Fae Champion (Royals of Embermere #2)

22. Fire Writhes, Licks, Toys … and Emerges to Blaze Across This World

22. FIRE WRITHES, LICKS, TOYS … AND EMERGES TO BLAZE ACROSS THIS WORLD

Bond? What bond? echoed through my thoughts, insistent, demanding an answer, while Rush’s sword pushed me backward. Forcefully, I shoved the question from my mind and focused on the metal swinging my way.

After the queen’s little chat, I’d expected Rush to launch at me with his magic—whatever it was. Was he taking it easy on me? If so, how long would he be able to do so before the queen commanded him to use the full array of his arsenal against me?

I’d have to make the most of this reprieve. Metal on metal, I could do.

I swiped, parried, and struck, spun, lunged, and deflected. Within mere moments, Rush and I were flowing together. Chiing, clang, chang, shing , our swords went. My breathing matched his. My pulse thrummed evenly in my head.

I turned one way, he spun the other. He stabbed, I ducked and swiveled. I sprang from a low crouch, blade first, and he arched backward so metal only skimmed the air above him, not even a single strand of his hair falling to the ground.

We were as synced as the choreographed dancers who’d performed on this very field on the opening day of the Fae Heir Trials. The hushed appreciation of the audience faded into a buzz in the background.

Azariah spoke, commenting on our fight. I didn’t register the words. All I noted were the graceful movements of Rush’s body, the admirable lack of tells he possessed, his every next move a surprise.

And yet, they weren’t, not entirely—as if I knew his body nearly as well as my own.

We were acrobats, sliding this way and that, skimming around each other, the steel in our hands glimmering beneath the sun … but never slicing skin.

My breathing came heavier now, steadily reassuring in my chest, and I would have sworn my heart beat in rhythm with his, that our hearts beat as one, no matter how unlikely that was.

He twisted, his long hair trailing in a shimmering arc behind him, his sword reaching for me as I whirled the opposite way, metal clanking together as we met, before separating again, our next dance move pulling us apart … before drawing us together again.

I sensed the moonlight in his eyes dancing along with us, though I didn’t pause to confirm, the tempo of our attacks and feints denying me a moment of distraction for fear I’d lose this connection, whatever it was .

Sword first, he swiped. I dipped backward, watching his blade swing above my curved body, then sprang upward, slicing toward him.

We were a single organism—a shared body, heart, and mind.

Until I stepped backward through the clouds drifting as hypnotically as we were—and tripped on … something that hadn’t been there moments before, my chin jutting forward for an instant before I windmilled my arms to fall hard to my ass.

The tip of Rush’s sword dragged across my throat—not deep enough to kill, but sufficient to sting like a hundred bees and send blood spilling down my neck and rolling beneath my armor.

Sucking a sharp breath through my teeth, I registered how his eyes widened and our stunned audience gasped, how regret darkened the moonlight I starkly realized I’d learned to love in such short time.

“Pretend you don’t see us,” urged a tiny voice as I scrambled backward, forcing some distance between Rush and me before I popped to my feet, my free hand dragging across my throat and coming away red.

Had he wanted to kill me, that would have been the time for him to press his advantage, and the concern that weighed down his features told me he knew it too.

As would the queen.

Ignoring the warm trickle as it swam across my collarbones, I shuffled away, that synced flow between us now disturbed, and risked a glance at the spot where I’d landed .

The fluffy mist was still eddying, revealing four tiny heads of differently colored bright hair and wings like those of dragonflies lifting the diminutive fairies above it, a length of coiled rope—obviously heavy for them though it was no thicker than a bracelet I might wear around my wrist—drooping between them.

Eyes widening, rage swelling, I snapped my attention back to Rush, who appeared to be sizing me up, likely trying to decide how to put on a believable show for the queen without actually seriously hurting me.

If that was the game he was playing, it was a very dangerous one.

One of the fairies hissed, “The queen doesn’t know you can see us. Don’t let on that you can or she’ll kill us.”

I swapped out my sword for my two sai s, now forced to divide my attention between Rush and the fairies. In a swift attack, I forced him back while telling the fairies, through gritted teeth, “Stop tripping me, then.”

Rush’s brow arched in confusion as he sheathed his sword and drew a pair of wickedly sharp curved daggers, pushing me in the other direction until I returned the favor.

That tiny voice said, “The queen says you’re sparring, not fighting to kill. Let us take you down.”

Jaw clenched against the vibrations of our daggers meeting, I growled, “No.”

“What?” Rush asked, his breathing as heavy as mine .

