Asilent woman is a plotting one. When Selene plots, I worry.
We returned to her rooms. She ordered lunch but didn’t eat. She now stands on her balcony, observing the land. She’s a caged bird. Instead of the owner clipping her wings, he left them. It’s savagery.
She knows she can fly, but her situation prevents her.
My offer to free her still stands. It’s reckless. It could kill us both. It would set me back on my journey to find the Vitalis.
Seeing her suffer, trapped in a kingdom of vampires who whisper vehemently about how they detest her kind, married to a king who regards her as a trinket in his vaults. What kind of man would I be to allow this to stand?
Dishonorable. Unworthy.
Air slips between my fingers as I flex them. She’d look so magnificent if she could fly away.
Imagine if you could fly with her?
I swallow hard.Stop dreaming before reality kills you. I look away, knowing I’m left with the task of clipping Selene's wings, forcing her to stay and help me.
I roll back on my heels, too timid to approach her. The firmness of the stone floor pushes against my long-worn soles.
How in the world am I going to survive? I claw at the back of my neck. My flesh feels slathered with mud. There’s no relief from the hardening layers, no way to sweat it off and cool down. It’s a shell that’s suffocating me. If I don’t figure out how to flake off the layers, I’m fucked.
My palms itch; a dizzying chill slithers up my spine. Ugh! My body jerks as the time-weaving takes hold of me. I look at Selene. She’s unmoving on the balcony, trapped on the other side.
Great, now I’m a voyeur.
Now’s a good time to test the time magic. My approach is stagnant, achingly slow. I sense the size of the bubble wrapped around me, but when I stand next to Selene, it’s as if the walls ignore her.
Selene said Everett looked at people to pull them in. That’s what Everett did on the battlefield, and I did the same with the arrow. What if I touched them? My fingertips tremble, not from the magic. I’m restless to touch her, to feel her skin under my fingertips.
My attraction to her is immoral. I have to stop these thoughts.
How do you stop heat from warming your skin? If you add more layers, you only grow hotter. If you remove layers, the fever spreads faster.
These thoughts are something else. A new beast awakens deep inside my mind.
Magic, so rare and cherished, I dare not name it until I know for sure.
Quickly, I tap her shoulder. Her body recoils; she gasps as she stumbles back into me. I catch her in my arms. She’s a mixture of soft and hard flesh. My hands cling to her, to this unfamiliar sensation that’s foreign.
I’m used to grasping fallen bodies, rough steel swords, warm, wet blood.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Rather than letting go, I hold her closer. My muscles contract into iron, never wanting to release her. My magic pulses beneath my skin. It’s like dipping a toe into warm, inviting water. The urge to dive in and relax is overwhelming. Dizzying. Precariously blurring the facts of my reality.
Selene isn’t just any woman; she’s a fae and my queen. Wife of Galen, my king.
Regardless, my magic wants to come out to mark her as mine. To steal her away, never to let Galen touch her again.
Step away!
I do as my mind orders me.
“You’re time-weaving,” she breathes.
I nod.
“What were you thinking before it started?”
