by Cynthia Eden
Harrison’s lips pulled back in fury. “I will end you—”
“You will end my sister if you touch her! Look at your hands. Look!”
Harrison looked at them. Just beneath the skin, he could see fire. His hands fisted. “She’s hurt.”
“She’s a lot more than hurt. She’s dying.” Ardon crouched beside her. Spared a glare for the figure near Krista’s dead body. “Elise gave the only magic she had to Beaux. She was willing to die for him, and he’s not even her blood! He was nothing, but she gave her essence to bring him back!”
To bring him back?
Ardon’s hands fisted at his sides. “If she’s so evil, if she’s nothing but darkness inside, why did she do that?”
Harrison couldn’t make the fire banish from beneath his skin. All Harrison wanted was to scoop Elise into his arms, but what if he killed her with his touch? What if Ardon was right?
Fairies can’t lie.
But they could twist the truth so easily.
“Why did she do that?” Ardon yelled.
“Because she’s not fucking evil! You are!”
Ardon blinked. “No. No, I am meant to rule.” His hand reached out and stroked back Elise’s hair. An oddly tender touch that made no sense given what Harrison knew about the guy.
Wait a minute. He’s playing me. Harrison tried to push past his fear and think. He rules only if Elise dies. A cold laugh erupted from Harrison. “That’s why you don’t want me to touch her. You want her to lay there and die.”
Ardon shook his head. “You will burn her to ash. You have no control!”
“I had control when I shifted. I turned back into a man.”
“You aren’t a man. You have fire breathing beneath your skin.”
Well, maybe.
“I will take Elise back with me. In the fey realm, she may get stronger.”
You aren’t taking her anywhere. “May being the key word, huh? Or she may die when you drive a knife into her heart. Or maybe it won’t be a knife. Maybe you’ll blast more of your blue light at her. You nearly killed her the last time she was in the fey kingdom. Going for the win now?”
Ardon’s face tightened as rage darkened his eyes. “I was aiming for you! She got in the way.” He frowned. Looked down at Elise. Brushed back her hair again. “Why did she get in the way?”
“Because she loves me.” Harrison believed it with every fiber of his being. “And I love her.”
He heard the rustle of her wings. They were trying to lift, but she didn’t have the strength. She was dying, and he was standing there bitching with her brother. No!
Harrison fell to his knees beside her. His hands reached out, but he stopped. He wanted to touch her so badly. She’d said…said that love made feys stronger. When they’d kissed in bed, she’d said that she was stronger with him. He just wanted to make her stronger. He had to make her stronger.
“You touch her with your fire, and she will die if she isn’t your true mate. If your dragon hasn’t chosen her, if you don’t love her with every bit of your being, then she will die. I am not deceiving you. I’m trying to save her.”
Now Harrison actually felt like he was hearing truth. There was real emotion in Ardon’s voice. Terror.
“Do you love her?” Ardon demanded. His voice had gone low and deep. “Did a hunter really give his heart to a monster?”
“I’m not a fucking hunter.” Elise was too pale. “And she’s not a monster.”
“Do you love her?”
Harrison’s gaze stroked over Elise. “I do. I always will.” But he still hesitated because this was Elise. Elise with her beauty and her grace and her crazy schemes and her fey charm. This was Elise, and if he did anything to hurt her, if she got so much as a bruise, he would never be able to forgive himself.
And I can’t live if she dies.
He—
Elise’s wing brushed against him. A soft, gentle touch on his shoulder. It was like a cool breeze blew through his whole body. He sucked in a breath, and her fingers touched his outstretched hand. She touched him, and his Elise didn’t burn.
“I know…” she whispered. “You…love me…”
She wasn’t burning. He wasn’t burning. Her touch was cooling him, and his touch seemed to be making her stronger. He could see the faint light returning to her cheeks. A glow from within, and Harrison leaned forward and pressed a desperate kiss to her lips. He scooped her up into his arms, and he held her like the treasure she was as he kissed her and kissed her and wished that—
“Look what you’ve done!” Ardon shouted.