Fairies zoomed close enough to my ears that I felt the wind from their rapidly flapping wings. I caught a flash of white hair—Morwenna—then, “You owe us for Kamilah.”

I said nothing as Rush pushed the advantage of my distraction, forcing me backward, my step faltering before I grunted loudly and shoved him back again.

The four nuisances flew around me, far more bothersome—and therefore dangerous—than the silent body parts.

Morwenna pressed, “Kamilah helped you get the icepick.”

“That doesn’t mean I should let him kill me.”

“A favor for a favor. That’s exactly what it means,” said another one of them, voice barely audible over the ringing of our blades.

“Go. Away,” I grunted as Rush sliced across my shoulder so swiftly and deeply that I felt the cut as it bit into my flesh beneath.

“Focus,” he reprimanded between heavy breaths.

“I’m fucking trying,” I grunted, spinning in a fast circle, blades first, effectively dispersing the pests, who shrieked as they flew off in every direction.

“I’m gonna have to use my magic on you soon,” Rush muttered, “or she’ll get too suspicious.” He grunted as he hastily blocked my latest strike, our blades crossing before we pushed away from each other. So softly there was no chance the ears would pick up his words from where they still bobbed at the edge of the arena, he added, “When you feel me in your mind telling you to go down, make sure you stay down.” Another grunt, another parry. “If we keep going like this, I’m going to have to hurt you.”

He swung his blades toward my chest. I dipped low, swiped his legs out from under him, and jerked up to point my blade at his prone body.

Only he stumbled but didn’t fall.

“Maybe you should go down before I hurt you,” I said.

“Blood’s already dripping down your neck.”

Cling, clang, clang, clack .

“Just a flesh wound.”

“Yeah, ’cause I don’t want to hurt you. So go down and stay down.”

“You say that as if”—I struck; he retaliated—“there’s no chance I’ll beat you.”

“No.” He was a flurry of silver blades. I pursed my lips as I used all my concentration to defend against his onslaught. “I have to win, and you have to lose. It’s how I’ll keep you alive.”

“I can keep myself alive, thank you very mu?—”

I swallowed my retort as he pressed me back, back, back. A peek behind me revealed another of the fairies’ traps, the rope taut between them, two holding it on each side.

“I’m going to trip,” I mumbled to Rush though I had plenty of time to avoid the snare.

“What?” Rush whispered urgently under his breath, still pushing forward.

I retreated straight through the fairies’ pitfall, stumbled convincingly, making a show of jerking forward and nearly impaling myself on Rush’s dagger, before righting my body.

The audience’s gasps reminded me they were there, watching us as closely as the queen. I gaped in feigned shock. Rush wasn’t pretending when he gawped at me, eyes tight with concern.

“There,” I threw out behind me without looking. “Now we’re even.” I hadn’t even used the icepick, though I was majorly wishing I had. “Now, buzz off ,” I hissed at the air around me, only causing Rush’s brows to furrow more.

He shook his head. “Just remember, none of this is what I want. But it’s the only way.”

An ear flew toward us from the sidelines, the queen apparently uncomfortable with all this dialog between us.

“We’re only here to put on a show. Now it’s time to do what’s expected of me.”

I couldn’t decide whether the ear had relayed that or not. Either way, it was what the queen would want to hear.

He lowered his daggers. I launched at him, both of mine lifted. This fight wasn’t over! Not yet. Not while?—

My hands went slack, the lethally sharp sai s slipping from my hold and falling to my feet with a clatter, the handle of one glancing off a toe.

Suddenly, the desire to submit came over me—a feeling I’d never experienced before. I found myself kneeling before the man who’d learned to see me as his equal in the arena—until now.

I felt like a mere observer of my actions. They felt foreign, wrong. I was a puppet on the end of invisible strings, and every speck of me wanted to revolt, to break free of Rush’s control—his magic.

But I placed my knuckles on the earth, concealed by mist, and curved my back, bowed my head.

“Thank the Etherlands,” I heard a fairy say from far, far away. “The queen’ll never know now.”

Even with me prostrate on the ground, the fairies were still only concerned about what the queen might do to them. They were not friends.

I wanted to fight, to buck and thrash against the power Rush had over me. But how could I fight against what I couldn’t see? Couldn’t so much as feel, insidious though it must snake inside me?

But just as Rush sheathed his daggers and stepped close enough that he blocked the sun, casting my face in shadow, a spark flared deep within me.

One moment I was unable to resist the urge to follow what must have been Rush’s silent commands, and the next a flame burgeoned deep in the pit of my stomach. As if a violent gale were fueling it, that flame swiftly became a fire, and then rapidly after … it raged .

