Saving the Fae (Daughter of Light #3) - Leia Stone Page 0,22

gaze I’d ever seen.

“Nothing… I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m going to have to kill my own father.”

Oh, gods.

My heart broke then. Yes, his father was evil and totally misguided, but he was still Liam’s dad. I was reminded of when I used Liam’s hair to have the memory vision and how, even though Liam had despised his father for trying to take Cain and the crystal and all of that, there had been a tenderness there. A yearning for the old dad, the man who used to just play with him in the yard and teach him to fly while his mother cooked dinner. All before he became obsessed with seeding a new race.

He stood, and I reached out, wrapping my hand around his, standing to meet him at eye level. “I’ll make sure you don’t have to do that,” I told him.

My intention was clear.

You won’t have to kill your own father. If it comes to it, I will.

Reaching up, he stroked the ends of my pink hair and stepped closer to me, bringing the heat of his body flush against mine. My heart picked up pace in my chest as he stroked his thumb over my bottom lip.

“I’d never make you do that.” My eyes fluttered and then closed as I felt his warm finger trail my skin. “Go on a date with me? Tonight, in Faerie?” he whispered against my ear.

A grin pulled at my lips, and my eyes snapped open.

A date.

Starting over felt good. It felt like this was how we should have done it all along.

“Yes,” I breathed when a shrill scream rocked through the house.

Elle.

Liam and I both tore through the kitchen, narrowly avoiding a collision with Bashur when we came to Mara’s office. She and Liam’s mother were peering out the door to Faerie with a frown.

“What is it?” I shouted, making my way across the room.

Mara looked over her shoulder at me, eyes wide. “While we were gone, there was an attack. A forest creature…”

Why would Elle scream like that… unless. I burst out from behind the ladies and onto the rocky shore to see Elle holding her mother, bleeding and gasping, in her arms. Her sweet mother, my nanny since birth, held a sharped bloody arrow tip in her limp fingers. A harpy lay dead a few feet away.

“Get Kira!” I shouted the second I saw her mother was still breathing. Cam took off running for our house as heat started to ignite in my palms.

Healing… I’d done it once before with Cam, and Kira had said it looked like he’d already been healed… I wasn’t trained, but maybe I could stop the bleeding.

Falling to my knees before my best friend, I felt my heart squeeze at the sound of her sobs, the limp way in which her mother’s body lay, the wet rattling of her chest.

Elle looked up at me with such desperation I nearly burst into tears. We’d attracted a crowd now, and I didn’t want to fall apart in front of everyone. I needed to be strong for Elle and my people.

“Lil,” she whimpered.

The heat pulsed in my hands, and a fierce need to take her into my arms overcame me. Light emanated from my palms, and I reached out for her mother, taking her from Elle.

“I’m not going to let her die,” I promised my bestie as she released her grip on her mother’s frail body, depositing her into my arms. The second she dropped into my arms, pulses of buttery sunlight shot from my hands and into her body where I held her. The fae surrounding us, including Liam’s men, gasped and staggered backward.

“She’s a healer too?” someone whispered.

“A Queen of the people,” another said.

“Long live Queen Lily!” one yelled, and I tried not to cringe. I was a temp Queen, nothing more. Pushing their murmurs from my mind, I cradled Elle’s mother in my arms and pumped the light into her body. It was like a language, the pulses; they weren’t random. It was as if the light was tapping out a rhythm in her body.

After she took one final shuddering breath, her eyes snapped open, and she looked up at me. A cough wracked her body, and then she gasped long and clear, taking in deep lungfuls of air.

“Lily.” She cupped my face.

Relief poured through me, and the light turned off in my palms instantly as if it sensed it was no longer needed.

Elle leaned forward, taking her mother