Fae Champion (Royals of Embermere #2)

14. The Dark Queen Must Die

14. THE DARK QUEEN MUST DIE

More elegant than I’d ever seen him, Rush wore a fitted, iridescent slate gray jacket that matched his pants, both skimming his muscles and accentuating his sculpted waist and narrow hips. A single short sword hung from his belt—as if the queen’s court weren’t as dangerous as the arena, where he would have been armed to the teeth.

“I wish you the fortune of dragons, milady,” Pru said as she snaked through the open door. But Rush yanked it shut before I could respond.

Brows arched, I asked, “What’s got your britches in a twist? I mean, other than the obvious?”

He steered me by the elbow rapidly down the hall. I had to take two steps to his every one in the silly heels, but I made sure to keep up, unwilling to risk him scooping me up in his arms again so we’d move faster.

“Isn’t it enough that I’m delivering you to Her Majesty knowing she may order you killed on the spot for your treason?” he grumbled, skirting the line of what content was acceptable for the two severed ears bobbing along the seam of ceiling and wall of the corridor.

I glanced up at them, wondering what would happen if I swatted them away—or even captured them.

At the far end of the hall, Ryder, Hiroshi, and West stood in a line, three mighty, thorned trees stuffed into civilized clothing. Like Rush, their expressions were grim.

“I can’t believe you’d try to escape and put me in this position,” Rush snarled without even looking at me.

I interpreted that to mean, Why would I put him in the position where turning me in was the best of our poor options? Why hadn’t I left Embermere when he’d wanted me to?

“Her Majesty will be expecting us,” he added, his voice void of emotion though I could feel so much of it rolling through him. My arm now laced through his; his bicep was twitching.

“Have you told her already, then?” I asked.

“No.”

Just that, the one word. A single eyeball hovered ten feet in front of us, floating backward as we advanced so as not to miss a single movement.

I leaned my head toward him; the guys were maybe forty feet away now. “I understand why you’re upset.”

“Oh, do you?” he snapped so viciously that I stopped to stare at him. He kept walking for a moment, jerking to a halt when I refused to advance.

“We can’t delay,” he said. “We have to find Her Majesty on her throne.”

Or else she’d dispatch with me here, and my chances were better with an audience that might at least oblige her to pretend to be just.

I’d become another dead noble in a lengthy list of them. If, evidently, no one was concerned that lords and ladies were assassinated fairly regularly with no murder suspect ever being denounced, then they wouldn’t blink at my death. After all, I’d be labeled a “traitor,” and it wouldn’t matter that the royals had been the ones to kidnap me in the first place.

In Embermere, wrong was entirely subjective—and defined by Her Majesty .

A chill spread across my skin as if I were suddenly feverish. I met Rush’s gaze, the silver of his irises bubbling with anger.

I swallowed thickly. “We should probably say our goodbyes now, just in case.”

I’d been a fool—a na?ve, hopeful, damn idiotic fool. I’d asked these men to deliver me to a woman who’d lean into any excuse to have me killed. Like them, I’d put their cause above my own life. But I was new here, and I wasn’t prepared to go down as a martyr.

I should have run and let them figure out the rest once I was long gone. I owed none of them anything.

“Don’t you dare say goodbye,” Rush snarled. If he’d been a dragon shifter, I would have said his beast was riding close to the surface. His eyes blazed like flames of moonlight.

“Is that what you’re so mad at me about?” I asked, chortling morosely when I realized how defeated I sounded.

I’d likely been as good as dead since the moment the queen laid eyes on me. When she realized her husband had been unfaithful to her and decided to punish him for his adultery. When she understood that, without a formal crowned heir, no matter that her bloodline was the one and the king’s a far second, I became a possibility as a successor.

I’d been living on borrowed time. When Malessa let Dougal take me without a fight, she’d condemned me to death.

I’d been a moron for not seeing the inevitability of my circumstances sooner.

“No, that’s not what I’m mad about,” Rush seethed. “Okay. That is what I’m mad about, but it’s not the only thing.”

“Then what?” I asked, tilting my head up toward him, no longer certain I cared what his answer might be.

“How could you…?” He glanced all around us, not snagging on the disembodied body parts in our midst, and pressed closer to me, whispering harshly. “How could you touch me like that?”

My brows went up again. “This is all about me barely grazing you?” I snorted. “Seriously? Seems like we’ve got much bigger problems than me imposing on your ‘modesty.’”

He growled, and in such close proximity, my insides flip-flopped before my core tightened. The closest ear zipped nearer, floating just three feet above our combined heads.

He tsked . “That’s not it,” he breathed, as if sensing the eavesdropper though he couldn’t see it. “How could you…?” He shook his head, the long silver strands scarcely moving in response, as if they, too, were already defeated. “How could you awaken things in me only to…?” Once more he trailed off, and the ear jetted to the end of the hall to listen to Hiroshi, West, and Ryder, whose impatience was likely louder than our whispers, based on the hurry the dragonfire up looks they were casting our way.

“On your way out of your rooms, you touched me like…”

“Like what, Rush? Spit it out. I don’t have much time to spare, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Like we’re together. Like we ever could be together. Like the entire idea of us isn’t as pointless as what you’re making me do next.”

“I’m not making you do anything,” I snapped, though I kind of was, at least a bit.

“Come on, guys,” Ryder called from the end of the hall, where he gave a pointed look down the corridor perpendicular to this one—the path we needed to take to the Hall of Mirrors. “What’s the holdup? ”

I huffed and told Rush. “Let’s go.” I took one step away, and he pulled me back.

