Page 56 of The Ruthless Fae King
“Shhh…” Lucien cradled me to his body, holding me so tightly that it hurt and felt good at the same time.
I looked up into his eyes and knew from the absolute terror marring his features that my wound was bad. A sudden sharp coldness pierced my stomach and I gasped, nearly passing out.
“I’m sorry, I had to freeze the wound. There’s too much bleeding.” He sounded like he was on the verge of losing it, and I felt bad for putting him through this. After losing his mom, and having a horrible father, I wanted to try to be a good thing in his life.
Blackness danced at the edges of my vision and I blinked rapidly to chase it away. I had no idea where he was flying me off to, what the point was.
“Lucien?” I whispered.
“Yes, sugar plum?” He leaned his forehead against mine.
Reaching up, I cradled his face and met his gaze head-on. I needed him to know something in case I went to be with the Maker. “I would have chosen you. Even if I had my pick of any man in the realm, I would choose you,” I told him. Arranged marriages didn’t give you the best confidence that you were wanted. I needed him to know that he was my choice, regardless of my father’s input or our royal lineage and the rules set before us.
A whimper lodged in his throat and then everything became too cold. I couldn’t tell if it was Lucien making it that way, or my soul finally going to be with my ancestors.
“Stay with me!” Lucien shook my shoulders and my eyelids snapped open. I fell asleep? When? I shivered, my teeth chattering as snow fell from the sky in clumps and thunder clapped around us.
“I’m sorry, my love. I have to keep you cold or you’ll bleed to death,” Lucien said, and then we made our descent.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I told him through chattering teeth. “I don’t feel any… th… ing.”
He looked panicked at that, and the blackness at the edges of my vision grew wider until it encompassed everything. Suddenly I was drowning in blackness. My heavy body felt like it had fallen away and I was finally free.
FOURTEEN
LUCIEN
Madelynn’s body went limp in my arms and my worst nightmare quickly became reality. Reaching up to her neck, I pressed my cold fingers there.
Nothing.
“She has no pulse!” I screamed to Drae, hoping my old friend could do something about it. His wings pumped harder as he cut through the Winter sky and then descended faster.
This isn’t happening.
I looked down at Madelynn’s face, studying every freckle and curve. It was as if on the day the Maker made Madelynn, he set out to create a masterpiece. Her face was carved of porcelain, smattered with freckles across her nose. Her sharp chin made her entire head resemble a heart, but my favorite thing was her orange and red hair, like bits of fire were trapped inside. The colors were different depending on the angle and if the sunlight was hitting it or not. I ran the pad of my thumb over her soft pink lips and what life I had stored up in my heart after my mother died perished in that moment. I was born a great lover of all things and people, but with every drunken rant my father beat the love out of me and turned it to hate and vengeance. The only person who’d kept it alive was my mother, and then she died and I was lost. When the teenage girl I loved had cheated on me with my best friend, Raife, my heart turned black and I covered it in steel, impenetrable to anyone.
Then I saw Madelynn dancing in the wind with her sister, the sun lighting up her hair like a roaring fire, and it was as if I’d been kicked in the chest. My heart flickered to life, dropping its steel cage and letting me know it still wanted to beat.
I had to have her.
I didn’t blame Madelynn for hating me when she first saw me. I knew the rumors surrounding me were horrible—some of them even true. But when she stuck up for me with Marcelle and the Summer fae, and then again with my father, I fell in love with her so easily.
She owned my heart and soul.
I would do anything for this woman and now she was gone.
They always leave me.
I screamed into the sky as a frigid snowstorm blew around us. My powers were dangerous, and if not controlled would kill people, but I didn’t care right now. My grief consumed me.
Drae dropped quickly, so quickly that I had to tuck Madelynn to my chest to keep her from flying out of the basket.
I failed her. Maybe I should have tried to find a healer in Summer, but would they have helped her? We just killed Marcelle and they didn’t have any healer elves there, right? I was questioning everything now, every decision I ever made that led to this moment.
Suddenly Raife Lightstone, my oldest friend and the biggest pain in the ass, leapt into the basket atop Drae’s back.
He was the greatest healer in all of Avalier. But he couldn’t bring back the dead.
