“No, I told it to protect my friends.”
“Awww, I think he likes us,” Drayce drawled, elbowing Eno in the side. The bodyguard snorted and gave Drayce a shove.
With another small wave of his hand, Caelan ended the protection spell and the shield gradually disintegrated in a shower of harmless green sparks. The energy returned to him on the wind, swirling and sinking into his skin as if it had always belonged to him. At least the power from Kaes didn’t mind obeying him when it came to protective shields. Now he just needed to figure out how to create something a little more aggressive. Offensive rather than defensive.
“Yeah. Okay. I can do that.” Shey turned to the bowl of water still waiting for him in the sunlight. Caelan took a step back, giving the prince some breathing room in which to work.
Shey reached out both hands toward the water, and Caelan could feel the small swirl of energy around the other man. It was gathering within him, but not moving outward. He could almost imagine it sort of sitting within his chest, its head cocked to the side like a dog trying to figure out what its master wanted it to do.
Caelan took a step closer to Shey and lowered his voice so that no one else could hear him over the whistle and rush of the wind. “Just think about Rayne. Just think about keeping Rayne safe.”
Shey’s lips quirked slightly, as if he were trying to fight a smile. “You’re too astute.”
“I see how you watch him when you think no one is paying attention to you,” Caelan murmured. “Just think about protecting him. The rest of us are too much of a bother.”
A sharp bark of laughter left Shey. At the same time, the water rose up in the middle of the bowl, almost like the start of a fountain, and dropped down. The power had rushed out of Shey to circle the bowl of water as if it were trying to figure out what to do with it.
“There! Hold on to that happiness. Be calm. At peace,” Caelan instructed, excitement buzzing through him. It made sense. He had to be calm and relaxed when he created the barrier. Protection was about safety and embracing the love and concern for others.
Did that mean he needed to be embracing other darker, more violent emotions in order to direct his power toward offensive means?
The water moved, but this time blue energy spouted upward like a geyser toward the sky. It arced over them, moving toward Rayne, but Shey’s phone suddenly started ringing. Shey jumped and the spell lost its cohesion with his concentration broken. Apparently there was still some water clinging to the energy because it fell like fat raindrops on Rayne’s head.
Drayce cackled and darted closed to Eno, using his larger form to hide behind him. Rayne looked grumpy and even Eno failed to find it amusing, which was surprising.
“Whoops!” Shey cried out, wincing and chuckling softly as he reached for his phone in his back pocket.
“Lovely,” Rayne grumbled as he pulled his glasses off his face and ran a hand through his now wet hair.
“You’ll definitely need to work on your concentration, but it’s coming along,” Caelan said.
Shey smirked at him as he lifted his phone to his ear. Caelan walked toward Rayne, who was cleaning the water from his glasses with a cloth from the inner pocket of his jacket. He was not amused, but Drayce was clutching his sides as he continued to giggle like a lunatic.
“Do I even want to ask what I did to deserve that?” Rayne grumbled.
Caelan shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. He was—”
“The Empire! We need to leave now!” Shey shouted. He was already running toward the SUV. Caelan’s heart jumped into his throat, and he joined Shey with the others falling in behind them.
“What’s going on?” Eno demanded.
“It looks like half the New Rosanthe fleet is heading straight for the Sirelis harbor,” Shey replied.
“What?” Drayce squawked.
“How close are they?” Caelan asked. He grabbed the door handle for the passenger door behind the driver.
“Too close. We’re scrambling ships now to meet them, but they’ll be outnumbered. At best, we can slow them until midnight.” Shey threw himself behind the wheel and the engine roared to life. Rayne barely managed to close the front passenger door before Shey gunned the engine and they sped toward Sirelis.
Shey was cursing under his breath while Caelan hung on for dear life. Shey was pushing the SUV as fast as he could to get into the city, but the country road was narrow and winding. They were moving far too fast for these turns.
“How much of the fleet is guarding Godfall?” Rayne asked.
“What? How did you know about that?” Shey gasped. He took his eyes off the road to glare at Rayne and Caelan cringed, only partially relaxing when Shey turned his attention in front of them.