Saving the Fae (Daughter of Light #3) - Leia Stone Page 0,46

at Mara, I… blocked it all out. I somehow compartmentalized the fact that she looked dead. The odd angle of her neck, the way her stomach was opened up and icicles littered the floor. Her cuffs… oh gods her cuffs had popped off and lay open on the floor. I blocked it all out and flew into a rage so blinding that I feared I would kill Liam’s mother on accident.

This was it. This was the moment I was going to end him, slowly if I had it my way. I leapt from the ground and plowed into the both of them like a linebacker. Knocking Liam’s mother out of the way, I landed on top of the Winter King, my chin clipping his chest. Reaching out, I grasped whatever I could hold, relishing the moment that I was about to liquefy this mother fucker!

I grabbed his left upper arm and then his right and pushed myself up so that I was hovering over him.

Then, I turned my head to look Liam’s mother right in the eyes. “Run!”

By the time I snapped my face back to the Winter King’s, I was ready to light him up. I pulsed sunlight into him with what felt like the force of a supernova, but something didn’t feel right. There was no release, it was meeting resistance.

He looked up at me and grinned. “I’m born of Summer and Winter. You really think some Spring magic can kill me?” He cocked his head to the side, and a trickle of fear wedged its way into my bones.

I remembered the moment that Indra had told me he was a product of the original Queen of Summer and King of Winter and how he was older than any fae she’d ever seen.

His hands snaked out and clamped around my arms as a bone-chilling cold took over, freezing my magic in place.

“No, but I can.” Liam’s voice came from somewhere above me, and then I was ripped away from the king, pulled backward and away from the kitchen as Liam and his father went head to head.

One quick look back told me that Cam was dragging me out of the house with a death grip on my upper arms. Liam tossed his father across the room and into a wall as we passed Mara’s lifeless body on the floor. Everything was happening too fast. I needed it to slow down. Just slow down.

“Mara!” I screamed as Cam tried to drag me away from the scene. The reality that I’d lost Mara was just now hitting me. I elbowed Cam in the ribs, forcing him to let me go, and dropped to the ground over Mara’s corpse. Liam and his father crashed into another wall, busting right through it and into the next room, but it was the red-headed fae who held my attention.

Placing two fingers at her pulse, I screamed in frustration as I felt nothing.

“No!” Sobs wracked my body now that it was real. No pulse meant dead. Mara was dead. It was too much, too much death in too little a time. Was she really dead when I walked in? Should I have tried to save her? But then, Liam’s mom might have died? I pushed light into her body, causing it to shake with the force of it, but nothing happened.

Liam groaned in pain, and a crashing sound rang throughout the house.

“Lily.” Jasper appeared before me. “We need to go. Without Mara, we have no way home. We need to run. I’ve gotten some cars—”

“Mara,” I sobbed, clutching her chest and starting to do CPR, but when I pushed down, it just made more blood pour from her open abdomen. “Jasper, help me save her.” I looked to the warlock. “You must have a spell. You said I could give life, right? I’m the Queen of Spring, I—”

“Lily, it’s not possible… not in the way you want.” He actually looked a bit devastated for me.

“But I could bring her back?” Hope bloomed in my chest as Liam and his father crashed through another wall, trashing Mara’s house. Ice was flying everywhere, but I couldn’t move to help him, not now that I was confronted with Mara’s corpse.

Jasper shook his head. “She’d be an animated ghost with no soul.”

I crumpled over her body, grief opening up inside my chest. I didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t free her of her chains. I did nothing for this woman, and she did everything for me and my mother,