Page 34 of Fae Unleashed
That had to be it. The man didn’t love me the way I loved him. While my heart belonged to that man, his belonged to the Seelie Court and the crown that would lead it.
“Don’t give in to the curse,” Tal shouted across the rooftop.
I wondered why he was telling me not to give in to Beryl’s curse at a time like this, but he wasn’t talking to me. The darkness in Rhoan’s eyes swirled with a myriad of colors like an oil spill. His lips curled and revealed sharp teeth.
Rhoan’s beast would break free of his body soon. While I had no qualms with the beautiful creature inside Rhoan, it seemed that others did. That…or I was missing a crucial piece of information here.
Rhoan
Beryl treatedme like I was vital to this mission. I could hear her laughter at the peripheries of my attention. However, my gaze was focused on Faust with Cerri in his grasp.
When Faust tightened his grip on my princess, my beast lurched. It hit me so hard, I stumbled forward. My breath rushed out of me, and I thought the beast would, too. It didn’t quite make it out, though. Instead, the beast told me to handle this.
I straightened and turned to Faust. The sight of Cerri in his hands filled my stomach with a hot rage that wanted to pour out of my mouth like dragon-fire.
Cerri planted her feet and threw herself forward. Faust’s claws tore across her throat, but that didn’t stop her. She shoved away from him and threw herself towards me. Her blood drifted on the air like tiny rubies and garnets that dashed along the crimson leaves of her plants.
I moved without thinking. Unfortunately, Faust moved while thinking. I reached for Cerri, but Faust swept her out of my grasp once more. Cerri’s expression went wide, her mouth forming an O as she tumbled over the edge of the rooftop.
Faust put his hands on his hips and laughed. The swell of arcana in the air smelled like blood and earth. It set my beast at ease and told me towait.
Cerri rose, seated in a throne made of twisting roots and pillowing blossoms. Her hair had escaped its bindings and now floated freely around her face. The white streak in her cinnamon blonde curls had spread, but it framed her impish face so perfectly that I couldn’t bear to find fault in it. My princess crossed one knee over the other and gripped the arms of her throne as she laughed.
Meanwhile, I cocked my fits back and punched Faust in the side of his head. The man vanished mid-stagger. When he reappeared beside Beryl, she slapped him.
“You’re pathetic,” she snapped.
Faust snarled and revealed his silver-capped canines at her. Beryl lifted one eyebrow and that was enough to silence the pookah. She was still our main threat. Faust was here to cause trouble and steal my beast for his army, but Beryl was the one we needed to watch out for.
I couldn’t move fast enough when Beryl turned her gaze on Cerri.
14
CERRI
Queen Beryl of the Unseelie Throne, the woman who murdered my parents, was done playing around. She lifted a finger and pointed it at me. Arcana turned the air cold. The leaves of my plants curled and died.
I plummeted in the air again.
This time, my arcana refused to respond. Beryl’s curse had a chokehold on it that I couldn’t break. She was holding it at bay so I couldn’t save myself this time.
Man, that last save had looked sick.
As a fae, would I die from the impact? My skin could break. I could bleed. My bones could shatter. It seemed unfair that I could be fae and still fall apart so easily. Shouldn’t I have been made of sturdier stuff? The kind of material that kept a creature immortal throughout the long centuries?
I was also a little mad at the idea that I would just splatter on the ground rather unceremoniously. The mad queen didn’t rip my heart out. She didn’t stab me with an iron blade. She didn’t even bother poisoning me. All of which would have been poetic and dramatic. Instead, she kicked me over like a child on the playground.
And I wasn’t having it.
The hold on my arcana shattered. I shoved it away in defiance and kicked back. Precious seconds had passed. Time slowed. Above, I watched Rhoan and Tal both leap from the roof. Black wings sprouted from Rhoan’s back. Faust leapt and burst into three bodies. One landed on Tal’s back. The other kicked at Rhoan.
They could handle Faust.
I pulled my arcana from the ground and forced a massive peony into existence so I could land into the soft furls of petals. My back hit a hard surface. My eyes went wide at the sight of metal protruding from my chest. Blood dribbled down the edge of a fae sword while Faust laughed in my ear.
He gently lowered me to the ground and stood so that he could watch me bleed out. I clenched my jaw. Was he stupid? I pulled my arcana into myself to knit the wound together. Faust raised his blade and plunged it into my body again.
For a moment, his face blurred. He wasn’t the pookah assassin swathed in shades of black and white. Instead, Alvin grinned above me. He knelt over me and licked my blood off his fingers like it was sugar water he wanted to drink down.
