~2~
Cillian watched Aliseconcentrate, helplessly in love with this powerful woman and desperately wishing he could do more to assist.He probably should have planned the rest of their escape better, but he’d been focused on getting Alise out of House Elal and away from the controlling clutches of her father.That task had been daunting enough.If he’d thought farther down the road, to where they’d actuallygo, he might have talked himself out of the attempt.
Still, he hated that so much of this stage of the escape fell to Alise.Her delicate face looked drawn and pale, both from stress and the prodigious drain of magic.He’d offered her some of his magic earlier, before the worst of the pursuit kicked in, but she’d declined saying she had plenty and they might need his later.Cillian thought she could use his magic first—what was he going to do, search an archive while they were being chased?—and save her reservoirs in case they were separated.
Promise me that you won’t leave me alone.I fall apart without you.
Her declaration and plea had rattled him.Alise was the strong one in the relationship, the determined and talented one.How could she possibly believe she would fall apart without him?Just that moment, she met his gaze, her wizard-black eyes intense and huge in her wan face.She smiled weakly, a closed-lipped twist of her full mouth.“What will happen first—we reach the border or they reach us?”
“I have confidence you’ll get us there,” he said, mastering the tumult of his stomach as the carriage nearly went off the narrow road into the deep defile.He truly believed she could get them over the border, but not if they plummeted to their deaths first.
“Just getting across won’t be enough,” she replied with an edge of panic.“With Elal wizards in that group, they’ll be able to cross, also.The road is still narrow on the other side and this carriage is coming apart at the seams.They’ll overtake us and we’ll have nowhere to hide or run.”
He’d forgotten that part, that the border barrier would be no obstacle to an Elal wizard minion.One had met him at the border on his way in, grudgingly admitting him to the sacrosanct lands, and only because Lady Harahel, who happened to be his grandmother, had leant her considerable weight toward obtaining passage for him.Considering that he’d used that admittance to House Elal to steal away Lord Elal’s heir and daughter, they probably regretted the decision to allow the likes of him into Elal.Too late now.
“Unless you can close the border against them, they’ll just follow right through.”
Alise gave him an arrested look.“Unless I close the border… You mean, change the barrier so they can’t get through?”
“Can you do that?”He eyed the looming switchback.“Tight turn ahead,” he noted, as calmly as possible.He was beginning to run out of calm.
With a grimace of concentration, she slowed the carriage by a tiny amount, not nearly what he’d have preferred.But then, he also didn’t want them to be captured.Or worse.Plummeting to their swiftly delivered deaths sounded good in comparison.
Except he wasn’t ready to die, especially when he’d just begun to live.
“I don’t know that it would have occurred to me if you hadn’t suggested it,” Alise continued, as if they weren’t teetering on the brink of that disastrous plunge.Where she got her iron constitution from, he didn’t know, but Alise was fearless.Of course, so was her sister, Nic.And their father…Well, he lacked all human emotion, except the lust for more and more and more.
“Maybe I can…” she mused, absently bracing a hand on the wall as the carriage leaned precipitously.“I learned a great deal about the generation of spirit-fueled veils and barrier with my—while I was at House Elal.”Memories deepened the dark shadows under her eyes.They hadn’t had time yet to talk about everything she’d endured during her imprisonment.He’d have to dig it out of her later.Her eyes sharpening, she met his gaze.“But I’ll need a little time.”
“What can I do?”
“I need a distraction.”She looked out the carriage window.They were at last rounding the final bend, on the straightaway for the barrier.Their pursuers had been fortunately also slowed by the tight switchbacks and rock-strewn road.Though still gaining, they were a few loops down.“There will be a wizard stationed at the border who will have been alerted to stop us at all costs.I need to deal with them.Then, once we’ve crossed, I’ll need a minute or two to reconfigure the barrier.”
Cillian rapidly calculated the rates of speed and the remaining distance.There was no way.“It will be close,” he told her, deciding that the truth wouldn’t help her at all.“Trust me to handle the distraction.”
She nodded, accelerating the carriage to ear-popping speed as they barreled toward the crossing.Sure enough, the border guardian stood boldly in the middle of the road, hand extended palm out as if to halt them merely with the imperious gesture.The wizard was the one who’d admitted him the day before.Probably this would not be a convivial reunion.
Her familiar, Feny, stood just behind and to the side of the wizard, one hand on her shoulder, ready to be drawn upon to provide her with a reservoir of magic.Once again, Cillian fretted that Alise hadn’t taken some of his own magic when they had the chance.Too late now.
Alise brought the carriage to a halt.“Stay here?”
He understood why she posed it as a question.He bore no illusions about his ability to defend himself—and the liability he posed for Alise in a fight.Back at Convocation Academy, in that strange, eerie battle for control in the midnight hallway outside the archives, Cillian had been used against Alise.It had been one of the worst moments of his life and he had no intention of being that kind of problem for her again, so he nodded.“Go get, ‘em, tiger.”
With a flash of a tight smile, she stepped out of the carriage.“Wizard Tyrna,” Alise called out with cold formality.“You will step aside and allow me to pass.”
“You shall not pass, Wizard Alise,” the woman declared with barely concealed fury.“Unlike you, I am loyal to Elal.You are remanded into my custody.Surrender now.”
“I don’t think so.”Alise’s wizardry gathered, a cloud of rose-scented red wine, redolent of summer heat.Cillian had in part fallen in love with the scent of Alise’s magic before anything else.Certainly before they’d ever spoken.“Stand down.”
“I will die to obey my Lord Elal!”
“I don’t want to kill you, Tyrna, but I will,” Alise replied implacably.
“You can try,” the wizard sneered.“I knew you… when you soiled… your nappies and… and…” The woman’s broken speech devolved into strangled gasping.
Curious, Cillian angled himself to see.Tyrna clutched at her throat while her face turned distinctly blue, shading into violet.His wizard senses revealed the air elementals enveloping the woman’s head, gleefully bobbing as they took all her breath.Feny, valiantly keeping physical contact with his wizard, sinking to the paved road with her, quivered in fear as he gazed up at Alise.
“Please,” he said.“Don’t kill her.”
