Page 63 of Fae Unashamed

“I love you two.” I shook my head, even though I couldn’t stop smiling.

With any luck, we would return to find Rhoan still in his mortal form…I was just glad that Tal kept Rhoan distracted from the other elephant in the room: my own mortality.

I sucked in a breath and opened the dream, releasing us all back into the waking world.

Rhoan

I woke up with a start.That’s not how stories should begin, but it was how this one started, nonetheless. Scrambling to my feet, I was relieved to realize that I had two and not eight. I patted down the front of my torso and ran my hands down my back in search of the wound that Foxglove had dealt, but there was none.

The divine blade sat at Fox’s side. The man sat up and groaned, clutching his forehead like he was in the throes of the worst hangover of his life. A Sluagh read my desires and apparated beside Fox before snatching the dagger from the floor. I gave the Sluagh soldier a nod before turning and rushing off to my queen’s side.

Just as it’d been in the dream, the mound of flowers and moss remained. I dropped to my knees beside the human sized hill. Beyond it, a Sluagh beast whined and patted at the moss with its paw.

My heart stuttered. I grabbed at the moss and ripped while my heart thundered in my ears. I could hear nothing beyond the sound of my own fear and fury. If Cerri wasn’t okay, I would tear this building down brick by brick. Foxglove would have nowhere safe.

Beryl would know my wrath. I would make it rain down upon her with all the fury of my new power as Nightmare King. I didn’t have much, and I knew that. However, I could make her life hell until she struck me out of this world. Every second of her waking life would be filled with stress so long as I drew breath.

Finally, I tore a piece of moss away and caught sight of a pale, pink cheek. My heart lurched. Unable to see all of Cerri, I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. My hand trembled. I tried to hide it by ripping away another chunk of the moss.

I prayed that this would be like the day that Del stabbed her. Perhaps Cerri could come back from this, too. She would rise from this hill renewed the same way she’d risen from the crystal coffin at the Seelie Castle.

But it’d been the castle that’d given Cerri a second chance. There was no entity like that here. No force waited to keep Cerri from passing on to the afterlife.

My chest was tight. I don’t know when I stopped breathing, only that my lungs refused to unclench. The edges of my vision darkened until all I could see was the face of the woman I loved. With her head and upper torso uncovered, I gently pulled her free from her self-made cocoon and clutched her close to my chest.

Blood covered her sweater. It’d dried to a sickly brown color. As I moved her, the fabric crunched and made me cringe. Of course, I’d seen all this before on the battlefield. It was the fact that it was Cerri’s blood that made me sick.

I glanced up and met the eyes of the beast who’d offered his life force for her. He looked at me as if to say I’d waited too long.

“I know,” I growled. “I know!”

Bile reached the back of my throat. I clutched Cerri tight and held my breath to hear her heartbeat.

“You can’t leave me now that I’m back.” Tears burned my eyes, but I would not let them fall.

Tal’s footsteps approached. “Is she…?”

I couldn’t find the words to tell him. I still didn’t know if we’d failed her or not. The thunder of my heart and the tremble of my hands made it difficult to tell if she was alive…but that could have been my own sense of denial.

Cupping her cold cheek, I prayed that was only the Unseelie curse making her skin so chill to the touch. We’d lived through so much. I’d endured an entire lifetime alone. I couldn’t do it again.

Tal touched my shoulder. I jerked away from him and snarled. The Sluagh beast ahead of me jumped over the mound and placed himself between Tal and me. More Sluagh appeared and surrounded me as I cradled Cerri’s body.

“Come back to me, princess. There’ s no light without you. You are the shining star in my night sky. No matter where you are, I will follow, even if…even if…”

“Don’t you dare!” Tal roared.

He knew where I would go if Cerri perished. My heart gave a small pang of regret knowing that Tal cared enough to yell at me for such a thing. There was no point in going on without her, though. My life was too dark; there were too many ghosts in these shadows.

I could not go on without my star.

Her lips curved upward. “You really think Tal would let you leave this world?”

My heart leapt and exploded into a million relieved pieces. I gasped, suddenly aware that I hadn’t drawn breath in too long. The aching burn in my chest was nothing compared to the cooling relief that made my lower lip shake as I pulled her close.

Cerri wrapped weak arms around me and buried her face in my chest. I fought my sobs to hide them from the Sluagh watching in case they thought me weak, but there was no fooling them. All could tell that I wanted to cry with relief.

Tal slapped me upside the back of my head. “Damned fool.”

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