Free Elemental by Emily White Page B

were
laugh lines and ones of sorrow around his eyes and mouth, creating
darker shadows in his already dark skin. He was black as night and
just as beautiful. His wide nostrils flared with each steady breath
and his wide lips were slightly parted. I thought he might be
asleep, but without the snoring, I couldn’t be sure.
    I smiled.
    This face, just as it was now, would be in
my mind as I took my last breath. I had been given the chance to
love someone and know what it was to be loved in return. Manoo
could take my life now because I already had everything I’d ever
wanted.
    A sharp screeching sound, like metal on
metal, ripped through the hold, and I was sent flying through the
air. The floor was coming up at me fast, but I wasn’t going to hit
it. No, because the hard corner of a metal crate would hit me long
before the floor did. My arms and legs flailed about as if I
actually thought I could fly and escape the coming pain. When I saw
the sharp edge rising up toward me, I reasoned that I should
somehow move, but I instinctively knew that wasn’t going to
happen.
    And then my skull came cracking down on the
crate. The corner dug into my temple, ripping the skin wide open.
My cry of pain was cut short as my head snapped back, cutting off
the air through my windpipe. The floor decided to take its turn
then. My legs were below me as I landed and I cringed when the full
weight of my body landed on my right knee. But I didn’t scream
until I heard it pop.
    I gritted my teeth and gasped against the
agony. Flames of pain shot up my leg and inside my head, but I knew
I had to be quiet. Somehow, I had to be quiet. It wasn’t time for
me to be discovered. Not yet. Not until Malik and Meir were safely
away. And I knew no “respectable” Tarmean slave would scream from
pain.
    Something happened then that made me almost
ninety percent sure I’d lost my mind—right in front of me the air
began to melt.
    I didn’t really know how air could melt, but
it was doing it. The crates in front of me shimmered at first like
on a hot day, but almost immediately that description wasn’t even
good enough. The air thumped, pulsing back and forth, warping the
crates, pushing them toward me, and then pulling them away. It was
like everything just a few feet ahead of me was sucked into some
center point.
    And then I knew I was crazy—beyond a shadow
of a doubt, head banging against the wall crazy. Where the air had
been twisting and morphing just seconds ago, three men
materialized. And yet, they weren’t really what you could call
“men.” Oh no, they were so much more, like something ripped
straight out of a dream.
    They had wings. Huge, bright wings of colors
so vivid, I had to shield my eyes to look at them.
    Only one of the winged men faced my
direction, but his gaze rested above me. His ivory face was
shockingly pale against the bright, pulsing blue of his wings, with
waist-length hair only slightly darker than his skin. I stared,
frozen in awe at the overwhelming perfection of the clean lines of
his jaw and cheekbones and in terror at the thought of what someone
so obviously greater than any mortal man was capable of doing to
me.
    His wings left trails of blue in the
shivering air as he twisted to face his companions.
    The trapped air in my lungs came out in a
silent whoosh. I don’t know how he didn’t see me, but I thanked
whatever deity was out there that he hadn’t. El, Manoo—at this
point, it didn’t matter.
    The one who had turned away from me pulled
out some kind of flat-paneled device and stared at it. He tapped it
a couple of times and said in a watery voice, “I’m picking up a
strong radioactive signature, but I can’t lock onto it. Whatever’s
in these crates is messing with the readings. I’m not certain, but
I think she’s in this room.”
    She? Oh, crap.
    For a split second, I thought about trying
to crawl my way to the back corner of the cargo hold and hide in
the shadows behind a wall of crates, but as