Harrison’s head lifted. Fire surrounded him. A circle of flames that he didn’t remember making. The flames were reaching for Elise.
“You’ve killed her. You’ve killed my sister!”
Harrison’s wings sprang from his back. He held tightly to Elise as he shot them into the air, moving her away from the flames—
“It’s not his fire. It’s mine.” Elise’s voice. Not weak any longer. Strong and steady. “What’s his is mine. What’s mine is his. The way it is for mates. That’s the way it is when the love is real.”
He had never heard of magic being exchanged that way. Was it a fey thing?
“The fire is to protect us from you, brother.”
Ardon backed up as he retreated from the flames that suddenly heaved toward him. When he scrambled back, he bumped into Beaux. A Beaux who was standing up, looking a bit like warmed death, but standing with his illusion back in place. Beaux clamped a hand over Ardon’s shoulder.
Spiders swarmed from the darkness.
“Take the prisoner to his cell,” Elise announced. Damn, but she actually sounded all queen-like right then. Not weak, but strong and fierce and sexy.
Mine.
Ardon tried to jerk free of Beaux’s hold. “Beaux can’t take me anywhere. He doesn’t have the power. He doesn’t have—”
“He has me.” Elise pulled from Harrison’s arms. Her wings fluttered as she flew down—and the fire eased for her as she passed. With a soft, delicate movement, she touched down in front of Krista’s still body. “Such a waste,” she murmured. “Sometimes, our families are truly the death of us.” She reached down and her hand seemed to snag something from Krista’s jacket. “May you find your peace.” She turned her attention to Ardon. “May we all find it.”
“I don’t want fucking peace!” Ardon yelled as the veins on his neck bulged. “I want a kingdom!” He tried to rush forward, but Beaux just yanked him back. “When the hell did you get so strong?” Ardon demanded. Then he snapped his fingers. “Oh, right, when my sister nearly died trying to save you.”
Elise flew toward him. All of the fire had died away. The floor was stained black. Her wings sent a gentle wind blowing before she stopped in front of Ardon. “You would have cared if I died?”
His lips pressed together.
Beaux still had a hand clamped on Ardon’s shoulder.
Harrison flew to stand behind Elise. He didn’t trust her brother. He’d seen just how much power the guy packed back in the fey realm.
“I have my wings again,” she told her brother.
“Yeah, I freaking see them. I’m sure you’re thrilled.” His gaze drifted to her wings, then over to Harrison. Ardon sneered and said, “And you have your champion. I bet you think your big, bad dragon is going to turn me to ash—”
“He’s not my champion. He’s my lover. He’s my mate.” Her hand flashed out, and Harrison realized that she’d taken a tube of holy water from Krista. That was what she’d lifted from the hunter’s jacket a moment before. Elise threw the holy water at her brother’s face.
Ardon screamed as he burned.
“Holy water doesn’t hurt fey, but it does hurt demons.” She dropped the empty bottle and grabbed Ardon’s shoulders as she hauled him against her. “Razor told me that you burned when holy water hit you. That’s when I knew what had happened to you. What had happened to you all along.”
“You know nothing!”
/>
“I know our father was a demon. For a while, I thought that meant you and I were both half demon, but…I’m not. That’s one of the reasons father hated me. I wasn’t enough like him.”
Smoke rose from Ardon’s skin. Fury and pain swirled in his eyes.
Voice sad, Elise added, “Just like you hate me because I’m not like you.”
He hissed at her.
“I have never seen your wings, Ardon.” So soft. “It’s because they are demon wings, not fey wings. That’s why you wanted the power of the fey crown so much. You thought maybe the magic would give you what fate hadn’t.”
His lower lip trembled. “Why do you have everything…and I have nothing?”
Harrison wrapped an arm around Elise’s stomach and pulled her back against him. He was afraid Ardon would attack her.
