Page 137 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
“I hate to break up your little moment, but if Queen Keira could remove her magic from my flesh, it would be most appreciated.”
I turn at the sound of King Leonardo’s pained voice. The cracks continue to creep along his face, black outlines that burn red within. Aldrin cut off my magic through our mate bond, but neither of us removed from Leonardo what I had already fed into him.
I am tempted to leave it there. It will burn out eventually, without the act completed.
Aldrin sighs, pulling my back close to his chest and murmuring in my ear, “Can I trust you, if I remove my block on your magic?”
The honest answer is that I feel fucking unhinged, and his presence in my mind knows this.
He pokes me playfully in the side. “Keira,” he says in a low warning. “Can I trust you? We still need him.”
I huff. “Well, in that case, sure, why not?”
I try to stand and go to Leonardo to call back my power, but Aldrin’s grip tightens on me. “Do it from here. I’m not ready to let go of you.”
Before I can protest that I don’t have enough power to do it from a distance in my current condition, Aldrin opens up the reservoir of his magic to me. Somehow, he is fully healed. He went from death to full health.
I begrudgingly remove every last web of my destructive earth wield from the Starlight King. As I do so, I notice the dark rings under his eyes and the sheen of sweat across his skin, the way it stains the neckline and underarms of his tunic in long lines. My attack didn’t do all of that. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
Then I register the other faces in the room. Cyprien, sitting in a metal chair, elbows on knees, leaning forward as he stares at us intensely. Klara is holding a bowl of medical supplies, her lips twisted, eyes flashing and every muscle beyond tense, like she is desperate to rejoin the fight. She must be going through her own personal hell, with her husband still in that golden cage fighting for his life and her son in the dungeons, enduring the gods know what sort of fate. Hawthorne stands in the doorway, a frown of concern pinching his features. Voices from the others drift in from the next room.
They are all here.
“By the Soul Ripper, can someone explain to me how we are alive?” I snap, ready to pull my hair out.
“Return to the table, allow me to finish removing the poison from your system, and I will explain while I talk,” Leonardo says gruffly, raising an eyebrow at me. “Unless you would prefer me to leave the remnants in you to grow and multiply and kill you a second time?”
I glance at the bare metal table before him, then the others in the room. The chill in the air and the frost on the walls finally register. This is a morgue, kept artificially cold with ice magic fueled by plinths. A shiver runs through me, and not because of the temperature. For a time, we were all dead bodies in here, being preserved until the Starlight King could work his magic on us.
I pull away from Aldrin and he begrudgingly lets me go, needing to be forced to finally unwind his fingers from mine. I immediately miss the hard warmth of his body against me. The certainty of safety within his arms and the reassurance of his heartbeat. I move toward Leonardo as though walking through water, and when I reach the table he gestures toward, I send a glance back at Aldrin.
Are we sure about this? I don’t like the idea of making myself vulnerable to this man.A spike of anxiety flares within me, but Aldrin soothes it with a wave of his own confidence.
He healed the rest of us. He helps us at a risk to himself.
I climb onto the table and lie down, watching Leonardo through slitted eyes. I am no longer that naive girl who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Leonardo’s hands hover over me, then pause as I tense. “Can I touch you? My magic flows faster with contact, especially close to your heart, since I am working on your blood.”
“So, you are going to ask for permission this time?”
“It’s a little hard to ask a corpse for consent.”
“Perhaps you should have ensured I didn’t become a corpse in the first place,” I snap.
He lets out a long-suffering sigh and glances to Aldrin, who just shrugs with a suppressed smile quirking his lips.
“The last battle is still to come and your enemies remain breathing,” Leonardo grumbles. “So I will ask you again: can I touch you while I extract the poison?”
A deep fatigue rolls over me. I search his face, knowing I have no choice. “Yes.”
The moment his icy fingers touch my collarbone, a blast of magic surges through me, causing me to jolt. My body tingles like thousands of ants crawl all over me,insideof me. As each particle of the toxin is drawn out of my blood and into him, the soreness recedes from my muscles, unknotting them, and the deep fatigue lifts from my brain.
It feels like I can finally suck in a full breath after holding it for an eternity.
Leonardo speaks while he works. “Belladonna’s poison is unmatched by any other fae in my court, Nightmare or otherwise. The particles seem to have some level of intelligence, and all they want is to grow and destroy as much as possible. I have never witnessed another poison working so rapidly in killing a person, and I have lived for hundreds of years. It clogs the blood, stops the heart and makes the lungs fail, but it also preserves the body perfectly for a long time. Rot, decay and breakdown of the internal structures are paused. Even the brain and mind remain undamaged. She cannot call back the poison once she has fed it to a person, but I can.”
My muscles lock up and I gasp from the pain of the cramps as he draws out the last particles that cling to me. My back arches, raising my chest from the table.
