watched her tilt her chin up at him in defiance, holding her ground despite her disadvantage in height and build. “I am afraid that falling will slow you down in a fight. If someone is chasing you through a city, that city needs to become your playground. You need to learn how to fall from great heights as if jumping over a fucking puddle. Capisce?”
Anger melted from her features. Her lips twitched. “Capisce.”
“Good,” he spat and strode past her toward the main entrance. “Spire. Now. And use the shadow trick to conceal yourself. The last thing we need are photos of you on top of the fucking La Sagrada Familia circulating the internet.” He traveled outside before she could respond.
Seconds ticked by as he watched the tallest spires. The church was lit up, but the spires were less visible as they pierced the night sky. Fionn could still make out the tops of them with his fae eyes.
Impatience wriggled through him.
Uncertainty created waves of displeasure in his gut.
What if she fell?
Rose cannot die.
But she can break into a million pieces.
The reality of that caused something akin to panic. Fuck, she would fall. He prepared himself to travel to her, to stop her, but then he saw her atop one of the spires, pulling shadows toward her.
Before he could make a move, Rose kicked up off her feet onto one hand, suspended in a one-handed handstand for a moment before leaning her weight over and off the building.
His heart lurched into his throat as she fell too fast, too hard.
Even if he caught her, her neck would break on impact.
“Rose,” he whispered, the word choking him as helplessness paralyzed his body.
But then the air changed and her shadowed body slowed just before she hit the ground.
Rose landed on the stone paving in front of him with the grace of a panther, stunning him.
The shadows melted from her body and the anxiety he felt melted with them.
Deciding the emotions he’d experienced as she’d fallen were far too complicated to contemplate, he focused on her cockiness.
The bloody woman just did a bloody handspring off La bloody Sagrada Familia.
He settled his face into a blank mask. “Show-off.”
The sensation of falling stayed with Rose as she followed Fionn, both traveling out of the church grounds to a shadowed corner behind the walls that protected it.
She was getting better at that too.
Still, Rose took a minute before hurrying to catch up with Fionn, already marching toward their hotel. He’d accused her of showing off but that wasn’t what the handspring off the spire was. What Fionn had forgotten to mention was that traveling to the top of that spire was dangerous in itself. The precision required of a newbie was asking a lot.
She’d ended up on one of the construction cranes instead, and it had taken her a moment to gather the courage to travel to the spire.
The fearlessness she’d felt inside the church abandoned her.
It was all well and good to say to yourself, “Hey, I’m unkillable!” It was another to stand five hundred feet above the ground and jump. Fionn was asking too much. He must have known the possibility of her smashing her body to pieces was high.
She should have smacked him to the floor until she knocked some emotion into him.
The handspring off the spire was the only way she could convince herself to fall. Rose pretended the spire was merely an uneven bar in gymnastics. Then as she fell at amazing velocity, it had become a battle of survival versus panic. The world below was coming up to meet her way too fast, yet at the last second, she’d remembered Fionn telling her about using the wind to break her fall. Magic became imaginary wings on her back, flapping around her and slowing her descent.
The experience wasn’t something Rose wanted to repeat, but it was nice to know she could do it.
Although she wouldn’t admit that to Fionn.
He was lucky she didn’t blindfold him, force him back up to the top of the damn church, and push him off. See how he liked it!
“You know, you take coaching to an illegal level of limit pushing,” she commented as she caught up to him.
He grunted.
Rose sighed. “So, I guess training is over for the night?”
Fionn flicked a hand at her. “You’re a natural.”
Despite the pride his compliment made her feel, she frowned. “We won’t be training anymore?”
“You still have much to learn so, yes, we will. But tonight, we rest. The auction