Page 64 of The Blood Queen

The gate’s lifting, lifting. The angle’s steep. My feet hit the first few planks, and I sprint with everything I’ve got, up, up, as it keeps rising.

There’s shouting. Screaming for us to stop. Something bursts next to me. A magic attack? I’m not sure. I just go and go, muscles aching, lungs burning, but all those feelings are distant nuisances to what I’m doing. The Red Cap rage has me in its grip, and I relinquish myself to it.

Alyth clings to my neck as we reach the top, and I don’t hesitate; I leap off the gate moments before it slams into place behind us, sealing away the fae court.

Immediately, they start barking to lower it.

But we’re falling. Plummeting down, down through the warm air. Alyth whips her hand out just before we crash to the nettle and thistle field, and a gust of that warm air surrounds us, gathers us up like a hand catching our fall. It softens the drop so it’s only like I came down a step, and I take off again, Alyth still in my arms as I race for the edge of the forest.

She keeps the stinging plants off us, and soon, we’re bursting into the cool dark of the fae wood. Through unspoken agreement, I set her down, and she dashes ahead, leading me on, to a portal, I assume. Which one? Where will we pop out? Doesn’t matter. Already, I can hear the echo of angry voices from the fae court behind us.

We swing around a massive tree, and there’s a large, black cauldron.

A cauldron? In the forest?

After all the weirdness of the fae, it doesn’t even seem that absurd, honestly.

Alyth stops long enough to grab for my hand. She looks up at me, gasping, sweat-slicked, her eyes bright and determined and ferocious.

The Red Cap rage is still gripping me, but the lack of blackout holds, and I feel almost giddy with it. If I can control it—if I can use this rage state—I can actually help her.

I squeeze her fingers. “I love you.”

Alyth’s jaw drops.

I laugh. It’s the wrong place, wrong time entirely, but we’re nothing but wrong places and wrong times, and I’ve gone and surprised her.

She sobers, her lips flickering in an exasperated smile. “Daft man.”

I smack a kiss to her lips and drag her through the portal.

16 Alyth

Sound is dampened in my ears, a wash of muffled roaring addling my mind. My eyes burn; my vision is blurry, and through the chaos, I distantly realize that I’m underwater. The shock of the cold makes me gasp. My lips part, and I choke, instinct alone making sure I don’t fully breathe in water.

Something yanks on my arm, and I have just enough sense left in me to realize that I may be drowning, but I’m still with Samson, who’s pulling me up to the lighter part of the water.

I kick frantically, my body rebelling against me, the icy water tugging at my skirts, dragging me down.

It’s more than cold making me slip deeper despite my struggles. Just above me, I see frantic bubbles swirling around Samson, who’s just as desperate as me to break through to the surface.

There’s a force here, something we can’t fight, determined to drown us.

Black dots dance behind my eyes. My lungs scream for breath.

Think, think. Is it magic? Although the portal was a cauldron on the fae side, it could lead anywhere in Scotland. Was that a portal designed only for sea fae? Is that why there are no weapons slicing through the salt water toward us?

No. My muscles are seizing; the water’s too cold to think straight, but it’s cold because it’s Scotland, it’s wild, and that is where my magic thrives.

I’m too desperate to do more than just pull. The fingers in my free hand claw in the water, reaching, reaching for the strands of magic. It’s all raw, unbridled power, but as soon as I feel it, I wrap my hooked fingers into the threads of power, curling my arm up toward my chest, summoning the force with rage and fury. Blackness flickers in my vision again, and I wonder as I start to slip away if this is what it feels like for Samson to fall to the Red Cap nature, for him to taste—for just one moment before it all goes dark—the rush of wildness coursing in his veins, the sheer strength of it all, the way it makes me feel invincible before it’s gone.

Before I’m gone.

* * *

I wake up vomiting ocean water. I roll over to my side, gagging as violent shuddering makes my entire body shake.

“Alyth, Alyth,” Samson says, his hands pushing my hair out of the way before he smacks my back.