Page 47 of Knightfall
“Sorry, Lord Willard, I can’t help it. He’s been rather obsessed with me.”
If only you knew.Quinn jerked his head toward a stairwell and the three of us began to climb.
Quinn and I quickly outpaced the portly Willard and when we had rounded yet another bend ahead of him, Quinn pulled me roughly against him. His hand traced down my back, and then he squeezed my ass.
“Whoa!”
Shhh.Quinn grinned, running his hands back and forth over my hips. He glanced over my shoulder and must have seen the top of Willard’s head, because he led me into another sprint up the stairs. The next time he stopped, I was breathless.
You’re insa—
Hush.He grabbed my face in both hands and bent until our eyes were level. His eyes … my chest got an airy, restless feeling. Like the wind was dancing between my ribs. I clung to him.I think I’m hallucinating again.
He smiled, his eyes simply flickering back and forth between mine as if he were drinking in every fluttering, girlish beat of my heart.
Can you feel what I feel?
Do you feel like you’re flying?
I nodded.
Willard’s head poked around the spiral staircase and Quinn yanked me upward once more.
You didn’t answer,I scolded.
How would I know it felt like flying? Unless I felt the same thing.
I was already breathless from climbing. But his answer took my breath away.
Two seconds later, before I could process what anything might mean, we stood in front of mage Wyle’s door. Quinn rapped smartly and then stood aside to let Willard and myself in. I went first, seeing as Willard was heaving like a messenger horse that had rushed down from Macedon.
“Hello, Wyle,” I strode toward Wyle’s project table before he could even take off the oversized goggles and gloves he had on. The table just stretched the limit of my distance spell with Quinn. I reached but couldn’t quite rest my hand on the table.
“Your Highness,” Wyle carefully set down the glowing orange beaker he’d been holding. He pushed his dark goggles up into his skull, which was lined with perfectly symmetrical white braids. His pointed elf ears twitched. His large, almond eyes blinked as he adjusted to the daylight.
“What lovely concoction are you making there?” I asked, nodding toward the beaker.
“Not making,” he sighed. “Extracting. Declan’s asked me to help with research he’s been doing into water contaminants.”
“Oh,” I quickly switched off that deadly boring topic. “Well, if you have a moment, Willard and I would like a thirty-minute mage oath binding.” I turned to Willard. “You think that’s enough time to explain everything?”
Willard, who had bent over and used a table to help support his gasping, just nodded and waved a hand.
“I, oh, well, it’s been some time since … I’ll just need to grab the book, Your Highness. Reference a few things.”
“Absolutely,” I followed him as Willard sunk into a wooden chair by the window. Luckily, the bookcase was right by the door. I heaved a sigh of relief.
Wyle hummed as he looked through his handwritten tomes, until he noticed I was right behind him. “Your Highness?”
I leaned close to him, pulling a book from the shelf to cover my intentions. I flipped the book open to a random page. An anatomical drawing of a penis, with all parts labeled. How fitting, seeing as I what was about to ask Wyle to do. “I want you to lift the spells my mother put on my husbands.”
“All of them, Your Highness?”
“All … what do you mean all?”
“Long life, virility, good vision, safety—”
“Okay, fine. Not those. The one where they have to be within five feet of me. And the one where they can only physically be intimate with me and no other woman.”
