Free Breathless Magic by Rachel Higginson Page A

before ripping off his gag.
    In less than five minutes, the odds were stacking more
generously in our favor.
    “You won’t make it out of here.” Alexi stood from behind the
desk and barked out his warning. “There are more men here than you could
imagine. We are taking your Kingdom and we are going to destroy it, bit by bit
until there is nothing left for you to rule, until there is nothing left but
ash and dust.”
    Titus ran to the door and looked out into the hall. He
immediately slammed it closed and flipped the lock. He gave us an “Oh, shit!”
look and shook his head. “Not that way,” he said.
    Kiran and I looked at the long windows that let in moonlight
from either side of the desk at the exact same time.
    “You can try,” Kiran told Alexi as we fought our way toward
him. “But this Kingdom isn’t built on solid things to destroy. It’s not
centered around buildings you can burn or cities you can raze. This Kingdom is
made from a people that defy reason by surviving against all odds and have hope
when there should be none. You fight against a Kingdom that is built in the
hearts of these people and lives forever in their eternal minds. The Magic is
free. My people have claimed their birthright. And the battle you fight is a
losing one. You cannot take it from us because it belongs to them. And you
cannot destroy something that you will never control.”
    I loved that man.
    So very much.
    Alexi looked a little lost for words, so he raised his
weapon instead. The room around us was blowing to pieces in our battle. We
ducked Magic blasts, bullets and swipes of multiple swords. The men outside the
room banged against the brass door, but no one seemed able to budge the lock. I
wondered how Titus had sealed it so permanently.
    Probably it had something to do with his brutish-bear
strength.
    “We will take it all!” Alexi screamed in an inhuman shriek.
“We will burn it all!”
    Kiran looked at me and nodded toward the windows. “Like the
top of Kingsley? The dance?”
    I smiled at the memory. How long ago? It felt like lifetimes
ago when he followed me to the roof of the Kingsley gym during the Fall Equinox
dance.
    “This time, I’ll break your fall,” he winked at me.
    “Deal.”
    And then I followed Kiran as he jumped out the window. Glass
crashed around us and would have sliced through our skin if we didn’t have
Magic to protect us. Titus flew through the other window and shifted in midair
so he could land without hurting himself.
    Just like Kiran said he would, he Time-Slowed our fall and
twisted to catch me. I floated gracefully into the curve of the strong refuge
of his body and threw my arms around his neck. I buried my face in his chest
and gave into the momentum that carried us down.
    We hit the ground, two stories below, with a painful thud;
but with Magic, we quickly shook it off and jumped to our feet. My blue smoke
floated around us before I even conjured its healing power.
    Kiran grabbed my hand and pulled me after him.
    We were on the side of the Castle with the underground
garage and so that’s where we took off to.
    There weren’t that many of Terletov’s men in our way as most
of them had been occupied inside the Castle. We disabled the ones we could and
ducked out of the way of the one’s we couldn’t. Titus stayed in bear form until
we were in the garage and picking out a suitable getaway car.
    Kiran wisely chose an H2 and we piled in with Titus now
prudently in human-form.
    Kiran took off, not bothering to drive carefully or
expertly. Mostly, he drove through things. Through the garage exit. Through the pileup of Immortals that gathered
to stop our getaway. Through the narrow streets of the village. He almost drove
through the Immortal Fountain, but I think old Magic bumped the steering wheel
to the left and we narrowly missed the gigantic structure made from thousands
of years-old stone. And finally through the gates of the Citadel that had been
blown wide apart from