“I don’t think you realize what you do to me.” He scanned me up and down. “Or how stunning you look in that dress.”

It so wasn’t the time for his confessions. Even so, I leaned forward, silently inviting him to tell me more.

“You can’t touch me like that and expect me not to … react. It makes it hard to think, and right now I need to be entirely focused on … what I need to do.”

The eyeballs near us whirred jerkily, attempting to take in everything happening in the hallway all at once.

A couple in matching pantsuits and dress the color of freshly pumping blood emerged from a closed door forty feet from us in the other direction and didn’t bother hiding their curiosity at how closely Rush and I stood to each other.

The woman openly gawped at us while her partner led them toward us. Irritated at the interruption when our time was already nil, I stuck my tongue out at the woman. She gasped, her hair vacillated precariously atop its artfully coiled pile, and she pointed at me while tattling to the man at her side.

Rush snapped his attention back on me, and I smiled up at him guilelessly.

He rolled his eyes.

“What? She was being rude and staring.”

“That’s Jolanda, the dowager countess of Etherantos, and Conroy, the viscount of Etherantos.”

“So? ”

“So, that’s Lennox’s mother and his much older half-brother.”

“Oh.” I glanced back their way; they were close enough to overhear. “Then I should have done more than stick out my tongue at her.”

Jolanda glared.

“Don’t let the likes of her upset your delicate constitution, Mother,” Conroy said, patting her hand linked through his bent elbow.

“Drake Rush Vega,” she called out to him when they were about to pass us, crowding to the other side of the hallway as if my rudeness were infectious. “I advise you to reexamine the quality of the company you keep.”

“And I advise you,” I told her, “to reexamine the quality of your cowardly son who stabbed me in the back with a blade so fine no one would know what he’d done till I was dead.”

Jolanda looked down her nose at me as they sauntered past, causing her to crane her neck as she went. “My son is loyal to her majesty the queen.”

“Your son’s a bully and an asshole, and I hope he dies a death like he tried to give me.”

Jolanda halted in mid-step, spun around, and launched herself at me, curled hands already pointed at my face. Her nails, person-like moments before, had been replaced by thick, sharp claws erupting from her fingertips.

Conroy lunged after her, wrapping his hands around her trim waist in a firm band.

Rush positioned himself in front of me, a solid wall of muscle, and from the end of the hall, West, Ryder, and Hiroshi headed our way.

“Let me go,” Jolanda snarled at Conroy, her arms stretching toward me.

Conroy clenched his teeth together, making his round cheeks puff out as he struggled against her efforts. The dowager countess was like a beast denied her food and then taunted with it.

“She’s not worth it, Mother,” he said.

Jolanda, whether by accident or intention, kicked him in the shin with stabby heels. He yelped, eased his grip on her as she strained to claw my face, then tightened down again.

Rush spread his arms wide to protect me as he caged me behind him.

I scowled at his back. “She’s not a damn dragon. I don’t need you to shield me from her. I can handle myself.”

But Rush ignored me, bowing his head gracefully to the wild alley cat currently gnashing her teeth at me. “Apologies, Dowager Countess. My charge is under a lot of pressure right now and knows not what she does.”

“Excuse me?” I fumed at the stretch of fine back blocking much of my view. “I know precisely what I’m doing. Just ’cause the bitch doesn’t like to hear the truth about her precious son doesn’t mean?—”

“Please,” Rush interrupted. “Jolanda, Conroy, forgive us and move on. We’ll be in the hall shortly.”

I sputtered while the red-cheeked Conroy implored his mother to listen. Finally, she straightened and announced to Rush, “No wonder Her Majesty, in her infinite wisdom, favors you for the role of heir. You’ll make a fine crown prince.”

“Infinite wisdom, my ass,” I muttered under my breath, causing Rush to tense until the alley-cat dowager countess and her son passed the guys and continued onward.

The instant they were far enough away not to hear him, Rush spun on me. “Have you learned nothing in your time at court? You shouldn’t make enemies without need.”

“And have you learned nothing about me in all this time? You shouldn’t presume to speak for me, and you shouldn’t treat me like I don’t know what I’m doing.” Even if I didn’t truly much of the time, still largely out of my depth in a world so different from the one I’d known. “I stuck my tongue out at the mother of the man who tried to murder me. Was I really out of line? It was my tongue, for dragons’ sake, not a sword.” My nostrils flared as I glowered at the man who was too handsome for his own good. I could hardly be angry at him without noting the perfect curvature of his lips, the beautiful line of his jaw…

Rush breathed in, out, in, out. “No, no you weren’t out of line. I just wanted to prevent the situation from escalating.”

“I’m pretty sure the situation’s as bad as it can get already. Now, are we gonna keep dilly-dallying, or are you going to turn me in to the queen already? ”

As best I could in the cumbersome heels, I stalked past the guys, who paused to study me. When I left them behind, I heard Ryder ask Rush, “What in dragon’s veins was that about?”

“I have no idea,” Rush said. “I think I’m out of my league with her.”

I snorted a laugh but refused to turn. All the way to the Hall of Mirrors, I didn’t slow or glance over my shoulder, though I heard the men’s footfalls close behind.

If I looked at them again—the men who’d almost become friends, a lover even—I might not have the nerve to follow through with what I had to do.

And they might read the intentions on my face. I wouldn’t condemn everyone I’d met in Embermere to my same fate by my actions.

But I wasn’t at fault here.

I’d do whatever I could to ensure I didn’t cause anyone else to suffer without need?—

…and then I was taking down the queen with me.

If I had to go, then so did she.

The dark queen has to die .