And I’ll burn him to ash.
“You do have something, Ardon,” she assured him. “Deep, deep inside, hidden so well that I almost overlooked it, I think you have a little bit of good.”
Ardon laughed. “Bullshit.”
The spiders had formed a circle around his feet. They weren’t attacking. They just seemed to be waiting.
“When I was in that cell in the fey realm, I heard you scream when you hit me with your magic. You were afraid you’d killed me.”
Harrison still owed him for that attack. He’d be getting payback.
“And, a few moments ago, you were afraid that Harrison would kill me with his touch. You tried to stop him because you were truly worried about me.”
Ardon’s expression didn’t change. “I’m bored. I’m leaving—”
“I’m stronger than you. The curse is gone. My wings are back, and I have my dragon’s power. You’re not going anywhere unless I decree it.”
When he didn’t try to run away, Harrison realized that her brother was under Elise’s control. Harrison still wanted to tear the guy apart, though, so he was waiting and watching for so much as a twitch that looked like a would-be attack.
“You didn’t want Harrison to touch me because you were afraid he’d kill me. Harrison wasn’t touching me because he was terrified of hurting me.” Her lips curled. “So I touched him. I knew he loved me, just as much as I loved him. There was no risk.”
“How…did you know?” The halting question came from Harrison. How had she been so certain of him?
Elise spared him a glance and a tender smile. “Because when you found out that I was a supernatural, you didn’t come at me with a knife or a gun. You rushed to me so that you could protect me. You loved me even then.”
“Hell, sweetheart, if you want the truth,” he murmured. “I think I started falling for you when I first saw you in that alley. You stood up to those vamps like they were nothing. No fear.” Strong was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
She blew him a kiss, and he could have sworn she hummed.
“Uh, can we stop this shit?” Ardon groused. “You won. You’ve got a dragon. Why not just go ahead and kill me?”
“I can kill him for you,” Harrison offered. “It would be my pleasure.”
Elise shook her head. Her gaze returned to Ardon. “You aren’t all dark.”
Beaux coughed. “Never thought I’d be defending the dick, but you’re right, Elise. I hitched a ride over to this realm on him. He had the chance to kill you. He came over right after you, but…I think he was just here to make sure you were okay. He sent you here, I think, so that you could get stronger.”
She nodded. “I know. You were worried your magic would be poison in me, so you sent me to this realm. You wanted me better. You didn’t want me dead.”
His chin jerked up. “You need to end me. You or your dragon. I warn you now, the world is better without me in it.”
Elise shook her head. “And I tell you now that you will not die, not while I still can save you.” She glanced around. “There’s already been enough death.”
And Elise reached for Harrison’s hand.
Chapter Twenty
“Do you want to talk about it?” Elise asked softly. She turned her back on the view of her kingdom and focused on her dragon. He’d come with her back to the fey realm. Been silent and strong and been breaking her heart the entire time.
Something had happened during that last fight. When she’d poured her magic at Beaux, something had broken inside of her…only to be welded back together when she’d touched Harrison. She was stronger than she’d ever been in her life. So powerful. She’d been able to bind her brother’s magic with a wave of her hand.
She’d transported them all back to the fey realm with a snap of her fingers.
Power pulsed beneath her skin.
So did fire. She could summon it with barely a thought.
She hadn’t even touched her crown yet. What would happen when she did?
Harrison didn’t answer her question. He just stared out at the kingdom. “It’s beautiful here.”
It was. As soon as she’d come back—as if the realm had known that her curse was gone and she’d won the battle against her brother—magic had exploded. What had been dead or dying had burst into bloom. The darkness was gone. Glittering, shining homes and castles had returned.
“Beauty is only on the surface. It’s what’s beneath the surface that matters.” Beneath all of the shine and glitter of her world, her people waited. People who were ready for a change. Ready to leave darkness behind and step into the light again.
She reached for Harrison’s hand. “I’m sorry you had to kill Jason Key.”
