Page 42 of The Crowned Fae Queen
Waves crash over the stone edges as the water falls with a loud slap. Nothing. No separation. I stare wide-eyed at Bear. His own desperation clear.
“I... I don’t know what to do. My magic doesn’t even feel the poison. The water isn’t sharing all of its secrets with me.” I glance down, unable to keep his gaze. This is my failure.
“There has to be something you can do.” His voice breaks, his confidence in me is so strong, even as my own wavers.
I shake my head. My hand drifts to settle against my racing heart. The tips of my fingers brush against the ridges of my necklace. A sentimental piece I hate that I kind of love. Sometimes love can make us weak, lessons I have learned one too many times.
“No, but I know someone who can.”
13
The Storm
Syren
Soggy clothing and rain-soaked hair clings to Iri’s form. His wide eyes desperate and pleading for an answer. The way the cloth clings to every inch of him takes away from his bulk. It makes him look unnervingly thin. Perhaps it is my imagination.
“I’m going,” I shout against the rumble of thunder.
Lantern lights flicker on around us as the storm overshadows the sun, and the haze of smoke from burnt bodies lingers. Each one with their steady sphere of light glowing until they flicker manically in the wind.
“To the witch? Will she even help us with this?”
“She has to. She’s my mother.” The words sound weak, even to me. “I have to do something.”
Iri steps forward, his movement stiff. I lift my hands, cupping his arms and squeezing his biceps in reassurance.
“I can’t let you go alone.” His words are a cry that catches in the wind.
“Goddess Nature will watch over me.” Standing on my tip toes, I press a kiss to his lips.
He wraps both arms around my shoulders, pulling me against him until our bodies align. Heat drives through the cold cloth, stilling my shivering body.
The tip of his nose nuzzles into my neck, the breath of his words tickling against my skin. “Goddess Celeste will watch over you. Meet me back at the castle. Do not return here alone.”
I nod, pulling away. “There is no better time than now. I need to go.” My hand cups the trinket at my neck.
“Are you sure you can even use it to get to her?” The end of his sentence lost to the storm, only saved by my ability to read his moving lips.
I smile, mustering every ounce of my courage. “I’m the daughter of a water witch. There has to be some dormant power waiting in here somewhere.”
Iri gives me an arch of his brow, a cynical look that says he needs me to prove him wrong.
And I will.
A retort forms on my lips, but the words never come. The orange glow of lamp lights, the black of the steel poles, the dark brown of Bear’s hair, and the nude pink of his lips... all of it becomes a blur. Streaks of color that swirl around me.
When I had fallen from that wall on the way to the witch, there had been a moment much the same as this. Everything was happening, and it all was happening to me, yet there wasn’t anything I could do. Now the world spins, slicing my vision and spreading it like paint smeared roughly against the canvas. My body is weightless but falling at the same time. I am the weight.
Wind changes direction. Instead of breezing past me as it does while standing on the flat earth, it pulls my hair up above my head. My dress floats in the air around me, lifting from my legs. A strangled scream disgraces my lips as Iri’s image completely vanishes and my arms and legs wave through the air for purchase.
I expect to hit solid ground. I expect to feel the greeting with such a shatter of pain through my bones. Yet I don’t. The twisting lines of color slow, creeping to a halt. Curves of weathered rocks, clouds of white steam, and a moving wall of spiders.
Blinking, I recognize the hot spring. Even more so, I recognize the large pool of water, remembering the way it felt as it called to my magic just under my feet. My body hangs in the air for a moment longer. A stilled second for me to shout a profanity before I drop completely into its warmth.
Energy, warm like a sunny day and soft like a lover’s caress, travels from the tip of my toes up through my legs, then my torso, past my shoulders, and comes out in a gasp as my head breaks the surface. The scales on my neck tickle at the sensation, ready to breathe in the water like it’s my true home.
“I sensed I was needed.” The witch smiles with her rows of sharp fangs. Her tail flicks against the water, her body perched on the rock as I once had been before. “Would you like a hand out of the water?”
