Page 90 of The Fae Warrior's Queen

Ro

Poof.

Immediately, the soldiers and the vines turn to dust. They dissipate with some soft crackling sounds, and the brown powdery debris blows away with a gust of wind.

Some of the chalky stuff hits my face, and I briefly close my eyes. When I open them, the greenery is gone, and the colorlessness of the Lost Land has returned. The cobblestones are cracked and there’s gritty sand everywhere. The sky is gray instead of blue.

I never thought I’d be glad to see the Lost Land again, but that means we succeeded so it might as well be rainbows and butterflies and all the beautiful things.

I’d whoop for joy if I wasn’t so weak from my adrenaline taking a sudden dive.

Breathing hard, I slump to the side to sit on my rump. I brace my hands on the ground, but my elbows give out, and I allow myself this momentary collapse.

I need to lie down while I get over the fact that I was one second away from getting my head lopped off.

“I’m sorry, Sunny.” Kai coughs as if his throat is dry. “I’m so sorry. I hesitated, and I failed you.”

“Are you serious?” I balk, sitting up. “The last thing you did is fail. We’re a team. And what you went through…”

When I look at Kai, I trail off because I’m shocked by the lack of blood on him, and I squint as if I’m not seeing things correctly.

His skin is tan, not red, and his wounds are no longer open. They’re not gaping and fresh. They’re old.

Scars.

Glancing down at myself, I note how my dress is mostly yellow. I’m dirty and there’s a stain here and there, but it’s not soaked in blood like it was before.

It’s like the whipping, Zarid’s attack, the soldiers… None of it happened.

Or, rather, it happened a long, long time ago.

In the past.

Oh, thank the suns.

“You’re okay.” Crawling over to Kai, I ignore the way the little rocks on the ground dig into my hands and knees because I don’t care about a few extra scratches right now.

I can’t remember the last time I was this happy. I’m just so glad to see Kai uninjured, and I’m overjoyed at the fact that he won’t have to continue this game while being in excruciating pain.

My smile is wide as I lay a hand on one of the big marks on his stomach. Then I cup his face and run my thumb over the raised skin on his cheek. “Does it hurt anymore?”

“Hurt?” Seeming baffled by the drastic changes to his body, Kai sits back on his haunches and flexes his fingers. “No, not at all.”

“You’re healed.” I’m positively giddy, but Kai doesn’t share my enthusiasm.

“Not healed,” he says gruffly. “Just back to normal.”

As he scans himself, his frowns go through a variety of forms. Shock, exhaustion, and acceptance rapidly flash on his face before his expression defaults to his usual grumpiness.

I get it. This is a lot. The aftermath of going through the whipping a second time must be hard for him. It’s something he never should’ve had to endure again.

When he looks at his left arm, we both zero in on the bite he received from the flower. It’s a bit inflamed and scabby.

“Interesting,” I comment. “That’s still there.”

Flattening his lips, Kai lifts my messy braid away from my neck and glares. “You got cut by Zarid’s knife.”

Now that he mentions it, I do feel a sting, and my hand goes to the shallow slice I didn’t realize I’d gotten.

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