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Astonishment spread over his features as he registered the magic and what she was. He sputtered when she slipped, then hissed when she grabbed his ankles and kept pulling aggressively. Just as she was about to give up, the rock he was holding on to broke.
“Don’t breathe it in!”
But her warning was too late, as the next shot from the pixies went straight to his face, covering him with shimmering powder. Then they were both plunged into a continuous fall that choked her senses. Emerald reached up, hands calling her magic, but it was stuck in her body. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to die a gruesome death…then preparing herself for the hard impact.
An arm caught her and swung her upward, changing her direction until she was eye-to-eye with the male Fae. She watched the powder take effect as those magenta eyes lost focus. She felt his body struggle with it as he locked her in place. Then she was bouncing on some force—a magical one—just as his arm went slack and his body slumped against hers.
They bounced a second time, then twice more before skidding to a halt and landing on some invisible cushion. She lost her breath when his body crushed hers completely, smothering her until she forcibly pushed him out of the way. She sat up, dizzy…and still felt her neck prickling. She looked up, convinced that they hadn’t given up yet. The urge to keep running pounded in her head until she glimpsed the crumpled figure and cursed.
“Hey, wake up. Wake up.”
Emerald kept shaking him until he stirred, the first sign that he was still alive. She slapped a hand over his mouth when he groaned, then leaned in to whisper.
“Don’t talk out loud. We’re still in harm’s way.”
Those mesmerizing eyes opened and locked onto her, but the awareness from earlier was gone as he was shrouded in dreamy blankness. Realizing she needed to do this alone, she lifted him to his feet, gritting her teeth when his weight swayed and nearly toppled them back to the ground. Left with no choice, she used magic once more to steel her body and give her support, the relief pouring when it held. Carefully, Emerald dragged them away from the cliffside, then closed her eyes when the hissing came back.
“Oh, no,” she moaned. “Oh, boy.”
“That’s it, baby. Moan it out. Feel me.”
She opened her eyes to glare at him, but he was still out of it. When she dragged him away faster, she noticed that he was staring at her and glowered again.
“What?”
“You’re very pretty. Baby…”
“Don’t baby me.”
Great. She was stuck with a dazed, confused flirt, who would probably kill her the first chance he got once he was sober. But she didn’t let go, her conscience unable to bear the guilt of leaving him to his helpless death, even when she couldn’t run while supporting him. At the corner of her eye, she spotted flimsy wings and ducked—but the wings slammed into an invisible force and bounced backward.
“You’re more than pretty, actually. Beautiful. That’s what you are. You must be from a nice court that our court covets. Or you must be from one of those deadly ones, using your beauty to trap the likes of me and my helpless kingdom.”
“Shut up.”
“My father always warned me about those courts and those folks. They will seduce us first before killing us in our sleep—or during sex. They will kill our king and queen just because they can.”
“Please stop talking. I don’t want to learn any more about your court.”
But she was already intrigued, her mind forming a few reluctant thoughts. One, he was from a court with a proper king and queen, and that court was weaker than other courts if he could admit that his kingdom was helpless—which meant he wasn’t from one of those formidable big courts she kept hearing chilling stories about. Two, he was of a lower status if he talked of their king and queen with this kind of reverence. Three…
“Are you sure? I was just getting to the good part.”
A pixie came charging toward her, then another. They bounced back and a rippling shimmered before her, then around her as more tried to hit them with powder but couldn’t penetrate. She looked at the Fae, then at the continuous rippling every time a pixie tried to come for them.
Three, it’s him. He’s the one protecting us from this.
“Keep talking,” she blurted out. “Keep doing whatever you’re doing while I get us out of here.”
But get them where?
She scanned her surroundings while his voice washed over her senses, the words a lull that urged down her panic every time it tried to rise. She couldn’t remember what else the books said, her mind terrifyingly blank. Refusing to give up, Emerald gathered her magic instead, deciding she could use up all her energy and try for a big blast in case the invisible shield broke down.
“We are fairly peaceful, really, but everything’s just a mess lately and I don’t know how to fix it. It doesn’t help that someone has an agenda against me and threw me here before I could solve the mystery of why we keep having deaths in our court.”
Great. Was he a hunted man too?
“Hmm.”
