Chapter 8

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. Prince Brian 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 magic girl. 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.”

Prince Brian 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, prince Brian 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 magic girl , 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,prince Brian 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.”

Then there are my friends, who refuse to see reason and just want to have fun and cause mischief. Admittedly, that was also what I did before…I’m hot. It’s really hot.”

That he was, his body already heating her skin as they rubbed against each other while they walked. She rubbed his hot back, trying not to let the alarm sink into her voice.

“We’ll get you somewhere colder.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“Okay. Let’s get something for that too…”

Prince Brian’s eyes widened as it clicked, her blank mind parting to reveal what she had been searching for all along.

And just like that, she already knew what they needed to get away from the constant assault of pixies.

It was all a blur in palace mind, mostly because his mind wasn’t in its right state at the moment. Despite the constant buzzing in his head, a few things still managed to flit through: one, the blurry state wasn’t of his doing and he was actively struggling to get out of it. Two, there was a weight plastered against his side and urging him to walk, even if walking was a pain and he would rather lie down and sleep the dizziness off.

Three, a voice was ringing in his ears and repeatedly telling him words that didn’t make sense.

Keep going. Walk faster. Don’t you dare fall.

Why would he fall when he had never fallen in love with anyone in his entire life?

“I can’t support your weight. Please keep up with me. We’re close. We’re so close.”

They were sexual words, the ones he was used to saying in bed or being on the receiving end of. But her voice was all but sexual. It was prim and filled with determination, as well as a rising frustration every time they paused from walking. Some dim part of his still-functioning mind told him he was holding them up, so he loosened his fingers and began to let go.

“Don’t you dare give up on me or I swear I will drop you myself.”

His body prickled at the sense of command, unused to being told what to do. He opened his mouth to retaliate—and was thrown forward with sheer force, one he couldn’t stop for the life of him. A second later, his lungs were on fire and he was drowning, the water glissading into every open pore he possessed. He struggled to push off it—and was immediately jerked backward with just as much aggression before he was let go.

He tried to catch his bearings as his heart raced hard and the dizzying effect faded away. A second later, the memory of the pixies and the dust came flashing back and he straightened, blinking even more dizziness away—

“Stay where you are.”

He was drenched to the bone, tied up, and no longer hot from the pixie dust taking its effect on him. Who knew if it was going to burn him in the long run? The water probably stopped that from happening. Belatedly, it occurred that the string around him wasn’t ordinary, the glowing green indicating it was infused with magic. Not Fae magic, but one probably far worse. Either those pixies finally got scared of her or the water did that, too, but…

Rick looked up and found the woman standing ankle-deep in the small bank of water, her hands matching the glowing green of the string. She tensed when he tugged at it. When there was no give, he gave up and settled for studying her, a couple of things fluttering through his mind.

Witch. Danger. Need to stay away.Except…

“You saved my life. I think,” he declared, then paused as he tried to recall the rest. “Not that I didn’t save yours first from what would have been an awful fall.”

The woman scoffed as if not quite believing his audacity. Green eyes seared him with a look, one that shriveled his balls and tightened his gut at the same time. The rest of her was a sight to behold: a tall, willowy frame, an aristocratic nose, pink lips, and blonde hair that still gleamed despite all the bumps they had endured. Sure, it looked like a scary bird’s ass at the moment, but it did nothing to hinder her beauty. Noting his perusal, she turned that nose up at him.

“State your name, affinity, and purpose.”

There was a threat in there somewhere, but he needed to snap out of absorbing that distracting face of hers first. When he did, her smooth tone and cool confidence ticked at his awareness and he remembered just who—and what—he was dealing with.

“Damn it,” he said out loud and didn’t miss her shoulders tensing. “Are you some kind of territorial witch who controls this island and the creatures living here?”

“What?”

At her clear-cut confusion, he relaxed while she tensed further.

“Never mind that. Anyway, my name is palace. You may call me witch.”

The offer was cautious but friendly as he toed the line that wouldn’t upset her. Instead of taking the hand as a truce offering, she lifted her chin.