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“My friend,” Rick amended, glaring at her. “I’ve come to free her and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Confidence rang in his tone and spread over his features, his smirk ever-present. The giant frowned, her face clearer now and the rocky parts gone. Then the giant walked over to them and Rick’s smirk dropped when the large hand scooped them up, bypassing the shield altogether.
“Damn it—”
They were crushed in darkness and each other then slammed into another empty cage hanging from the ceiling. She groaned when the iron bars hit her back. Before the cage could be slammed shut, Rick slipped out and landed more smoothly on the table. He held up his hands when the giant tried to scoop him up again, pissed off.
“Wait!”
“You—”
“I’m a mystical Fae prince and I can entertain you.”
Emerald threw him an incredulous look, hissing. “You will get yourself killed, you idiot. Run.”
“See now, she was my companion when we first landed here, so our connection’s short and she doesn’t know about all this. But now she does and so do you.”
The giant growled. Emerald opened her mouth to shout at him to run again, but the giant beat her to it.
“How will you entertain me?”
What?
“With my tricks, none of which involve me leaving this place,” Rick replied promptly, assurance in his tone. “That is, unless I get a smile out of you.”
The giant didn’t smile. The silence ticked on, leaving Emerald rattled with nerves and ready to kick the cage to get the female’s attention. But then the giant was backing away a step, grabbing a chair, and sitting down, arms folded.
“Entertain me,” she demanded.
There it was again, that smirk, oozing with so much confidence that Emerald was torn between bopping the damned man on the head and calling him all kinds of names. Instead, she kept quiet as she watched him relax, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms as if he had all the time in the world.
A second later, she blinked as Rick started dancing. It looked like a random dance…but it wasn’t a random dance because he was moving with a fluidity that almost belied bones. Not only that, but Rick was also moving as if following an invisible rhythm, one that made her imagine she could hear the thrum of the music and every single beat. She shook it off, worry overpowering amazement as she glanced at the giant.
A sound choked her throat when the giant stayed sitting on the chair, gaze pinned on Rick and just a bit glazed. The crazy sight had her gaping before the Fae’s voice filled the quiet room.
“I don’t know if you have heard of acrobatics, but it’s another specialty of mine. It’s good for entertaining but useless for other things.” He beamed. “Which doesn’t matter, because I am entertaining today.”
He flipped on his feet, then flipped multiple times around the room until he was a blur. He climbed the table next and jumped toward an empty cage, swinging it around until he could flip mid-air, too, and swing to another cage. Dizziness seized her at the sight of him going at it, his stunt entering a frenzied state that had even the giant’s eyes widening. When he reached for the cage in front of her, he swung toward her.
Face close to hers and separated only by the iron bars, Rick winked once, magenta eyes perusing her for wounds and relieved that she was okay. Then he broke into a grin.
“You’re crazy,” she mouthed.
He winked again. A bubble of laughter threatened to expose just how amused she was, and she held it down as it tickled her throat. He was crazy. Reckless. Silly. All those things rolled into one…yet he still looked wickedly handsome when he grinned like that without a care in the world, or how silly he looked.
A few more air flips and swings later, he jumped back to the table, where he rolled and did some fancy acrobatics before finishing it off with a grandiose pose. He held both his hands in the air, showing they were empty.
“No magic,” he announced proudly. “Just me.”
Oddly, the sight of him breathing hard and so infused with joy cut off her amusement as a different feeling entered her. She flattened her palm on her belly, willing it not to flutter…willing her body not to throb this hard for something this ridiculous.
“That was…good,” the giant offered.
“It was more than good,” she blurted out. Two heads whipped in her direction, one assessing. She swallowed her nerves and the other more insistent feeling. “It was fantastic. A top-tier performance, and not useless at all.”
Magenta eyes watched her closely, astonished. The giant examined her further, so she focused on the larger creature and held her head high.
“And I don’t care if you don’t talk to me or acknowledge me because that’s your choice. But at least give him the praise he deserves for risking his dignity.”
