Free Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers) by Cassi Carver

“With all the cracks and crevices in this stone, let’s hope it’s not a striation of some kind.”
    “But that would make sense, at least in that it needs to lead to the next stop on the map, right? Man, this sun…” Kara stood and wiped her brow. “We need to talk to Raley about adding some cloud cover.”
    Gavin squinted at the fawn and then stepped back a few paces. “The sun…yes… Do you see that? Look at the way the sun catches the specks in the granite. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or if there might be a pattern there.”
    Kara marched to Gavin’s side and stood on her tiptoes, trying to catch the view from his perspective. “I don’t see it.”
    His large hands came around her waist and lifted her easily until she was cheek to cheek with him, viewing the stone from his vantage point. “Now do you see it?”
    Kara swallowed, willing herself to stare straight ahead and not give in to the urge to press her cheek to Gavin’s. She blinked and refocused her vision. “Maybe… Yeah, I think so. Can you get me closer?”
    With Kara still held in his grip, Gavin plodded closer to the side of the fawn’s gracefully arching neck. Sweat had begun to collect in Kara’s cleavage, and she pressed her tank top between her breasts to absorb it and stop the tickle there.
    “Yes,” Gavin said, “this heat isn’t helping your scent any.”
    “What?” Kara gasped. How embarrassing. They had heat in the Shadowland, but no convenience stores where she could run in and pick up a travel-size deodorant. “Sorry.”
    Gavin laughed. “You misunderstand me, princess. The scent of your perspiration has always done something to me, and none of it is bad.”
    Kara grinned. “I guess that’s a matter of opinion.”
    “I’d say it’s more a matter of timing.”
    Kara reached her hand up to trace it along the sparkles in the stone. “I’m not sure what the pattern would be, but I do see something.” The stone was powdery and dry, more like chalk where the infusion of brilliance ended. “Look, this comes right off!” She used her nail to scrape harder.
    “So it does,” Gavin replied. “You may be on to something.”
    She wriggled from his grip onto her feet and really got to work, trying to clear away as much of the porous, crumbly stone as she could.
    Without enough room for them both to work, Gavin stood back, and Kara could just see the toes of his boots in her vision. “I think that’s most of it! Only a little more,” she said.
    “Wonderful. Are you getting tired yet?”
    “Gavin, give it a rest, will you?” But even as she said it, she caught the quick shift in his stance. She dropped her hand, and her gaze flew to his.
    Nostrils flared, Gavin scanned the sky. “Come. Quickly!” He reached out and grabbed her hand just as she detected the sound of wings beating in the distance and heard the muffled rise and fall of masculine voices.
    Without a word, Gavin dematerialized, and at the same time, Kara witnessed her own skin fade until she could see the ground through where her legs should have been. This was totally different than flashing. She could feel Gavin’s grip on her hand, and they weren’t going anywhere, but in every other sense, it seemed like they’d ceased to exist on this plane.
    Gavin’s hand came around her mouth, gently but decisively, and she nodded her understanding that she needed to be silent as two silver-wings flew toward them.
    “Are you sure the scout detected intruders here?” one guard asked the other.
    These men didn’t dress a thing like her clan-mates. They wore a single piece of armor over their chests, dark, like pewter, with an emblem etched into the metal and below that, black skirt-length bottoms made of vertical slats of leather. Gladiators, maybe?
    “They must have flashed when they heard us coming.”
    “I didn’t sense anyone flashing, did you?”
    “No, but…” The guard stilled and lifted his nose to the wind. “Do you smell that? There was