Better yet, I had saved us both—with no magic required!
Exhilaration flooded my bruised body as I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring all of my aches and twinges along the way. “Well, then!” I smiled sunnily at my ex-fiancé, who stood three feet away from me, carefully brushing down his elegant greatcoat. “Now that I’ve solved that little problem, we can leave our friend to sleep for another century or two, and…”
A sound like thunder rumbled ominously nearby.
Snow continued to fall around us, soft-looking, white and steady without any hint of rain in sight. Wrexham’s head jerked up as I fell silent.
Both of us turned in the same moment to face the crouching troll. I took one nervous step backward.
It wasn’t far enough.
The thunder built into a deafening roar as the troll surged upright in one explosive movement that sent rubble and boulders flying through the air. I turned to run, already knowing it was too late.
Before I could take a single step, Wrexham knocked me to the ground, his voice snapping out as his arms wrapped around me. His words were lost in the roar of sound that surrounded us, but the effect was impossible to miss, even with my view half-blocked by his shoulder.
The boulder that had been aiming straight in my direction hung in mid-air for one paralyzed moment before dropping harmlessly to the ground. More and more rubble hit the same invisible wall before giving up and raining onto the ground before us.
I said, my voice reasonably steady given the circumstances, “That was a rather more powerful protection spell than Lord Cosgrave set on me earlier.”
“A sign that he hasn’t spent nearly enough time with you, clearly.” Wrexham levered himself up onto his elbows, craning his head to peer up through the flying clouds of rubble. “I don’t believe your friend up there is actually trying to attack us at the moment, just shake itself free. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to make my protection spell portable, so we’ll have to remain here for the duration.”
“Hmm.” It might be reasonable to grant even the most accomplished magician the benefit of the doubt when he’d been forced to cast a spell at a moment’s notice, in the midst of deadly peril. And yet…
I gave my ex-fiancé a suspicious look. Now that the immediate peril had passed, I could finally take note of our position...and with his arms braced on either side of my head, he covered me entirely, radiating warmth through his greatcoat in the most distracting manner.
I had thought, once upon a time, that we fitted together perfectly. But I had never before had the chance to test that theory quite so literally.
What nonsense. I shifted beneath him, trying to ease the disconcerting tingling sensations that were suddenly running through me.
Unfortunately, that movement only made them more intense. My breath was coming more quickly than before. I moistened my lips and fixed my gaze on the underside of his stubborn chin, just above me, to distract myself from other, more dangerous regions nearby.
Most of his throat, of course, was covered by his cravat, but the bits of light brown skin that were exposed looked perilously soft and touchable—almost as soft as the tips of glossy black hair that curled against the thick collar of his coat. If I lifted one hand...
No. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing my recalcitrant body into submission. The time for allowing myself to be distracted by Wrexham’s physical presence was long past. I had not only given up that dream, I had thrown it away with both hands, and with the most vicious repudiation I could manage. If he realized how I was reacting to him now, after all that had passed between us, I would be humiliated forever.
And that realization was enough to make me stiffen like a board. My eyes snapped open. “I would have thought,” I said sharply, “that all those years of working for the Boudiccate would have given you the ability to calculate the details of your spells more precisely.”
“Oddly enough,” said Wrexham, still gazing upwards, “in all those years, I’ve never before been in a situation where you were about to be killed in front of me…at least not when I could actually prevent it.” For a moment, his voice flattened.
I went still, remembering it too. He had been the one who’d found me four months ago, stepping into my workroom barely a moment too late, just as the spell caught me in its grip...
But then he shook his head, and his lips twisted into a rueful grin as he finally looked down at me, his gaze alarmingly focused and intent. “Although…if I’d ever hoped for a single moment when you were forced to stop running and actually listen—”
“Oh, I think not,” I said, and twisted out from underneath him. “The rubble’s stopped falling,” I told him as I pushed myself swiftly to my feet, breaking through the bubble of his protective spell. “So it’s perfectly safe to start moving again.”
Wrexham muttered something under his breath. But I chose not to try to decipher his words as I took three perfectly calm and composed—and rapid—steps away from his prone figure.
There. Now I could breathe again. More than that, I could think.
The troll was looming over us, vast and rocky and unmoving, with its heavy stone arms hanging at its sides. I tipped my head back to peer up at it through the veil of snow and found it gazing down at me.
Its massive mouth opened. A gravelly, throaty roar emerged, as deep as thunder but a hundred times louder.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pain battered my head and the earth shook beneath my feet as the troll’s roar echoed around the hills. I threw out my arms for balance, fighting to stay upright within that wall of nearly impenetrable noise...
But in the midst of it all, I could just make out a set of words I recognized in the rolling Densk that my brother had taught me so many years ago:
“Meddlers...Hurting...Changing...”
Oh, damnation. “I’m sorry!” I shouted back, cupping my hands around my mouth. “We didn’t mean to hurt you—”
But a high, clear voice spoke behind me in Anglish before I could finish bellowing my sentence.
“Oh, he wasn’t speaking about the two of you.”
I spun around as Wrexham leapt to his feet, his greatcoat billowing around him.
A tall, pale man with hair like glittering shards of ice and a shimmering blue, ankle-length coat stood on the snowy ground just behind me. Every silvery detail of his embroidered coat was bright and clear as a warning to my gaze, for the snowflakes that should have formed a veil between us shot away in all directions instead, clearing a path before him as if in honor...or in a frenzy to escape.
Not a man. I sucked in a breath as I met his gleaming white gaze through the clear air and realized who—and what—I must be looking at.