Page 49 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
“That’s right,” I said, speaking to the fiend again. “You don’t really want to do this. You don’t want to hurt us. You don’t want to get hurt, either.”
I wasn’t sure if the fiend had any idea what I was actually saying, but maybe it was just something about the tone of my voice that made it pause again. It narrowed its eyes at me and sniffed again, considering.
Though what it was considering?
The moment passed, however, and then the bear was stepping closer. The intelligence in its eyes dulled a bit, blackening into two dark pits. His lips curled back, fangs bared, and I saw the way the muscles in its hindquarters readied themselves for the charge.
This was it.
There was no way I could defeat this bear with
“Stop!” I shouted, and this time, my father’s glamour flooded through me. It felt it overwhelm me, mingling with the glamour already forcing its way through my veins. Together, they were a sickening poison.
But together, somehow, they worked.
The bear stopped. Not out of curiosity. Out of compulsion.
It froze, halfway through its first angry step, mouth agape, eyes now suddenly blinking terrified in its sockets as it discovered its body unwilling to obey.
“Go from here,” I growled, each word grating inside me like shards of broken glass, tearing me deeper and deeper. “Go back to the one who sent you and never come back.”
The cub blinked once more, its body going limp so suddenly that it nearly tumbled to the floor. It took one last curious look at me before turning, half dazed, and lumbering off.
That instinct in me, the feeling that drove me and told me how to handle the glamour, evaporated the moment the cub’s form melded into the dark depths of the forest.
I dropped the sword first, then the rest of me, to the forest floor.
That was how Zev and Finch found me, their own bodies returned to their human forms—bloodied and scarred. Their elated grins, sure signs that the mother fiend had been defeated, fell the moment they laid eyes first, on me, and then on Shiel.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see the lord of the western court looking down at me, eyes hooded and breaths still ragged, but once again conscious. He said nothing, just traced the line of my arm until his hands came to rest on the blackened, charred tips of my fingers.
We both knew, without speaking, what kind of glamour I’d had to use to survive.
We were a sorry sight to behold, I was sure.
But we were alive.
And that was all that mattered.
Or…all that mattered for now, anyway. Because the distant sound of wolves’ howls echoing through the forest was quick to remind us that the battle might have been won, but the war was only just beginning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My hands were too blisteredto hold the reigns, but it was no matter. Only two of the bolted horses were able to be found, so I rode in Finch’s lap and Shiel with Zev. Between his leg—so close to healing, only to now shoot pain up his calf with each step he took—and my hands, there was no way we could survive another fiend attack.
Especially if this time, instead of one attacker, we faced an entire pack.
I was shaken to my core for more than one reason. I’d fallen prey to Icarus’ plan for me all along. I’d dipped into the glamour just as he’d wanted me to.
And just as I feared, I didn’t make it out unscathed.
There was no time to stop and bandage my damaged hands. Though I hadn’t used nearly as much glamour there, in the forest, as I had the day before, usingbothmy inherited and the inherent glamour had left me an empty shell of myself. It was all I could do to stay upright in Finch’s saddle.
Finch alone had escaped the fiend attack unscathed, aside from a few scratches, anyway. Zev looked nearly as bad as Shiel,his shoulders hunched and brow knitted as if each breath he drew was more labored than the last.
But there was no time to stop, no time to think, no time to plan or plot or decide the best way to continue on.
There was only continuing on.
