For a second, he thought he had landed in a movie set. Everything was so...Too much. The outrageous visuals—pointy ears, giant butterfly wings, glowing glowering eyes—made him wonder what kind of mushrooms exactly had been growing in his bedroom.
But he hadn’t imagined Adelyn. He hadn’t. He still felt her in the tips of his fingers, still tasted her on the back of his tongue. And Adelyn wasn’t the sort to run from make-believe.
He lifted the iron-tipped spear, and the figures nearest him pulled back with a murmur of dismay.
One moment he had been standing in his empty bedroom and now he was surrounded. And if at one time, he entertained the notion of fairy princesses, these beings destroyed that childhood illusion forever. He had come upon a mountain lion once, feasting on the remains of a calf. While the cow lowed plaintively in the distance, Josh had stared at the beast. It stared back: ferocious, deadly, and utterly indifferent to him.
He had shot at it, but it had been too quick. And though it had run away, he knew it could just as readily have run at him if it believed him weak prey.
These phae were the same.
With the pistol in his right hand, the spear felt strange and unwieldy in his left, but he cut it in a slow circle around him, forcing them back another step.
He strained for a glimpse of Adelyn in the crowd.
And caught a glint of emerald eyes. She lingered behind a distant pillar. He wanted to call out to her, but she’d said names could be dangerous.
“Poor man, you seem to have lost your way.” The voice was silk over steel, slicing and beautiful, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from rising to the dais nearby.
He had registered the throne-like setting, but in his need to find Adelyn, he hadn’t paid attention. He did now.
Adelyn had called her a Queen, and even in the heart of his rugged individualism, he understood. She exuded a sheer power that made his legs tremble with the urge to lower himself.