“An old spell from when wars were more intimate affairs. If you can set a fear circle around your enemies, you can practically starve them to death within.”
Iolanthe glanced at Master Haywood, who was trying to absorb the news that what he feared most was fear itself.
She turned back to the prince. “Did you find any portals?”
“There are two armoires and a bathtub; I set alerts for—”
His expression changed. Taking Iolanthe by the arm, he concealed them both behind the heavy blue curtains.
Iolanthe peeked out. Master Haywood was just turning toward the open bedroom door. The edge of what looked to be a brown cloak appeared for a moment near the floor—on the other side of the wall, someone was hiding, waiting to reconnoiter the situation in the sitting room.
The prince quietly opened the French window that led out to the narrow balcony. Iolanthe held the air still so the curtains would not flutter with the draft coming in. He disappeared from the balcony. A few seconds later, he rematerialized, looking slightly dazed.
“She is here,” said the prince. “I put her under a time freeze from outside the window of the bedroom—but I could not get in that way because it still has anti-intrusion spells.”
“You mean Commander Rainstone?” Iolanthe’s voice sounded like a squeak.
“Go and see. She cannot harm anyone now.”
A time freeze lasted at most three minutes. Iolanthe took a deep breath and entered the bedroom—and almost fell backward in shock as she stared into the beautiful face of Lady Callista.
CHAPTER 27
The Sahara Desert
STARS WHEELED ACROSS TITUS’S VISION, bright, cold streaks. Fairfax’s hand threatened to slip from his. He instinctively tightened his grip, even as he tumbled head over heels.
The next moment he realized that he was no longer falling as fast. He had thought that should she succeed, they were sure to suffer injuries, slamming into a powerful current of air blasting in the exact opposite direction of their acceleration. But she had summoned multiple streams of air, so he felt harnessed—cuddled almost—and at just enough velocity to slow them down instead of making them come to a dead stop.
As the ground rose to meet them, they decelerated steadily, and then more sharply as the distance to impact decreased. When he fell face-first onto cold, hard sand, it was as if he had jumped from a height of ten feet, instead of nearly three thousand feet.
Pushing up to his knees, he began to laugh. Oh, it was the most marvelous feeling to be alive. “You did it. Fortune shield us, you actually did it.”
She was also on her knees, clutching her chest. “My heart is going to explode. It is going to burst open from my chest and spray blood over a ten-mile radius.”
“We are fine. We are fine. You were magnificent.”
“Magnificent, my behind. You were not responsible for saving us while in free fall, you frigging idiot. Toward the end we must have been nose-diving at more than two hundred miles an hour. How do you expect someone to just counter that with mere air? What sort of stupidly blithe assumption was that? If I didn’t die of fright, I would have died of shame of failure!”
Her irateness only seemed to build as she inveighed against him. “It was the rashest, dumbest, most arrantly thoughtless, most—”
Words failed her. But her fist did not: it connected with his solar plexus and knocked him flat.
Right. One should never anger an elemental mage, who would have been specifically taught violence as an emotional outlet from an early age.
But he only laughed again, giddy to be safe. His mirth infuriated her further. She leaped on top of him, seized him by his collar, and raised her fist.
He yanked her down and kissed her instead. A shudder went through her.
He raised her face and repeated himself. “You were magnificent.”
She panted as if she had run a footrace. Her finger traced over his lower lip. Her other hand clutched his upper arm. His heartbeat, already unsteady, turned completely erratic.
He plunged his hands into her hair, pulled her close, and kissed her again.
“And the armored chariots will be here in three, two, one . . .” she murmured, her breaths more ragged than ever.
The armored chariots did not come on schedule.
“Well,” she said, “this is vexing. Just when I thought my kisses had the power to alert Atlantis to my presence anywhere in the world.”
“I am now willing to write very bad verses for you. Does that not testify to the power of your kisses?”
“How bad?”
“Ecstasy will be forced to rhyme with destiny.”
She laughed and rose to her feet. “That is, I must admit, satisfyingly atrocious. Have it framed before you present it to me.”
He took the hand she offered him and got up also. “Framed? I will have it chiseled into a fifty-ton slab that even you would have trouble moving.”
“Hmm, I might have to build a house on that and call it the Maison de Doggerel.”
The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)
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