Page 9 of The Crowned Queen

“Everyone will have to help hold her down,” Kai lowered the child to the cold stone in her nest of blankets. “I don’t have any restraints.”

“Goddess,” Loren muttered.

He knelt beside her, resting a hand on each of the child’s thin calves. She was impossibly small—pale skin stretched tight across her bones and her sunken cheeks flushed with fever. Her eyes moved rapidly behind closed lids, a small cry slipping between her cracked lips before Finn shoved a clean cloth into her mouth, silencing her.

“Is this really necessary?” Loren hissed. She was so thin—a stiff breeze could have blown her away. It couldn’t possibly take three grown fae to restrain her.

“We have to strap down the adults,” Caela said, her voice low enough not to carry to the female cradling her child’s head in her lap. “They scream and fight. If you can’t stomach it step back and make room for someone who can. And keep those—” she cast a dark look at his churning shadows “—under control. This is her best chance of surviving. If you ruin it for her, I’ll kill you myself. I don’t care who you are.”

She dares threaten her king, the darkness hissed. We could destroy her with a thought⁠—

“Not right now,” Loren muttered. “Focus on the child.”

Caela cut him a sharp look but turned back to the child without comment when the shadows subsided around him. Across from her, Finn pinned the girl’s frail arm to the stone, exposing the hateful rune carved at the base of her thumb.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, nodding at Kai.

“Great.” Kai selected a needle, flexing his fingers before he took the child’s limp hand into his own. “Try to hold her steady,” he said, glancing around at them all. “Once I start, I won’t be able to stop until it’s done.”

“Stop wasting time, Sterling,” Caela snapped.

Kai nodded, his expression set with a grim focus Loren had never seen on him before. The girl’s hand looked impossibly small in his grasp, the ly’ithra rune shimmering at the base of her thumb too tiny to do so much damage⁠—

The first needle pierced her skin.

The girl’s body jerked, her back arching. A muffled cry tore from her throat against the gag, but there was no real strength left in her—nothing but the desperate instinct to fight. Loren held fast, bile rising in the back of his throat as her small legs twisted and kicked against his grip.

The stench of seared flesh filled the air, blood welling on her skin as Kai worked, switching needles with surgical precision. The girl’s mother held her shoulders, tears pouring down her cheeks as she watched Kai work on her child.

The girl convulsed again, her muffled cry hitting Loren like a blade to the chest. He wanted to pull Kai away, to make it stop. But if this was her only chance⁠—

“Almost there,” Kai murmured, his voice tight. With a final stroke, he pulled the needle free. The faint shimmer at the base of the girl’s thumb vanished. For one terrifying heartbeat she went still, her body limp beneath their hands.

“Finn—” Loren started, but before he could finish, the child gasped—a ragged, wheezing cough tearing out of her chest as she choked on the gag.

“Thank the Gods.” Kai slumped back, his face haggard. The child sobbed—tearing the gag from her mouth as she fought her way free of the blankets, reaching for her weeping mother.

“We’ll give you some space,” Finn said, helping the human mage to his feet. “We’re right up here when you’re ready. Loren, Caela—you too.”

Loren climbed to his feet, following them deeper into the tunnels.

“Gods—” Kai collapsed against the wall, dragging a handkerchief out of a pocket and wiping his face. “I hate that. But at least she’s going to be alright now⁠—”

“She’s about to be hunted across the New Dominion,” Finn hissed. “We can’t get her out. Not with the blockade. You never should have brought her here.”

“She would have died if he hadn’t,” Caela retorted, stepping between Finn and Kai. “At least this way she has a chance.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Finn snapped. “Maerin does things her way. But there are reasons we do them ours. If she wants to keep using Kai, you will not disrespect our protocols again.”

Caela’s chin jerked up, her blue eyes flashing. “Do you own him, then?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Finn said. “We had refugees here—innocent people you could have led the Arcanum straight to. And Kai’s supposed to be keeping tabs on Jaxon Shaw.”

“I didn’t join your rebellion to watch children I can save die in front of me.” Kai shoved his soiled handkerchief back into his pocket. “I’m not exactly in Jaxon’s inner circle after what I did on Eluneth.”

“So you haven’t found anything?” Loren demanded. The shadows hissed in the back of his mind, a muttered chorus of voices calling for him to do something, anything⁠—

“That’s not what I said.” A bitter smile twisted Kai’s lips. “He thinks I’m stupid, not traitorous. Our families are still friends—my father and I were invited to dinner at the Shaw house next week. I doubt he’ll let me see her, but I’ll do my best.”