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“Don’t you want to put me down and rest for a while?” the little female asked, interrupting my train of thought.
“Hmm?” I looked down at her, frowning. “Put you down? Why?”
“Because you’ll hurt your back. I’m not exactly, er, skinny,” she added with a grimace. When her cute little nose wrinkled like that, I could see the Fae bloodlines in her. She had delicate features, though they had been somewhat blunted by her years in the Mortal Realm.
“Hurt my back? How?” I asked, honestly mystified. Now that I had stared, I found I couldn’t stop looking at her face. She was actually kind of adorable, though I told myself it was wrong to think that about Royalty. Wrong and disrespectful, Krynn would say. But Fuck that—I call things as I see them.
“Look, you don’t have to pretend—I know I’m heavy!” she exclaimed.
I frowned.
“Are you questioning my strength and fitness to protect you, Princess?”
“She’s not doing anything of the kind,” Krynn said quickly, before she could answer. “Humans make their females feel bad for having bountiful curves. Living among them for so long has made her believe it’s a bad thing to be full-figured,” he added.
Oh—now it made sense. It was just more fucking human stupidity.
“You have curves, but you’re not too heavy—or too curvy, Princess,” I told her. “Don’t worry about that.”
But my words didn’t seem to reassure her at all.
“My name is Lily, not ‘Princess,’” she snapped.
I frowned.
“No, your name is Princess Lilliana—she who was lost but now is found.”
“I told you, I’m not a Princess!” she protested again.
“I know all this must be confusing to you,” Krynn said smoothly, before I could answer. “But I promise we’ll explain. Just let Sel and I get you to the Palace where it’s safe, all right?”
“I just think you’re both going to be disappointed,” she replied. “I mean, I’m not who you think I am. I don’t?—”
At that moment, a dagger came out of the darkness and buried itself in my upper arm.
I roared in pain and nearly dropped the little female. I put her on her feet and shoved her to the ground in one motion as I called my magic.
“Krynn—watch her!” I snarled as I scanned the trees for the would-be assassin. Just as I had feared, Mordren was already on the attack.
I felt my oldest friend pulling magic from the ground as I pulled my own magic from the sky. A river of molten lightning flowed down into my arm and I shot it into the woods, where the dagger had come from.
There’s a reason I’m the Captain of the Palace Guard and it’s not because I play nicely with others.
I heard a howl of pain and then running footsteps crunching in the leaves. The attacker, whoever he or she was, was clearly in too much of a hurry to be stealthy.
I started to go after them, but then I felt Krynn’s touch on my shoulder.
“Wait! It could be what they want—you running off and leaving the Princess undefended,” he pointed out.
I growled in frustration but I knew he was right. Krynn would do his best to defend the Princess, but his magic was much more passive than mine. He had grown a barrier of thick vines around her, but they wouldn’t hold back a really determined assassin.
“Fine.” I drew the dagger from my upper arm and examined it, ignoring the blood that flowed from the wound. As I had expected, it had no markings—no way to help me identify the would-be killer.
Disgusted, I threw it to the ground.
“You’d better let me look at that when we get to the Palace,” Krynn remarked. He looked down at the Princess, who was crouching in the center of the thick barrier of vines he had grown for her. “My Lady, it’s all right—Sel drove away the attacker. Come, let me carry you this time since he is wounded.”
“But he…he called lightning out of the sky!” Her eyes were wide and frightened as Krynn swung her into his arms. “And you made those vines grow in a split second—I’ve never seen anything like it outside of a freaking Marvel movie!”
