Page 70 of Royal Hunt
The figure was nothing more than a black silhouette against the setting sun behind him, but I recognized Ellis. He stood framed in the door, chest heaving. His black crown glinted menacingly as he glared at the room, death and destruction in his gaze.
My heart swelled.
He came for me. He knew something was wrong, and he came.
“Your highness! I—”
Ellis silenced Gertrude with one curt, sharp gesture of his hand. He took one menacing step forward, and everyone moved back.
Except me.
I held out my arms like a child toward him, the pain in my chest so potent that his face blurred before me. I made a pathetic noise, and his attention zeroed in on me. He knelt beside me faster than I could follow, one arm slipping behind my back to keep me propped up. Breathing became a little easier, but not much.
“Who?” he growled into my ear, but the entire pub went still.
“It’s not that bad,” I argued, but his dark eyes filled with fire.
“Where did they go?” he demanded, not of me but of everyone else in the pub. Eyes darted nervously here and there, but Gertrude raised herself on her tiptoes to be seen over the crowd.
“The men she was with? Scurried the moment you broke my damn door.” Her face flushed with anger, and I didn’t blame her.
Ellis stood with me in his arms, and I winced as a sharp bolt of pain went through my side. Something was definitely broken.
“And when’s the rain gonna come? The fae said it would rain after their little contest. But you ruined it! Is it not gonna rain now?”
I couldn’t tell who was calling out. The crowd was growing angrier, and pushing in from all sides. Ellis didn’t back down, his skin flushing until it emanated an angry heat. It felt warm, but didn’t burn me.
“Ellis, don’t—”
“Why couldn’t you die like you were supposed to? Then we’d have crops and food!”
“What is your plan to feed us? What have you done since the games?”
“Where’s the fae? Can they fix it?”
“We need answers!”
Ellis’s eyes darted with growing panic and anger. They pressed in further, hands going toward waists and fury tainting the air. Ellis’s body shook.
“Back away,” he snarled, but they didn’t listen.
“String the prince up and his human whore with him! Maybe then it’ll rain!” A man reached for me, and that’s when Ellis lost it.
The tavern exploded in a fireball. I cried out, but nothing was heard above the roar of the flames. Ellis’s grip was tight around me, his mouth open in a scream of his own. Smoke curled around us thick and heavy like a blanket, but stopped just short of us. I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face against his chest and waiting for the moment when I couldn’t breathe.
It didn’t come.
We stood there for a long while until the roar died down to nothing more than the crackling of a large bonfire. It was quiet … too quiet.
“Ellis,” I gasped out. “Ellis.” All those people … had they gotten out? Gertrude?
“ELLIS!”
His grip on me was loosening. He jerked, his eyes losing that distant, faraway look and sharpening on the scene around us. He took a frightened step back, and the flames roared higher. His gaze landed on me and then his lips were descending, a cool balm to the inferno around us. I kissed him with desperation, fisting the front of his shirt with both hands and hanging on. He turned and backed up until my back hit the stone fireplace. White-hot pain lanced through my chest and I tensed, expecting to be burned. All around us the flames had cooled, burning down to nothing.
“I thought you’d left me. I thought I’d made you angry,” he choked out between kisses.
I nipped his bottom lip, unable to get as close as I wanted to him. “Never,” I swore.
