement.

“Sylvan!” Puck roars, then lunges off the ground and races past me and Cove.

“Elixir,” Cove whispers.

I snatch my lady’s nape and fasten my forehead to hers. Her fingers curl into my hair and jolt me closer.

Then I release her. We lurch to our feet and sprint into the fray.

Three sides clash, punching into each other like a massive fist. The blow of bodies shatters my eardrums.

Cries splinter and screams blare like horns. Weapons clang and hit their mark. Bodies squirt fluid across my torso. Figures plummet to the ground or get snatched off the ground by winged Faeries.

A severed arm bounces off my shoulder. A dismembered head rolls.

Vomit splatters the grass. Blood bubbles from a person’s gagging mouth.

I hear Cerulean swooping around the opposing mountain Fae. He’s dodging their attack, trying to incapacitate them, to reach his father whose flight has blended into the quagmire. The owl’s livid hoot scrapes across the sky as he attacks someone, giant talons surely carving into them.

The air shifts across my knuckles—Puck has swung himself atop an unseated horse and sent the animal bolting toward Sylvan’s form. He launches a storm of arrows, shearing through anyone who tries to intercept.

Sylvan grunts in fury. Audibly, two fighters get caught in the deer’s antlers, which hurl them into the sky like ragdolls.

Other Faeries either defend themselves against their rival kin or drive their blades, arrows, and axes into the mortals.

Sizzling wings resound overhead and collide with the lash of Lark’s whip. She’s combating a pair of firebird Faeries…the surviving ones who had targeted her in the labyrinth.

Seconds later, her opponents’ skulls crack together. They split like eggshells as she yanks them into one another.

My limbs grow leaden. My joints struggle to bend.

Audible perception dwindles, leaking from me sensation by sensation. The darkness becomes less distinguishable, each shade of black reducing to a single void. Baffled, I swing my head from side to side. The erratic motions harken to the first moment I opened my eyes but saw nothing.

“Cove?” I bellow. “Cove!”

But she’s gone. My lady has been swept into the vortex of clapping steel, burning iron, and screams of anger, fear, and pain. Likely, she’s brawling a path to wherever Lotus might be.

Terror clamps like manacles around my throat. Rancor slithers down my arms. The agony lancing my bandaged side diminishes as I attune to the remaining vestiges of sensory awareness and hunt through the mob for a lone figure.

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