then gracefully pulls his arm back, coiled for attack. “Do not permanently maim me.”
Valasca shakes her head as if ruing the situation. “I so wish we were still mortal enemies.” She drops into a fighting stance. “All right, Crow. Give it up. Show me what you’ve got.”
Lukas smiles, and I’ve the sudden sense of his firelines heating to a scald. Whip-fast, he hurls his blade at Valasca, a rush of golden fire bursting to life around the knife and blasting ahead of it toward Valasca.
In a flash Valasca sweeps up her own blade, the image of fractured mirrors crackling into my mind as Lukas’s stream of fire hits her blade’s glinting side. Valasca sweeps her blade down, throwing the fire off to the side as she dodges Lukas’s incoming blade, the streak of fire colliding with a small knot of brush that bursts into a bright blue conflagration.
“I win,” Valasca gloats, her eyes full of confrontational glee.
“I’m just warming up,” Lukas spars back with the trace of a smile, as I’m hit with the vision of silvery fire rushing through his lines. Without warning, Lukas pulls his wand and flicks it toward Valasca, veins of white lightning spearing out ahead of it.
In a blur, Valasca pulls a second blade, her fingers dancing against runes as she holds both blades up in an X before her. Lukas’s lightning slams into the center of the X and doubles back at him.
Lukas flips his wand toward himself and conjures a rippling golden shield over his body, the lightning crackling over him in a shower of sparks before dissipating.
“Show me how to do that,” he says to Valasca as he drops his shield, obviously impressed.
Valasca eyes him incredulously. “Mage-power deflection is an Amaz military secret.”
Lukas is undaunted. “Teach me.”
Valasca snorts out a laugh and narrows a cheeky glare at him. “There are some things I will never share with you, Gardnerian.”
Lukas grins and shoots Valasca a suggestive look. “There are many things you will never share with me, Valasca.”
A spike of jealousy flares in me. “Hey now!”
Both of them turn to me with looks of amused incredulity in response to my territorial outburst. I bite my lip, abashed by my reaction to their mutual teasing as heat blooms on my cheeks.
Lukas gives me a warm look and sends out an invisible tendril of fire to caress my lines. I shiver from the pleasurable rush of his fire and sheepishly meet his gaze, unable to suppress a slight smile as affection for him rises.
My fastmate.
My fastlines are hidden by my glamour, but suddenly, they don’t feel so much like a cage anymore, even though I’m bound to Lukas by them. My flush heats further as Lukas’s fire sizzles through me and I briefly consider the many ways I don’t mind being paired with Lukas.
“Stop flirting, you two,” Chi Nam chides then gestures to Valasca. “Give Elloren the Ash’rion.”
Grinning, Valasca strides toward me and hands me the Ash’rion blade, the static energy in the runes prickling against my hand.
I look to Chi Nam. “Can you fight like them?” I ask her, curious about her abilities. Lukas and Valasca turn to Chi Nam as well, like two panthers looking to the lead panther.
Chi Nam’s lip twitches up, as if she’s amused by my question. She glances at Lukas and Valasca. “Attack me,” she says, almost fondly.
“Stand back, Elloren,” Lukas says as he pulls both a wand and a blade, eyeing Chi Nam with a level look of respect.
I step back as Valasca takes two blades in hand as both she and Lukas crouch down and Chi Nam’s fingers slide over the runes on her staff.
Lukas and Valasca exchange a quick look.
I’ve a split-second sense of Lukas’s fire blasting into his wand and blade as well as Valasca’s press of runic lightning energy into her knives, before they hurl their weapons and magic at Chi Nam with such ferocity, I recoil, their fire power bolting and forking through the air.
Their combined magic slams into Chi Nam, and an earsplitting crack sounds, painful in my ears, as a shield springs to life around the sorceress and she’s briefly encased in a web of chaotic blue lightning.
Chi Nam angles her staff, and the web of lightning flies out toward Lukas and Valasca, knocking them both onto their backs and pinning them to the ground like two fish caught in a net, their weapons thrown from their hands and now beyond their reach.
Chi Nam turns to me and calmly leans on