“These shamans are far more powerful than the public gives them credit for, and I suspect Halyma is special among them.” Iannis arched a brow at me, no doubt reading my thoughts from the expression stamped across my face. “I woke up in the dirigible feeling disoriented and sluggish, and found my fellow passengers completely unconscious. Then the pilot came into the cabin, wearing a gas mask.” His voice was suspiciously even, but I suspected that deep anger lay hidden underneath, like magma simmering beneath a seemingly dormant volcano. “I could not kill him since we needed him to land, so I tried to stun him instead. But the gas affected me more than I realized, for I missed, and he managed to throw me out the door of the airship.” His voice turned arctic. “He will be punished.”
“I took care of that for you,” Fenris assured him.
“Oh?” Iannis arched a brow.
“Fenris lost his temper when we were questioning him,” I remarked dryly. “He killed the pilot with a lightning bolt.”
“Ah.” Iannis looked surprised. “I suppose this means your secret is out now, Fenris.”
“I was forced to explain my past to the girls after it was done,” Fenris admitted with a sigh. “But never mind that, Iannis. What happened after you were thrown out the door? Even you cannot fly.”
“I haven’t come so close to death in several decades at the very least.” A shadow passed over Iannis’s face as he spoke. “I was hurtling through the cold air, my lungs aching from the gas, and it was too dark to see how far I was to the ground, so I invoked Resinah’s strongest protection spell as well as another to make myself lighter so the impact would not be as great.”
“Ah.” Fenris nodded as though that made perfect sense to him.
“Wait a second,” I objected. “Why couldn’t you use a levitation spell to save yourself?” If Fenris was able to teach me how to do that, Iannis had to know how to use it too.
“The levitation spell is not powerful enough to halt a fall that rapid. It is meant for slow ascents and descents. At the rate I was falling, it would have barely slowed me at all.”
“Oh.” I frowned. It sounded like magic wasn’t completely impervious to science. Clearly there was more to learn than I’d thought.
“In any case,” Fenris said, moving the conversation along, “I imagine you did not come out of this unscathed.”
“Certainly not,” Iannis agreed. “I hit a tree, suffered numerous broken bones and lacerations, and was knocked unconscious by the impact. I only awoke when Halyma and her small group of Coazi found me, stuck in the top branches, and deduced I must have fallen from the sky. To give her credit, she is a very skilled healer. I could not have done it better myself. But by the time I was mobile again, she had used her powers to make me believe I was a member of the tribe, and in love with her.” He shrugged, frowning deeply. “Had it not just happened, I never would have believed myself susceptible to such trickery.” After a moment he added, “Now I know why she had to sacrifice some animal every day. It would have been difficult to keep up such a deep enchantment without constant reinforcement.”
I huffed out a breath. “I guess I should take comfort in the fact that even you aren’t infallible.” I wanted to ask if he still had feelings for Halyma, but that would have sounded pathetic. “Still, it would have been nice if you could have kept the serapha charm around your neck. I about died when I found it in a bird’s nest without you attached to it. I thought you’d decided to throw it away for some reason.” My throat tightened, and I swallowed hard to get rid of the lump trying to form there.
“Halyma had a good idea of what it was, and she tricked me into giving it to her.” Iannis’s long fingers went to the charm, and butterflies fluttered in my belly as I watched him stroke the gem briefly. “I would have never taken it off willingly,” he added, his voice softening.
“That’s what I thought,” Fenris said, sounding satisfied. “We could tell by the glow that you were still alive, so the charm was helpful to us regardless.”
“How did you manage to locate me without it?” Iannis asked. “I hope you haven’t just been aimlessly wandering around the plains.”
“We decided to start with the Resistance camp at the base of the mountains,” Annia said. “We’d heard from another group of Coazi that there was a camp holding prisoners, so we figured that was our best lead after hitting a dead end with your necklace.”
“Prisoners?” Iannis’s violet eyes snapped fire as he sat up straight. “Do you mean my delegates?”
“Yeah. They’re being held in an abandoned mineshaft while the camp awaits orders on what to do with them. Naya can tell you the story, since she’s the one who met with them.” Annia jerked a thumb in my direction.
I sighed, then filled Iannis in on what we had discovered back at the camp – that the strike on the airship had been ordered by the Benefactor, targeting Iannis specifically, and that though they’d been waiting on orders from the Benefactor on what to do with the other delegates, they were leaning toward killing them. By the time I was done, Iannis’s face had turned to stone, his eyes blazing with a cold fury that sent shivers down my spine.
“We must rescue them immediately,” he said, pushing to his feet.
“Now?” Annia protested around a mouthful of beef jerky. “It’s dark out. Everybody knows that you don’t travel at night.”