Page 93 of Royal Captive
The split second he broke his focus on the crowd to reach toward me was his undoing. A fourth fae got behind him and stabbed straight down into his neck and back.
Ellis got to his feet, staring at the pile of angry fae on Hayida with horror.
Hayida jerked, magicking sparking all over his body.
“No time to balk,” Hayida snarled at Ellis, and with a final, desperate vigor, grabbed the fae and pulled the knife out of his neck, plunging it into his attacker’s guts. With a vicious smile, he snapped another’s neck.
More prisoners joined, and I lost sight of Hayida under the horde of bodies.
Time raced forward.
WHAM.
I hit the ground hard.
Something cracked as my side connected with the hard ground, and my head smacked the same ground a second later. Blackness tried to claim me, but I fought it, struggling to climb out of the oncoming rush of unconsciousness. If Hayida hadn’t used magick to slow me, I’d be dead.
“Get back! GET BACK!”
Heat washed against my skin, and vaguely I wondered how Ellis was doing it. Didn’t the cuffs stop him?
Prisoners screamed and yelled, but it was hard for me to see anything, as my traitorous eyes closed. Hopefully, it meant Ellis was succeeding and getting to Hayida.
He’d have to tell me all about it.
I lost my battle to the pain and dizziness and slipped into the darkness.
I woke to screams and crying, and hot water pouring down on me as thunder clapped from the sky. My head and hand ached fiercely, but it might have had something to do with the position I was in, which was slung over Ellis’s shoulder with my head facing down, the world bouncing around me.
It shouldn’t be that surprising that he could carry me. The fae had superior strength, even a half fae, but I still wasn’t used to any man just easily lifting me.
All around me was chaos—people running, fires everywhere, and rubble. The sky was a deep magenta with purple clouds that swirled and rolled, raining down hot water on us. That explained why I was wet, at least. How had we gotten back into the city?How long had I been out? Had Ellis carried me the entire way here?
“Not a chance in hell. Heal her first, then I will help you.” Ellis was speaking harshly, while a fae female argued with him. The voice wasn’t Fallon or the other princess, and yet, it was still familiar.
“We’re in the middle of a war zone!” she pleaded. “Bring her back to the palace where I can properly treat her! But you need to free me! Please! The weather and the magick—”
The fae medic. Shyllon’s sister. How the fuck had Ellis found her? I craned my head to the side, seeing her on the ground with one leg buried underneath stone rubble. Her face was white and pressed.
“If you think I’m letting her back into Fennis’s hands, you’ve got another thing—”
“She could bleed out internally before then! I don’t know how much damage the cracked rib has done!”
I banged my fist on Ellis’s back to get his attention.
“I’m up! I’m up! Put me down!”
His grip around me only tightened.
“No. You are dying, according to this female!”
Shyllon’s sister tilted her head to the side, lips parted in shock as I squirmed in Ellis’s arms.
“Put her down. I want to see something.”
I scowled, but Ellis let me go. Stumbling a bit as I got my feet under me, everything seemed to be in its proper place and the only pain I felt was still in my head from being upside down, and a slight ache in my hand. At least the swelling had gone down, and only light yellow bruising remained where there had been ugly black and blue before.
The female’s eyes flared with surprise as they settled on my neck.
