Page 43 of Tempting the Fae Lord
“Sir?”
My ears are playing tricks on me. It cannot be true. I whip my head toward his voice and gasp.
The sorceress has Gale!
Chapter Thirteen
Gale
This isn’tthe Ezra I know. This demon looks feral, half-covered in dirt, the other half in blood, hair in tangled clumps, eyes wild as a wolf gone rabid.
“Let him go!” Ezra roars, voice resounding through the valley in a powerful burst.
Beside me, Sonja laughs. Not the laugh I recognize from our polite conversation over tea, but a laugh filled with festering hatred. Like she’s another person.
“Your thrall is here of his own free will,” she says. “It is not I who chains him. That’s your doing.”
Chain me? Nobody’s ever chained me.
“You touch a hair on his head, and you’ll live to regret it,” he yells from afar.
“What is happening?” I dart my gaze back and forth between them—the man I’ve known my whole life, my protector, the object of my secret affection—and the fae changeling who I’ve only just met, but feel the stirrings of a nascent bond with already. Each glowering at the other with unfettered loathing.
Sonja and I look down on the battle from a perch on an open mound of granite. A knot tightens deep in my gut. My throat clenches. Ezra is surrounded by death. Corpses still covered in grave dirt close in from all sides.
Panic claws at my ribcage. Fearing for his life, I grab Sonja’s arm. “Stop this. Please. Call them off.”
She glares at me but doesn’t pull away. “And let him kill me? Is that what you want?”
That is not what I want. “I won’t let him.” Her laughter is beginning to irritate me. “I won’t!”
She shakes her head. “You’re his thrall, Gale, not the other way around. He holds all the power. You have none.”
She’s wrong about that, but convincing her will have to wait. I watch Ezra defend himself against the massive herd, one against hundreds, and somehow he’s holding his own. Somehow, he’s winning.
“How are you doing this?” I ask.
“I’m not.” She nods to our right, where a young man shakes with tension, arms extended toward the battle. “The bone caller is.”
A chill grips my spine.Bone caller.Yikes. I gather my courage to face him and march his way.
“Gale, where are you going?” Sonja grabs the fabric of my coat, but I lurch out of her grasp.
“You have to stop,” I beg of the quaking mage, who doesn’t even look my way. “Please. The Gatekeeper means you no harm. Call off the hoard.”
“Can’t,” he grunts. “She owns me.”
“Shut your mouth,” says Sonja.
“Owns?” I cringe.
“Gale!” Ezra’s voice claims my full attention. “Run for cover!”
“I’m fine,” I yell as loud as my voice will carry, hoping he hears me. The last thing I want is for him to lose focus worryingabout me when he’s the one in the middle of a starving throng of undead.
The wind carries a vile stench uphill. The urge to gag rises, but I swallow it down and turn to Sonja. “What does he mean by ‘owns’?”
The bone caller looks as if he’s going to keel over and join his rotting army any second now. He’s thin. Too thin. And ragged. Dark circles crescent beneath glowing copper eyes.
