15. Eat You up, Lick by Long Lick
15. EAT YOU UP, LICK BY LONG LICK
ELOWYN
I recognized the instant Azariah decided to overcome his lament to join the battle against the queen. He straightened from Bertram’s side and extricated himself from my embrace. He shook out his mane and stretched his wings, pulling them loosely against his sides. His long tongue laved the rainbow streaks that had dried around his mouth, making him look like an animal when he so rarely did. His coat was magically back to being a shiny, pure white. The hair of his tail was glossy once more. When his eyes finally met mine, they brimmed with resolve.
“Well,” I said. “Hello there. You look stunning.”
A sudden grin dissolved the stoicism that had elongated his face. “Why, thank you, Elowyn. I do try.”
I chuckled. “Your tail especially was looking pretty sad. I worried it was going to mat on you. Maybe even dread. ”
He gasped, his aghast eyes going comically wide. “ No . Say it wasn’t so.”
I didn’t have the heart to keep up the ruse he obviously found far less playful than I did. “No, it wasn’t so. At most, your tail looked limp.”
He gasped again. I imagined if he had hands they would have jumped to his chest in his horror. “Limp?” he squeaked. “My tail was limp ?”
Yeah, and your mane and wings too.
I forced a peppy smile onto my face. “Never mind that. You look glorious now.”
But he frowned, appearing troubled. Before melancholy could claim him again, I said, “So. Az. I need to ask you some questions. You up for it?”
What felt like a hot breeze trailed across my body. When I glanced up, I found Rush staring at me from the other side of the clearing like I was cool, crisp, crystalline water and he was dying of thirst. The beast inside me I’d believed calmed after reuniting with Rush woke and thrashed against its cage, demanding to be released, to have at him already.
But no. Not yet. Not until we were safe. Or the queen finally kills us , a pesky voice of doubt suggested. I might die without ever making love with him again, and that would be an awful tragedy.
To one side of Einar’s massive legs, I met his stormy moonlit eyes and smiled sadly. Neither of us had asked for the responsibility of keeping the others safe, but it had landed with us regardless. His responding smile was just as regretful and filled with a haunting longing. Next he scowled, tugged at a rope, and Ivar stumbled behind him as my mate led the queen’s most trusted advisor into what was left of the cabin. Hiroshi, Ryder, and Roan, who clutched the handle of his battleax with a ferociously determined pinch of his lips, followed closely behind.
“Elowyn, did you hear me?” Azariah was saying.
I blinked at him. “What? Sorry, I, uh, got a little distracted.”
Despite having the head of a horse, Azariah managed to arch his brow at me as pointedly as if he were a person. “I’d get distracted too if someone as fine as Drake Rush Vega looked at me the way he does you. He looks like he wants to eat you.” The unisus frowned, wagged his mouth to either side in an affectation that made it difficult to remember he wasn’t a man. “I guess I shouldn’t say that anymore. Not when the…” He gulped, his big throat bobbing. “…queen actually ate parts of my parents.”
My shoulders were already sagging when he shook off the somberness. He smiled, if a bit forced. “I meant, the drake looks like he wants to eat you up, lick by long lick, as with a delicious, creamy dessert.”
I was assaulted by the imagery of myself with my legs spread and Rush kneeling between them. His grin was wolfish, his moonlit eyes swirling, as he lowered to feast.
I swallowed as heat swept along the entirety of my body, sensing Rush’s attention on me again. When I looked over, he’d stopped moving, his captive and friends piling up behind him while he studied me, a mixture of curiosity and hunger written across his face as plainly as words.
I shook my head in a never mind and made myself look back at Azariah. Though Rush’s stare lingered, I didn’t glance at him again. I could make do without his touch, lips, tongue, and bejeweled wand a bit longer. I just didn’t fucking want to .
Trying hard not to pout, I trained my focus on the unisus. “Sorry, Az. Okay, so what were you saying?”
With a knowing look in his eye, he chuffed. “I asked you what questions you have for me?”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay, of course.”
“ Waawaa ,” Bertram offered, though I couldn’t guess why.
