Page 88 of Songs of Vice
“Let’s go,” she breathed.
We started running, but Lira slowed and kept looking back.
“Lira, we must go faster.”
“The skirt—”
“Lose it.”
Her lips snapped apart, and her eyebrows pushed together. She froze for a moment and then began untangling laces.
“You need to hurry,” I said. The guards’ voices grew in volume, and my magic felt half-spent. It was rare for me to face that position. Sometimes my magic felt endless. I’d just pushed the boundaries of what fairy magic could do, however, and didn’t want to test draining myself.
“I’m doing my best,” she bit out.
The thick navy skirt and a heavy wool layer fell to the ground, leaving her standing in the velvet jacket and the thin layer of her shift that followed the curve of her hip and tangled around her legs. “Done.”
I grabbed her hand, and we dashed across the palace grounds, tumbled around bushes, and ducked under tree limbs. We ran so hard, Lira gasped in noisy breaths, and icy air whipped across my cheeks, stinging them. Once we reached the river, Lira dropped my hand and shot her face back and forth to take in the rushing water.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We’re going to have to swim.”
She gaped at me and gripped her hands into the thin material of the shift. I hated it. She’d freeze in nothing but that, but we didn’t have other options. Lira straightened and rolled her shoulders back before parting her lips and singing. Ice swept across the river, freezing fast as deep spirals of frost swept across the surface, and reeds along the bank stiffened as if an unseen hand grabbed them.
A breath heaved out of me. Kali’s powers, she’d just sung that into existence with a simple fucking note. It had half-exhausted me to create a simple form of shadows, and she froze an entire fucking river with a sigh of annoyance. Her magic was untethered. She shouldn’t have access to much of it. What all could she do if she received a zevar and channeled her magic? Mother was right. The prophecy about the elementals rising and breaking the courts seemed possible as I stared at this display of powers.
Lira snagged my hand and pulled me onto the ice. We stumbled across the river right as guards reached the bank. I jerked an arm around Lira to keep up the show of me stealing her, but it slowed us.
Lira had just unleashed magic I’d never seen, perhaps she could figure something out for this too. “We need to keep these guards back.”
Lira parted her lips, and the rich, sweet sound of her song filled the air. Her music cut off, and she swayed before falling to her knees against the ice. I dropped with her. “Lira,” I gasped.
She gave her head a shake. Her skin had paled, and a glistening of sweat had broken out across her forehead. She sang again, and the notes came firmer, like she forced them in line. A feeling I knew well from shaping the shadows. I wrapped an arm tighter around her. Wind picked up, whirling past us before knocking the guards into the ground and holding them there. I tightened my hold on her and rose, helping her to her feet, before lowering my body and pushing us across the ice.
As soon as we reached the bank, Lira sang flames that melted the ice and released the soldiers.
I tapped deep into my magic until my arms shook and ripped down the wards of the soldiers. The guards froze as memory crystals whistled into the air and I snatched a few, blew on them, and then dropped the powers.
“What was that?” Lira asked.
“I don’t want them to remember your magic.” I grabbed her hand with my trembling one before she could respond and led her through half a dozen trees that stretched as bare silver strips in the moonlight. Lira’s breaths came heaving as she followed me. We both were near the end of our resources and had to get the hell out of this place. Orman had left a kelpie tied to a tree—thank the Goddess he was reliable for all his bullshit. I quickly unknotted the lead before swinging a leg up over the back of the creature and offering Lira a hand.
“We have to share?”
I released an exasperated breath that puffed into the air. Guards would arrive in moments. “We’ve shared more.”
She frowned and stepped back, her expression darkening. Fuck. That was not the right thing to say. Shouts echoed in the distance. “Lira, let’s go.”
She growled in frustration, accepted my hand, and swung up in front of me. The shift rode up, exposing her legs and the warmth of her body pressed into mine. It was so hard to have her so close to me, the sweetness of her smell wrapping around me, all while knowing she loathed touching me.
“Yah,” I said as I dug my heel into the kelpie’s sides. It reared up and then jumped into a gallop, racing the moon as clouds swept past it. A storm threatened but hadn’t yet decided if it would break or not.
We rode hard into the night, and I never let up, even once we’d outpaced the guards. Lira’s body rocked against mine, reminding me of what it felt like to lie in her embrace, to watch her face as she came undone.
My magic strengthened and settled again, which was a relief. Though not enough to undo the misery from the way Lira flinched away from me each time our bodies touched. We continued through the woods across human lands in rigid silence. Once we reached the river where the rest of the group waited, their kelpies tied up, I jumped down and offered Lira my hand. She hesitated before accepting it and sliding off the animal. “Someone get this creature to the water and unsaddle it. We’ll leave the kelpies here for the Seelie to find.”
Orman nodded and guided the animal away.
“We can’t waste time,” I said.