Page 21 of Faerie Fate
His hand slowly slipped from the key and his lifeless body tipped forward, crashing to the sunlit ground beyond the portal door, the golden glow a mockery. He lay still and the world held its breath.
My hands flew automatically to cover my mouth. I didn’t feel them.
What—
No.No, that wasn’t… He couldn’t…
It happened so fast, so brutally. There and gone. He’d come to save me and he’d paid with his life. What was worse? Watching the person you love die a horrible, slow death or having it be over in a blink, something that absolutely had not needed to happen? Something preventable?
Devastation sucked the air out of my lungs, and I stared at him, shocked and horrified. Uncle Will died. In a heartbeat. Faster than the pulse of a hummingbird wing.
For the briefest moment, I’d gotten my uncle back, the man who raised me, the man he’d been before he started drinking himself to oblivion when I was little.
He rested, sprawled on his stomach, a slight breeze tickling the auburn hair away from his neck. He’d never move again. All because he wanted to get me out.
Because of King Tywin’s fucking horrible rules. The king’s genocidal desire to keep anyone not fae, and not invited, out of his realm did this.
Uncle Will died because of Tywin.
The scream I’d leashed inside broke free and I reached for him, barely noticing the way the edge of the door dissolved.
Will hadn’t been allowed to use the key, so it killed him, and now the magic was destroying the doorway too.
I stepped back and watched the magic melt and take the key with it. The portal disappeared, with me on one side and my uncle’s body on the other.
A new, seething hatred for the king filled me. I had no way to get back to Faerie unless I found the others. And if they were already there?—
Then I was trapped.
Oh, god. Oh, god.
My hands dragged through my hair, knocking the glasses askew in the process. Enraged, heartbroken, I tore them offmy face and sent them flying against the wall that had held a doorway just a moment ago.
The plastic shattered on impact. I howled at the wall, at the glasses, at the way my uncle was ripped away from me.
How could this have happened? Why didn’t I say anything to him sooner? I should have stopped him. I hadn’t known he’d try to take the key from me. Why would he use it?
But I knew why.
The back of my neck burned where he’d torn the key necklace free. My muscles ached and the rest of me went hot and tight, feverish. Cold immediately took the place of all that heat and my skin erupted into goosebumps.
My bottom lip trembled and I bit down on it, my control leaching away into terrible fury. I listed into my first step and sagged to my knees, cracking my bones. My head spun in useless circles.
Uncle Will was dead. Repeating it didn’t make it feel real, not yet.
This world was weak, dead, lacking in something vital that Faerie had in spades. But it wasn’t only the dead sensation of the mortal world that got to me. My shifter was always strong here.
The mate bond drained me of the last bits of resistance and vibrancy. What the bond didn’t take, the zombie curse from Madam Muerte’s bite did. I spiraled low, my head filled with droning and my stomach sicker than I’d ever been before.
Behind me and down the hall, Kendrick lay unconscious in the room. If I couldn’t make my body move, then I’d never be able to distance myself. I’d never be able to crawl away on my belly like the bitch he told me I was.
I barely managed to get myself upright and stand, much less leave. My fingers shook as I clawed them into the mortar between stones, hauling my ass up, leaning heavily when my balance disappeared. Every part of me shook.
I’d fought pretty damn hard with my powers against Kendrick before he subdued me. And all while being sick. Now it finally caught up to me and my mouth filled with the acrid taste of bile.
Barbara’s witch fix down in the dungeons had been temporary. She’d warned me of it so long ago. Her fix wasn’t going to be enough to help me here, not when I pushed myself to the limits.
Tears broke free.
