Page 61 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
We keep climbing until we reach a doorway with a thick ward of swirling mist.
Cyprien pauses and glances over his shoulder at me. “Ready?”
I pull back my hood, grinning like a fool. “Beyond ready.”
The heavy resistance of the ward pushes back at us with each step we take, until all at once we are through.
The atmosphere of the room turns completely as tense discussions cut off. Silence falls upon us as my closest friends gape at me. None dare to move, except Hawthrone, who rubs at his eyes like I am a mirage.
“Well, it’s about fucking time you arrived!” Drake bellows, breaking the spell and striding over to me. “Where have you been? Hiding under a rock somewhere?”
“You know damned well where I have been,” I say. “I brought the reinforcements we need to the city, with more to arrive in the coming days.”
Drake closes the distance between us, throwing out his arms for a hug. “Come here. Bring it in.”
I put a hand to his chest, holding him back a step as I wrinkle my nose at his appearance. Fucking Florian’s red eyes look at me with such affection. His face, framed by chin-length brown hair and a short-cropped beard, smiles warmly at me, when the real man only knew how to sneer. While my brain knows it is Drake under that facade, my eyes tell me a different thing.
“Drop your glamour, Drake. I’m too tempted to punch you with that face on.”
He does so immediately, then locks me in an embrace, rocking us from side to side. “Don’t leave us again. Especially not under these circumstances, where we don’t know if you are dead or alive from moment to moment.” His voice breaks, and guilt floods me.
“I had no choice, Drake,” I whisper. “You’d do the same for Klara.”
“I know, but just don’t do it again.”
I sense another person approaching, and then Klara is pulling him off me. “Stop being selfish. We all want a piece of Aldrin.” She gives me a quick squeeze, never one for big gestures of affection. “Keira will be here soon. She has done well and triumphed over every insult they have thrown her way.”
All I can do is dip my head in reply as words rise up and choke within my throat.
Hawthorne slams into me next, tears sliding down his face despite his struggles to keep it together. I say soothing words and pat him on the back, then pass him off to Drake.
Silvan slaps me on the shoulder multiple times, as though testing my sturdiness. “You didn’t do too badly for being locked up with those gods-forsaken Nightmares.”
Kai stalks around, riled up with frustrated energy that he cannot expend in his humanoid form. When I hold my arms out to him, he tosses his head like he would as an equine, flicking long navy-and-green hair, then points a finger at me. “Win that throne, Aldrin. Stop this persecution of the low fae. We should be able to walk the streets as equals to any high fae, not be treated as a hated and shamed minority.”
“Kai.” I place both my hands on his shoulders and peer into his eyes. “Why do you think I am here? The Spring Courtwillreturn to the way it was under my rule years ago.”
The beast within him calms long enough for him to place a slightly scaled hand to my heart. “This is why you will always have my allegiance. Not just the way you respect kelpies alone, butthis, your heart, is the reason I will follow you into any battle, no questions asked.” He turns and abruptly stalks away.
Zinnia gives me a broad smile that is somehow viperlike, drained of warmth. “Kai is going to lose his gods-damned mind if we don’t start fighting soon.”
“And you?” I ask.
“I’m about the same,” she says with nonchalance.
I sense Keira’s approach before she enters the room.
A telltale warmth blossoms within my chest.
The misty ward covering the doorway churns and billows out white tendrils as two murky bodies push through, and then she is before me with Basil at her side.
My heart skips a beat at the sight of her beauty. Rosebud lips. Immaculate porcelain skin scattered with radiant freckles. Huge, hazel doe eyes that widen as they fall upon me. That halo of tightly curling fiery hair that has a life of its own.
I cannot help the huge grin that grows across my face as I stalk toward her like a predator homed in on its prey. Then Keira is running at me. I grab her around the waist and lift her into the air, spinning in a circle as I press her soft body to mine. I take her lips and find paradise within them.
Aldrin! Oh gods, Aldrin! It really is you,she moans into my mind.
Her hands run through my hair and across my face again and again, as though she cannot believe it. I part her lips and dip my tongue inside her mouth, needing to taste her. She meets me stroke for stroke. This is pure bliss. It is everything I have longed for since I lost her.
