Page 111 of A Touch of Gold and Madness

Gray didn’t respond. She simply fumed, bearing the weight of her anger and frustration in her glare at me. I soaked it up and closed the distance between our faces, our noses almost touching.

The world around us disappeared, seeming only to capture the two of us in our own bubble. My voice lowered to a whisper, “You’re overthinking it, Princess. Release your need to control everything. You and your element are a team. Don’t forget that.” Unable to stop myself, I cupped the side of her face and rested my forehead against hers. Air soothed my lungs as ifthey’d been starved of oxygen for too long. “You can do this. I believe in you.”

The tension in Gray’s body relaxed at my touch. I breathed her in, the longing to make her mine consuming my chest in a vice grip. “Come on out, little savage. I wanna play.”

The princess snapped her gaze up to meet mine. A burning hunger ignited in her eyes, making it extremely difficult for me to not take her on the spot and claim her as mine. The hardening in my pants had me clenching my jaw and pulling away. We were supposed to remain friends, that’s it. And I respected her too much to breach that line.

“Remember what Orion and Aella have taught you. Let it flow.” Orion’s eyebrows basically touched his hairline as I returned to my previous spot beside him.

“Well, that was…” he mused, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He laughed and raised his hands in surrender. “My apologies.”

Gray returned to her spot in the field, seeming unaffected by our heated moment, but I knew better.

All the discarded blades levitated and drifted to me, where I snagged a couple for one hand to have on deck.

Without warning, I sent a knife sailing at Gray. She did as before, ducking before rolling to avoid the next one. And the next. I didn’t stop. “Stop overthinking, Gray.” The blades flew for several minutes, whizzing dangerously close by her head a few times.

These daggers were average metal blades, so she wasn’t at risk of dying from the poisons, but if not healed fast enough in a vital spot, she could be permanently altered. She needed to fucking shield.

Another masculine presence stepped up to my left as I continued to launch blade after blade at our princess. “I see she still hasn’t managed an air shield,” Void’s deep timber rumbled.

“No,” I responded, keeping my focus on all the metal weapons. “But it’s coming.”

“She is a fast learner. I’m surprised she hasn’t mastered it yet.” Void couldn’t see, but it didn’t stop him from knowing everything going on around him. His immensely heightened senses allowed him to form images of what transpired. In my opinion, Void was our greatest asset. No one would ever compare to him.

“Was that…acompliment, Void?” I joked.

He snorted. “Never. Just an observation.”

“Right.”

“How is she progressing in your training?” Orion asked Void from my left.

Gray leaped in the air a breath before a knife almost impaled her stomach. She had been dodging a dagger coming from a different direction, so she hadn’t seen it coming; rather, she must’ve felt or heard it. “It seems her lessons with me are paying off. Otherwise, she would’ve been dead by now,” he answered, his voice deadpan.

Somehow, my little savage had managed to skirt around every weapon thrown her way and avoided being struck. Until I got creative with a knife. Instead of launching one directly at her, I tricked her, making her think it would sail on past her dodge. When she turned her back to avoid another, I made the knife follow her from behind while she was warding off the others and sliced her arm from the back.

She froze. A smile threatened to break loose on my face, but I held it back.

“What is she doing?” Orion whispered from my side.

“Hopefully building a godsdamn shield.”

But that was not what she did. An unseen force took hold of the weapons’ hilts, making them halt midair from their trajectories. I battled for control of the metal, trying to mentally snatch them back as I was caught by surprise. But once I realized it was Gray, using her air element to grab them, I let go, taking this opportunity to let her learn.

Gray resembled an avenging angel who’d finally had enough. Her blended dual-toned tresses floated up and down under the pillow of air thatsurrounded her. The scowl she graced me with said what she had planned with the levitating weapons now under her control.

“Now, what are you gonna do with them? Wait for me to steal them back?” I taunted, ready to see her wrath.

With an imperceptible twitch of her lip, the weapons went on attack, flying at Orion, Void, and me like a flock of birds. I grabbed the metal, essentially pushing Gray’s air control aside just before the blades struck, but I felt Orion’s air shield go up in front of us at the last second.

“Not quite a shield, but that works,” I said, pride filling my chest.

“What about this?” she asked.

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