Page 130 of Blood Mosaic

She pulled her head back. “Wait, I do remember that. How did I insult you?”

“Is this part of the plan?”

“Plan?”

“To catch Zara? To get your money. Why are you being… sweet?”

Her suspicion had hurt his feelings, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “You called me sweet. It was insulting.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t worry, I take it back.”

“Good. Do you feel your amnis?”

She looked down at her arms. “I feel… I don’t know. There’s a… buzzing under my skin. It itches.”

He looked at the fireplace on the far side of the room, reached his hand out, and pulled a thread of fire toward them.

“Oleg!”

“The water is right there.” He lifted his hand, slowly building the flames into a ring of fire that surrounded both of them.

“What are you doing?”

“If you don’t like it, put the fire out,” Oleg said. “Use the water.”

The flames grew and slowly sucked the air from the room. Oleg’s clothes, which had been drenched a moment before, were already bone-dry. Tatyana was looking in every direction at the flames that surrounded them.

“The water is right there, Tatyana.”

She was panicking. The flames were growing closer, and she jumped in the low pool of the fountain, her eyes locked on Oleg. “What are you doing?”

An alarm sounded somewhere in the distance.

“The water is right there,” he repeated. “Do you feel your amnis?”

“No!”

“Yes, you do.”

“Oleg!” She looked around the room cloaked in fire. “Stop! Please stop.”

He resisted the urge to give her what she wanted. There would be time to indulge her desires, but now he needed to teach her how to survive.

“The water is crawling up your body, Tatyana. Look down and think.”

The fountain surged as she began to panic. “I can’t think when you’re going to burn us alive!”

“We’re not going to burn because you’re going to use your amnis. Feel it underneath your skin. Pull the water like a silk sheet over your body.”

“Oleg,” she cried out. “Please!”

“Grab your amnis and use it!” He roared and lifted his arms, bringing the flames up as tall as the fountain, surrounding both of them in a wall of fire.

Tatyana screamed, but he felt her amnis snap into place as her instincts connected with her element, with the current that lived within her, with the water that leaped to her command.

She lifted her arms and threw her hands out, palms flat against his fire as if she were pushing it back. The water mimicked her, gushing from the base of the fountain in a singular wave that doused the ring of flames Oleg had called, chasing it away and drenching him, the ballroom, and everything around them in the process.

“You crazy bastard!” Tatyana screamed at him, charging toward him, soaked with water and crackling with amnis. “You fucking?—”

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