Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Shite.
I knew what that meant.
We were caged.
“Get off me,” I ordered.
“Stay down,” he demanded.
“Cass, get…up,” I snapped on a heave of his big body.
His big body moved at my heave, considering it had gone strangely inert.
I scooted out from under him, sitting up on my arse, hearing a constant low sizzle, and now seeing I was correct.
We were imprisoned in a magical red veil that sparkled in a dome all around us.
Cassius’s arm captured me at my waist, dragging me on my rear across the leaves and dirt and plastering me to his side, doing this raising his sword again with his other arm, but I noted he did not raise it to the point it touched the veil.
He was also on his behind, but somehow he managed to look alert and fierce, even sitting on his arse in some leaves.
But now I had confirmation of the reason for his grunt. Touching that veil caused pain, even if you didn’t do it bodily. He must have touched it with his sword.
He did not know Zees.
I sighed.
This was going to take some diplomacy and I wasn’t sure Cassius was up for that.
The Zees came out in force, surrounding us.
“Fucking hell,” Cassius muttered grimly.
I started counting.
I quit, still not done, when I got to thirty.
“What’s this, what’s this?” the voice that came earlier came now attached to a man who was standing beyond the veil right in front of us.
He wore a hat, but even so, I could see the scarf tied around his forehead under it. His hair was long, dark, and flowing over his shoulders and down his chest. His short jacket was open, the shirt beneath unbuttoned low. He had many necklaces hanging down his bare chest, some with medallions, most made of beads. His wide eyes were rounded heavily with black kohl. The sword at his back had a large jewel at the bottom of the hilt that blinked in the moonlight.
“An Airenzian soldier and a Nadirii warrior?” he asked. “Have we interrupted a spat between two forbidden lovers?”
“Be on your way,” Cassius growled.
“I have not seen this in all my years,” the Zee stated.
“You look naught but twenty-five,” Cassius returned, and the man burst out laughing.
Through it he put his hand to his chest and said, “You flatter me.”
“I’ll say it only once more, be on your way,” Cassius demanded.
“We shall, oh, we shall,” the man replied. “After you toss your coin pouch through the veil. And I like the look of your sword and dagger, thus we shall take those too.” He tipped his head my way. “Your warrior’s dagger as well.”
“We will not be doing that,” Cassius told him.
The man quirked just one dark, arched brow. “No?”
“No,” Cassius confirmed.
“You felt the magic around you through your steel,” the man declared. “Please believe me, it is far worse when it contacts skin, and with a nod of my head, our witches will shrink it.” He looked to me. “I respect your magic, witch. I truly do. But you are no match to ours. We Zees have been practicing far longer than you Nadirii, as you know.”
This was lamentably true.
Many a Nadirii, alone, without a sister at her side, could be bested by Zee magic, if there was more than one witch in the tribe.
And they definitely had more than one witch in their tribe.
Though, lamentably for him, he had no idea who he was dealing with.
“You really should be on your way,” I advised.
“Should we? Really?” the man mocked.
“You should,” Cassius said in a tone I’d never heard before, and it was disquieting. “Really.”
I took note.
Do not mock Cassius, even if he was arse to the leaves in a dark forest.
“We do not wish to hurt you, Airenzian, even if you are an Airenzian,” the Zee replied.
“I will have no problem hurting you, Zee, and I don’t give one fuck you’re a Zee,” Cassius retorted.
Some of the joviality shifted from the man’s face as he moved closer to the veil.
The others moved closer too.
“Cass,” I whispered, “be calm.”
“I am fucking calm,” Cassius replied, his eyes never leaving the leader of the Zees.
“You aren’t.”
And he wasn’t.
“I bloody am.”
“You aren’t, Cass. Just give him your purse,” I instructed, looking toward the leader. “We must keep our weapons. You understand.”
“I do not,” the man said, his tone having deteriorated too. “You are beaten. Give us what we ask, and we will not harm you.”
“Take my man’s purse and be done, and he will not harm you,” I returned.
“He cannot harm me, Nadirii.”
“Please do not test us,” I requested.
“It is not me on my arse, caged with righteous magic.”
“Lamb,” Cassius growled, and I knew he didn’t use my name because he didn’t want them to know it.
But, damn it all, I liked it that he was calling me “lamb” again.
“Don’t hurt them,” I ordered Cass.