Page 57 of Dark Sun (Wicked Lovely 6)

And Urian bowed his head.

“No begging?” The Hound’s boot was on his neck somehow.

He’d fallen, collapsed perhaps. His whole body shook from a twist of fear and exhaustion. And a woman was standing over him, boot on his neck.

Urian said nothing. He was not going to beg. They could take him to the Summer Court, and he would apologize for the whole stabbing incident and—

The boot slammed into his face, and the rest of the thought was drowned in pain and blood.

ChapterTwenty-Five

Aislinn

The Summer Queen felt the roll of terror in a different way this time. An almost energizing flutter crept over her.

“The Hunt approaches,” she announced.

Without another word, she walked out of the loft and into the park that was part of her court. As she waited, Aislinn looked at the area that she’d expanded. There had been a parking lot to the western side, a street that lined the eastern edge, and the next block over had been a series of shops that she had purchased. The park now stretched, plants growing through the ruined remains of the buildings. One apartment building, which the residents had all been paid handsomely to sell, was now a structure of stone and plant--suitable for the Hunt to call their home.

Nervously, Aislinn hoped that she’d not been presumptuous to do so, but if she had, well, there were plenty of things to do with the new block of the city that she’d acquired. This was her home, and unlike the last Summer regent, she wasn’t interested in relocating constantly.

So she’d been slowly expanding.

This time, however, it was rather vast and obvious. Once Winter noticed, they would have an issue. A part of Aislinn thrilled at the thought.Look what I did! Look at how strong the Summer has become!

“We will not apologize to the Dark or to Winter for our expansions,” Aislinn told Tavish.

He grinned. “Why would we? We have not stolen what was theirs.”

The Hunt filled the far end of the park, the side where Aislinn had been expanding, and the Summer Queen decided that it was time for more of a statement than was her usual way.

Sunlight took shape, as if the beams of light were liquid gold, and around them, she wove flowers. Maybe it was silly, girlish even, but she liked to twist flowers into everything.

They were summery, right?

Deep red wild roses twined around the sunlight throne she’d built at a whim, and the Summer Queen took her seat to watch the Hunt surge into her territory. They were welcome, especially if they brought quarry, but it was an odd feeling that rolled over her—no longer simple fear.

“Is it different for you?” she asked Tavish, who was standing at her side when the next wave hit.

“Softer.” He looked fascinated, and there was no doubt that he would be off to scrawl in one of his journals as soon as he was free to do so. Her advisor was an unrepentant researcher, and over the last five years, he’d apparently been chronicling the courts.

Not just hers, either.

Tavish had been working on a memoir of sorts, stories about the Summer King before Keenan, stories about Niall, stories about various encounters with the now-dead Winter Queen Beira. It was more of a chronicle of the courts, a reference for Aislinn.

“Details for your novel,” she teased him, as they watched the Hunt come at them.

“Ash . . . we’ve discussed this. I’m writing a history of—”

“Sure, but youcouldpublish it as a novel, make yourself a nest egg.” Aislinn watched a nerve twitch in his cheek. Honestly, she wasn’t sure why it was such a terrible idea. No one believed in faeries these days. Not really. There were rare exceptions, people who gathered at festivals and listened to music played on medieval instruments, but by and large, the world relegated faeries to the same fiction as actual make-believe things like ghosts or vampires.

“The approach of the Hunt has shifted because of their changing fealty,” Tavish remarked, stepping off the dais that she had built around and under them, lifting her advisor and her impromptu throne up higher.

She added grooves to the thing, creating a stepped pyramid with her at the top like a sun goddess.

Tavish strode forward, descending far enough that anyone approaching would have to cross him to touch her. He was her most loyal guard as much as one of her most trusted advisors. In truth, he was close to a brother to her—family by choice—so she knew he would step toward any danger that befell her.

This was curiosity, though. He wanted to understand the change in how he felt about the Hunt, how their change in fealty changed the way the court reacted to them. From the looks on a few of her court’s residents, they were equally curious.

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