Chapter Thirty-three
He helped her get dressed, taking every opportunity to brush his fingers along her skin as he slid the shirt over her head and pulled it down her sides. She ducked her head, smiling shyly, and her cheeks flushed in a blush. After all he’d done to her, after all they’d learned of each other, she was still shy, and somehow that instantly sent blood once more rushing between his legs.
He was hard again in seconds flat, and that wouldn’t do. They didn’t have the time.
Make time, he told himself. Nothing mattered but this – nothing mattered but her.
But they were already lucky that no one had come barging in when they’d made all the racket they’d made earlier. He had a feeling he knew why; he’d seen the reason floating around them as he’d taken Helena, a veritable cocoon of protective green magic and a buffer against the rest of the world. But it was foolish to think they could get away with it a second time.
Will’s heart swelled as he became the fool anyway and turned fast on the bed, at once knocking Helena to her back beneath him. She gasped in surprise, her eyes widening, and her hands flew to his now-clothed chest. He caged her in, an arm firmly planted on either side of her against the bed.
“If you want to keep your clothes on this time, you might have to put some distance between us,” he said with a dark smile.
“Gladly,” came a familiar voice. The cocking of a gun followed on its heels, the click-click sound like a death knoll in the small room.
Helena froze underneath him, her pupils growing tiny in fear as she looked from him to whatever was over his shoulder. A new wave of power washed over him, one in complete opposition from everything he’d felt so far. And yet it was terribly familiar.
Will reacted like lightning, leaning over to grab the gun he’d stashed beneath his pillow. He then simultaneously rose off Helena and spun to face the bedroom door, but froze mid-motion when he saw what Helena had already seen.
The intruder was standing right over the bed, and his cocked gun – the one Helena’s father had given her – was two inches from Will’s head.
“You were right Will,” said Liam Slate, whose words shook but whose gun arm was steady and strong. “These tattoos don’t work against Cain at all.”
For so many reasons, horror washed over Will as he stared down the barrel of that gun and consequence came slamming into him like a ton of bricks. But before he could decide what to do next, Helena was rising beside him, her arm reaching out, her fingers and palm glowing with fresh, fast magic.
She shouted something ancient at the tops of her lungs. It sounded primordially beautiful; they were exotically curved words, like spoken calligraphy. And beyond all reason, Will understood what she was saying. They were the words of a traveling spell, created when words themselves were brand new and travel was used to cross the vast regions of yet empty space.
The spell was created by the only one who could travel that vast region. The only one who existed to do so.
William, the name echoed.
The room around them flashed a bright, sparkling white, and Will reacted out of instinct, reaching out to take hold of Helena with his free hand. The bed beneath them lurched. Liam’s face twisted with rage, and the irises of his eyes went from green to bright, glowing blue. He lowered the gun to Will’s heart, aiming for what would stop him dead at once.
He knows, Will thought.
But then he was spinning on the bed, turning his back on his possessed cousin to wrap his arms firmly around the Promised One.
“No!” The gun went off, but Will must have already been already gone; the bullet went through the space where he’d been a split second earlier. The heated fuel of Cain’s wrath followed Will like a bath of fire as he and Helena vanished.
The magic of the spell bent the universe as it had been designed to do, and rather than manipulate time, for once Helena manipulated space. It folded before them like a piece of paper, then rather roughly shoved them from one side of the paper to the other.
He knew the landing was going to be tough. This was untried magic for Helena, and it was eminently powerful. He held her tightly within the protection of his embrace, and prepared his body for the impact. As he did, he called out with his mind, like any trained warden would.
Fort! He mentally bellowed, hoping the call could be heard through the twisted space of the wormhole Helena had opened up and sent them through. Liam needs help!
They came out of the spell with the oddly painless sensation of being pulled like taffy, and then Will was grunting with real pain as the wind was knocked from his lungs and he and Helena rolled across a rocky, flat surface. He took the brunt of the impact, and all of the scrapes and bruising from pebbles as they skidded across the ground, and all he could think the entire time was a silent, repetitive prayer that Helena would be okay.
When he came to a stop, Helena was still firmly in his arms, tucked safely against his chest. After a moment or two of discombobulated silence, she lifted her head. Will looked down to meet her gaze, and just caught the tail-end of a reddish glow as it faded from the depths of her eyes. She was shaking; he could feel the tremble of her body against his.
“Holy… f-fuck,” she whispered shakily.
For some reason Will found this to be an understatement. And that made him want to laugh. Instead he just smiled, shaking his head. “That was amazing.”
But she didn’t smile back. Her brow furrowed. “Liam is back there, Will. Cain has him.”
“I tried to let Fort know,” he said.
Will slowly let her go, and the two of them sat up. The rocks they’d rolled across were not just rocks. Each one was faceted and crystalline, and a myriad of colors lay naturally strewn across the ground, which stretched into the landscape, clear to the curved horizon. Nothing else moved. There were no plants, no animals. Just these multi-hued gemstones of varying sizes as far as the eye could see.
“We’re in Lapis,” said Helena.
Lapis was a fae realm, or rather a realm belonging solely to the fae. It was deserted for the most part, but once in a while it was mined for its more rare and valuable stones. The entire realm was composed of gems, from sand-size to those large enough to build a house in.
“You took us between realms,” said Will, his mind spinning. “I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be,” said Helena dejectedly. She got to her feet, and Will hastily joined her, worried about what effects casting magic of that magnitude might have on her. “I have no idea how I did it, and the gods only know how the hell we’re going to get back.”
She finished looking around, then turned to face him. “Are you okay? That gun went off, and it’s….” She broke off and ran a hand through her luxurious hair as her gaze slid to his chest. “It’s a powerful gun.”
“I’m fine,” he told her. “He missed.”
“That’s just it,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t miss. Not ever.”