Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,181

coming anymore; it was here.

Which is why I froze the little ankle-biting assholes, before they could attempt to mug a fey.

As usual, time stoppage was a bitch, even a small one. Which is why it felt like somebody had just punched me in the gut. But on the plus side, the little creatures had frozen in place as if trapped in a nonexistent block of ice.

Not that it mattered.

Because the walking mountain suddenly wasn’t.

I don’t know if it was the swirl of unfamiliar magic, or the sounds the creatures had been making, or what, but the massive sentry suddenly shuddered to a halt, almost on top of us. The snow flooded purple as daylight cascaded through semi-precious stone, and I contemplated having a heart attack. The manlikan’s massive head had paused almost even with our ledge, with it and its rider practically close enough to touch.

He was close enough that I could feel the occasional warmth from his fire when the wind blew just right. Close enough that I could see his handsome, expressionless face as he scanned the area, gray eyes narrowed and bright and searching. Close enough that he almost landed on top of us when he put down his spear, grabbed his horn, and jumped—

Straight onto the snow beside our bubble.

Our camo rippled from the impact, and a little snow sifted off the top, which would have made me catch my breath if I’d had any, because he had to have seen that!

But he hadn’t.

Maybe because he was focused on something else.

Pritkin realized it the same time I did. I saw his eyes follow the direction the fey was headed, the same one where a small, frozen creature had been caught, half in and half out of the bag, its knobby ass in the air and one tiny arm reaching for the breakfast it wasn’t going to get. Because, in a second, it was going to be dead.

Like us, I thought, my heart hammering from lack of oxygen, my vision starting to gray out.

Or maybe that was due to something else. Because the missing snow on top of our bubble was suddenly replaced. It rapidly grew thicker, to the point that I could hardly see the guard anymore. A storm that had in no way been threatening broke overhead, sending translucent white veils dancing across the mountaintop and causing Pritkin to let out a stifled grunt.

I looked up to find him red-faced and straining, a hand extended as far as the bubble would allow, his eyes closed in what looked like pain.

And then half a ton of snow dumped directly onto the fey’s head.

He went down, cursing, and almost slid off the ledge. He got up, flailed around for a second on the slippery ground, searching for purchase he didn’t find. And then went down again when a strong gust of snow-laden wind slapped him in the face. That happened a few more times before he cursed and went running, his feet crunching on the new-fallen snow until he leapt the gap—

And natural light flooded back across the mountaintop as the huge creature filtering the sun slowly moved away.

For a moment, I just lay there wondering why things were still hazy, before I remembered. And took a deep breath, which Pritkin must have thought I meant to use to scream, because his hand came down before I finished. I thrashed around for a moment, finally got free, and gasped in enough air to right the mad Tilt-A-Whirl I seemed to have ended up on.

And realized that someone was shaking me.

“Why didn’t you just freeze the guard?” Pritkin demanded.

I stared at him for a moment in disbelief, and then I started hitting him. I doubt he felt it through all the insulation, but I didn’t care. Son of a bitch mother—

He grabbed my wrist. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing!” I hit him some more with my other hand until he grabbed that one, too.

“Try again.”

I glared at him. “I shouldn’t have to!”

He just looked at me.

“A boyfriend would have asked me how I am!” I told him furiously. Because it was true. I was pretty sure it was true. And because I didn’t know what we were to each other anymore, and it pissed me off!

We used to be friends, and now we were obviously more than that, but how much I didn’t know. Or if we were more than that, or if that was just my human side assuming things Pritkin had never verified, never even alluded