Page 22 of The Crown of the Last Fae Queen
Inkeri inhaled sharply. “Herja!”
“Inkeri.” Herja released a shuddered breath and stumbled toward them. “I’ve never been so happy to see you.”
Inkeri rushed the woman in an embrace, hugging her tightly and sobbing softly. “Oh, I missed you and your foul temper. I never through I’d say that, but it’s true.”
Haakon’s tense shoulders finally relaxed, but he didn’t barrel into Herja and embrace her tightly like Blár thought he would. He only stood on the sidelines, as if he hadn’t cared one way or another. As if someone else had dragged him to be here, rather than him threatening to kill anyone who stood in his way of rescuing her. It made Blár want to roll his eyes.
Ivar patted her on the back. “I knew the fae stood no chance against you.”
Herja smiled, but it came out strained. Her gaze fixed on Blár; there was only grim determination there, now. “Kolfinna told me to warn you all that the elves and the fae are coming for the capital. And they’re going to free their evil queen. We have to stop them.”
“Where is she?” Blár’s hands grew clammy. “Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
Relief pooled in his chest, but it was cut short with her next words.
“They … need her, Blár. I don’t understand how, but … they believe Kolfinna is their princess. They think she’s the key to awakening the fae queen.”
Silence filled the group, and even the wind and the air stilled.
Blár’s shoulders tensed. He couldn’t breathe. Not with the confusion, the anger, the betrayal coursing through his veins and cutting through his chest like a broken shard of glass.
“Kolfinna … She can’t be,” Inkeri whispered.
Herja then explained everything that had happened during her capture. How Kolfinna had been kept separate from the rest of the prisoners. How they had clothed her, fed her, and took care of her. How they hadn’t tortured her. How the commander had spoken to her.
Blár didn’t want to believe it. He needed to hear it from Kolfinna herself. Because he had believed in her. He had thoughtthat she knew she could confide with him about anything. He had thought that she knew she could trust him.
His heart clenched tightly.
Everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion.
Kolfinna was the fae heir.
8
EIGHT – KOLFINNA
Kolfinna awoketo the wind blowing against her face with such strength that she thought she was falling through the sky. A scream ripped from her throat as her eyes flew open. The sky was an ugly gray color, the air thick with moisture and fog, and the winds unrelenting and frosty. Her limbs flailed out, her body being swept away with the powerful gusts.
She tried grasping for something, her mana, anything, but it was like she was stuck. It was only once the initial panic fizzled away that she realized she wasn’t spiraling down to her death. Her body bobbed up and down to a wild rhythm.
She turned her head to the right, then to the left—the skies were all around her, open and wide and free. Thousands of fae and elves atop drekis flew beside her. A shock rippled through her. She was on top of a dreki, but unlike the other riders, she was tightly bound in shadowed magic. She tried wriggling free, but her whole body, save her face, was constrained in magic.
“Finally awake?”
A purple-eyed elf peered over her shoulder at Kolfinna, her long, braided white hair whipping this way and that with the violent winds.. She sat just a foot away from Kolfinna. Her ears, like the rest of the army’s, were pointed, and beautiful moss-colored gems clustered along the shell of one. She was in her early twenties, and unlike the others who wore stoic expressions, she had a wide, easy grin on her face.
“It must be a shock to wake up like this,” she shouted, her voice nearly fading in the ripping winds. She held onto one of the horned spikes of the dreki, her thighs hugging the beast tightly, and a metal harness keeping her in place. The other elves, Kolfinna noticed, used their shadowy magic as a harness to the scaled beast.
“Can you unbind me?” Kolfinna tried worming out of the shadowy magic—she hated the grimy cold-and-warm feeling of the shadows and how it drained her own mana—but with a powerful flap of the dreki’s wings as they turned, she froze and thought better of it. She certainly didn’t want to plummet to her death.
The elf laughed and if it wasn’t for her shaking body, Kolfinna would have missed it. “It’s not my magic,” the woman said loudly. “So I can’t take it off even if I wanted to. But …here.”
The woman grabbed Kolfinna’s shoulder with one hand and yanked her up into a sitting position. The shadows shifted to allow her to move into that position, the wisps harnessing her in place.
The winds blew through Kolfinna’s black and white hair, sending it whipping over her face and shoulders, tangling easily. She tried pushing it away from her face, but the shadows binding her didn’t allow her to.