“Alright.” To alleviate the itch to chase after Rush and give into the temptation we both clearly wanted, I unwound the plait in my hair and began to braid a fresh one. Outside of the palace, I’d been able to wave away Pru’s ministrations. “From what we could tell,” I told Azariah, “the queen was using your magic to track me somehow. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” His fluffy, soft beard quivered.
“How did she do that, exactly?”
“My magic is capable of tracking a great many things. With you being a royal, I can track your essence especially easily. It was quite challenging to get her to believe I couldn’t locate you right away. It took me only seconds.”
“Oh, damn. ”
He nodded with a purse of his wide horse lips. “Yes. The fight would have been over very quickly had she not believed me. It’s why she tormented me with scenes I never wanted to see. She believed I’d do anything she asked to relieve that pain.”
“Again, I am truly so sorry you had to suffer through that.”
The line of his mouth hardened. “Thank you, Elowyn. Her Majesty has delivered too much suffering. I’m, uh … I think I’m ready to, ah, bring about her own … suffering.” He cringed as if he’d let a toot slip.
Ferally, I grinned. “Good. You are allowed to feel angry at her, you know. You’re allowed to want her dead.”
He nodded slowly as if to convince himself. “Yes. Alright. Then I want her dead. Very dead.”
I glanced toward the opposite side of the clearing to confirm that Edsel, Pru, and Larissa were still fussing over the dormant fae. West clutched Ramana to his chest as if he needed her for his own heart to beat. I looked back at Az. “We’ll make her ‘very dead.’ I won’t give up until we do. To that end, I need to know, can she still track me now that you’re here with us?”
“Not without another of my kind, no.” He canted his head toward Bertram, his horn appearing to spear a great cloud overhead from my angle. “Of course, she may have other ways I haven’t identified. As much as she is distasteful, she is resourceful.”
“That she is,” I said with a bitter scowl.
“If she doesn’t already have a way to find you, she’ll be searching for it. Besides, she surely must know where she’s hidden away all these fae whose power I presume she’s been stealing.”
“Mmhm. I’ve thought of that. But that’s only if she realizes what we’ve been up to. That we’ve been traveling with this mysterious map.”
He tipped his head in the other direction. “True. When she discussed searching for you with Ivar, she didn’t mention understanding where you were.” He pepped up. “Perhaps she doesn’t know.”
I looked at the rows of half-dead-looking fae. “Would she not sense that we’ve moved them?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on how it works, how connected she is to them. It’s possible that she might only notice when she goes to draw power from them next, however she does that. Or she might only notice after we’re able to disconnect them from her.”
“In other words, we don’t know if or when she’s coming.”
“Correct.”
“ Waawaa ,” Bertram contributed.
“Just in case,” Azariah added, “we shouldn’t linger unnecessarily.”
“Agreed. But it is getting trickier to travel with so many people and creatures gathered with us, especially when some of them are enormous dragons.”
Together, Azariah and I looked up at Einar, whose stare was pointed up into the sky.
Hey, Einar, I projected .
He turned his massive head in my direction, staring at me from far, far up. Yes? To what do I owe the interruption now?
Will you please keep an eye out for anyone approaching?
Anyone? There are many beings who live and move in these woods.
Anyone directed by the shadow, or the shadow herself, of course.
Huuuuh , was all he said before craning his neck back toward the sky.
I was going to take that as a yes . “I don’t even know where we’d go with all of them,” I told Azariah. “Is there even anywhere safe from her in all the Mirror World?”
“Hmmm. In the Sorumbra. Maybe.”
“So what do we do?”
His only answer was to waggle his horse lips some more.
“What we do is we fight ,” I replied for both of us. “We get prepared as quickly and as completely as possible. And then we bring the fight to her. We stop waiting for her to hunt us down. We hunt her .”
Azariah’s eyes widened to equal parts terrified and determined. Without losing any of that panicked look, he nodded, swallowed, cleared his throat. “W-we do.”
“ Waawaa .”
“Glad you’re on board too, Bertram,” I said, fancying myself a ranucu interpreter. Another waawaa suggested I was on the right track .
Already steeling myself for all the preparation we’d need to complete before we could take on the adversary who’d bested us at every turn, I faced the clearing. Rounding Einar’s tree-stump-sized legs stalked Xeno. My friend was buck naked, save for the boots and shirt he carried in each hand—not bothering to cover the goods on full display.