Page 79 of Enchanted Shadows
Without delay, I released a breeze to rush around her, spinning her, before I used a vine to pin down one of her feet.
She sent out shadows for me, but I wrapped my magic around them as fast as I could, sending them back at her, while she used more shadows to grab hold of my vine of magic and chuck it off her.
Her own shadows hit her in the face, and she fell back onto her butt for only a moment before popping back up.
On we went, and I learned how much stronger she was the closer she stood to the shadows. How much quicker she became while she stood in darkness.
Within ten minutes I held two things to be true. Princess Kessara was not afraid of the dark. And she also preferred her shadow magic to her palm one.
And a third more dangerous truth came a moment later: unfortunately, my wife was attractive as hell.
I had just sent another vine out to snag her and sent a low rolling log out to rattle her focus and see what she’d do with it, when I noticed her stumble a step.
Dammit. What was I thinking? I remembered her saying how she had been suppressing both Enchantments and how difficult that had been for her. While the rest of us were used to throwing around this much power, she wasn’t. Using both like this, she was probably already nearing burnout.
“Kessara,” I warned. “Dial it back.”
“What? Why?” she groaned, as the shadows flicked my vines away like they were nothing.
Instead of sending another vine, I sent several out, this time to catch her just in case she fell over. “Burnout.”
“I never reach burnout this fast,” she defended as she threw some shadows wrapped in gold at me.
I was so busy watching her that I allowed it to hit me, landingon my own ass this time. It felt like I got rolled into with a gigantic lead ball.
“Kessara,”I warned again as I strode for her.
“I’m fine,” she snapped as she brought more shadows toward her.
I quickly covered ground, moving to grab her.
Just as I got there, she stumbled another step. And before she could go down, I was there.
She took a deep breath, her head rolling to the side like she hadn’t slept in weeks.
“You haven’t been using this much of your power for a long time,” I told her gently. “And burnout isn’t something to mess around with. I should’ve warned you to ease into it.” The good news was that she wasn’t bleeding out of her nose yet. The bad news was that our wedding reception was coming up. She didn’t have a lot of time to recover.
She flopped her head to the other side like she didn’t have full control of her neck. “It felt good to use the shadows. And I just wanted to impress the team. Impress you.”
She was sleep drunk, hence the honesty. I gestured for Wren and Molly. “Grab her water, would you?”
Kessara must have been feeling self-conscious, as she tried to stand on her own, stepping away from leaning on me.
But then she almost went down in the other direction, so I was there, again catching her.
Wren ran over with her water while Molly stepped on the other side of her, helping me hold her up.
“Too much too fast?” Molly asked concerned.
“Apparently,” Kessara groaned.
“Burnout, a likely story,” Elsie joked.
I would take most of these jokes in stride, but not when someone was clearly hurting. Even Sam, as mouthy as she got, knew better. So I snapped, “Burnout isnevera joke.”
She rushed out to say, “Sorry.”
I knew Elsie was a sweetheart most of the time and just wanted to get in on making fun of us today, so I let it drop. To my wife, I added, “I guess you just got yourself another night with me, because you’re going to need to nap this off.”