Sweat slicked my skin, already flushed beneath my fighting leathers. My throat, mouth, nose, and eyes burned as if they were actually aflame. The blood that had continued to drip from the slice across my throat dried in an instant, evaporating into a spray of red mist .

The earth beneath my knees and hands rumbled, awakened .

Another round of stunned gasps reached me through the throbbing pulse behind my forehead as I leaned back into my heels and brought my hands to my thighs.

“That’s not possible,” Rush breathed.

I tilted my stare up to him.

Whatever he saw on my face made the silver of his eyes flare, his tattoos brighten along the sliver of looping vines visible above his collar, inching across the back of his hands.

“You’re…” he uttered. “Wow.”

My thoughts felt disconnected from my actions. No words bubbled to the surface. Only fire writhed across my tongue, licked at the inside of my lips, toying with the idea of emerging to blaze across this world.

Rush dropped to his own knees before me, a beatific smile spreading across his face. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, and the hovering ear inched closer to record every word. “I-I didn’t know. I was only doing what I thought was best.”

Slowly, gingerly, with a tenderness that suggested he considered my beauty evanescent, he fluttered a hand down to rest over mine, still atop my thigh.

“You…” he tried again before trailing off, at a loss for words.

The flames barely contained by my flesh danced and swayed and yearned, eager to emerge, to commingle with him .

Sweat beaded along my brow, across my upper lip, further dampening my leathers. The ground beneath me heated right along with me—more, more, more. Perspiration rolled down my temple, slid across my cheek, and splattered loudly to the land.

I heard the drops plop, along with the rustling of the crowd, its incessant chattering, making out myriad cries of shock and alarm I shouldn’t have been able to, my mind too hazy to piece them all together. Rush’s heart beat faster than mine, like a horse determined to win a race. His muscles creaked within his frame as he flexed his fingers over mine, caressing, squeezing, feeling.

His seed from mere hours before liquified and dripped along the hot inner walls of my body. My core softened, readying itself for him again.

His eyes widened once more; his tattoos brightened again, before dimming.

The four fairies flanked him, peering at me with eyes as big as grape seeds could get, seemingly unconcerned that Rush might rise and accidentally squash them. Azariah moseyed over to us in a slow clip-clop, his gaze pointed down so it looked at me straight on, his twisted horn a menace none of them noticed.

Shouts singled themselves out from the continuous murmuring from the stands, but though Rush startled at them, I registered them as one did a foghorn a great distance away.

More calls, these eager and rallying, caused Azariah to shake off his stupor and peer nervously around us. A fairy with sunshine-yellow hair fluttered onto Rush’s left shoulder and plopped down there, all the better vantage point to stare at me from.

A mouth and eye zipped over next to the still-hovering ear, and the eyeball studied me closely from a few inches to the right of Rush’s cheekbone.

My own sight slightly out of focus, I hazily returned its attention, finally realizing why that stormy gray iris was so familiar. It had taken me in with stark disapproval on more than one occasion—when it had belonged to Sandor.

No wonder the eyeball’s veins were still a bright, fresh red and pink. Sandor had only died that morning.

“What are you waiting for?” barked the mouth, making Rush, the fairies, and Azariah jump. I only blinked at the wide lips and the swath of dark stubble around them, wondering to whom that mouth had once belonged.

The queen’s voice, feminine and venomous, snaked through those masculine lips once more. “Kill her—now.”

Rush searched all around us, blind to the queen’s invisible weapons. The fairies and Azariah only grimaced.

“But she’s already defeated,” Rush answered, glancing here and there, unsure where to point those beautiful lips of his.

I blinked some more, the daze clearing, the sounds of the crowd coming into crisp focus.

“She doesn’t look defeated,” the queen’s voice growled. “Take her out before my subjects start believing she’s a god from the Etherlands.”

“But—”

Rush’s back went rigid, his chin pointed up, his eyes terrifyingly vacant.

Azariah retreated a few steps, and the fairies all flew off in a zip so fast their wings blurred. I didn’t turn to follow the path of their retreat.

“Rush?” I attempted, but my voice was a stream of flame that guttered before it formed his name.

His hand pulled away from mine as if I’d burned him, withdrew a dagger from its sheath. He leaned forward, pointing it at the red line marring my throat.

“May your memory burn forever in hell,” the queen hissed through that disembodied mouth. “And may your essence evaporate into nothing before it ever reaches the Etherlands.”

Blade firm, Rush pitched forward.

I scrambled out of the way as the dagger deflected off my arm, nicking me.

And Azariah bellowed, “The Gladius Probatio magic has spoken! We have a tie .”