His head sagged forward. “I hated him.”
Elise waited.
“And when I was a kid…there was no one I loved more.”
She slipped closer.
“Jason murdered my real parents. I will never know them. And…God, as I was killing him, part of me was still screaming to stop. Still screaming…” He swallowed. “Screaming like I did when I was a child and he beat me with a whip so that my wings were savaged.”
Elise’s hand went to his back. She leaned forward and pressed tender kisses to his shoulders.
“He wasn’t a good man,” Harrison said flatly. “And he raised me to be exactly like him.”
“No.”
Harrison’s head turned at her sharp answer.
“He raised you to be a hunter. You raised yourself to be a man. You turned yourself into the man I see before me, and you are not a single bit like him.”
His gaze held hers. “How can you love me?”
Elise had to laugh. “Oh, Harrison, wrong question. What you should be asking is…how could I love anyone but you?” She leaned onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. “You are the one for me. No other would ever do.”
“Because I’m a dragon?”
“That’s hot and all.” She winked at him. Mostly because she wanted him to smile. His pain was a weight on her heart. “But I love you because you’re strong and smart. Because you fight for the people who belong to you. Because you do what’s right.” She bit her lower lip. “I haven’t always done what’s right. Not until I met you. You taught me how to do that. You taught me how to be better.”
He shook his head.
“You did. You helped me.”
“Sweetheart, you’re so wrong. You saved me.”
The princess had saved the dragon? That was fun. She liked that. “Maybe we can just say that we saved each other. Will that work?”
He curled his arms around her and pulled her close. “That will work.” He tenderly kissed her. “I love you, Elise.”
“I know, but I will never get tired of hearing those magic words.”
***
She was so nervous that she thought she might vomit. Elise tried to do some deep breathing, but that shit didn’t help her one single bit as she stood at the end of the seriously long corridor that led to the throne room. Beaux was at her side, casting her frantic, calm down glances. She would’ve calmed down, except this was such a huge freaking deal.
The crow
n was going on her head. In the next few minutes, it would be placed on her head. The fey knew that she was the firstborn. The truth had been revealed. Her brother had been locked away in a cell, and this was supposed to be her big moment.
Except for one small problem…
“The crown judges you,” she whispered to Beaux as he escorted her down the corridor. Everyone curtsied or bowed, and she tried to look regal instead of freaked out. “If it finds me lacking, you know that damn thing might kill me. Or hell, if I’m bad on the inside, maybe the whole kingdom will go dark in a blink.”
“You’re not lacking.” His posture was perfect. His voice stern.
“My father was a demon. I’ve got fey wings, but who knows—”
“I know. And so does he.” Beaux motioned toward the tall, handsome figure that waited near the throne.
Harrison.
His dragon wings were out. The fey had made him special clothing—apparently, gossamer wasn’t his style, so they’d gone more badass for him. But the tunic still had slits in the back for his wings. What a sight those wings were.
Harrison smiled at her as he waited for her to come to him. He would be the one putting the crown on her head. He was her chosen consort, after all.
She couldn’t wait to consort with him. After she survived getting the fey crown placed on her head.
As she neared him, Harrison’s smile faded. He glared. Uh, oh. Who’d pissed him off? Elise risked a glance over her shoulder, wondering who might be behind her.
No one was there.
When she looked forward again—Gah! Harrison had flown toward her in a blink. He stood there, blocking her path and nearly giving her a heart attack.
Everyone froze.
“What’s wrong?” Harrison demanded.
Her gaze darted around him and landed on the crown that waited—on its own fancy cushion—to be placed on her head.
“She’s scared,” Beaux whispered.
“Scared of what?” Harrison immediately took her hand and pulled her away from Beaux as he swept the crowd of nervous onlookers. “Is a threat here?”
“It’s the crown.” If possible, Beaux’s voice was even softer. “She’s afraid it will find her lacking. Or afraid that it will show everyone she’s dark."