Completely Smitten Read Online Free PDF

and she made a strange whistling when she breathed.
    It had been so long since he had used magic for anything other than parlor tricks and transportation that he had forgotten almost everything he’d learned. He wasn’t supposed to heal injuries or sickness from natural causes, but he might be able to slide this one by on a technicality.
    He had created the ledge, so the injuries couldn’t be natural. They were his fault. At least, that was what he would tell the Fates when they decided to punish him all over again.
    Darius closed his eyes and tilted his head back. The river roared beneath him and he thought he heard the scream of a rafter. A warm breeze caressed his face. He forced himself to blot all that out, trying to remember the exact words of the healing spells he’d learned from a midwife in King Arthur’s court.
    After a moment, the words came to him. He clenched his left fist and extended his right hand over the woman’s back. She was still breathing, but her breathing was shallow. Then he recited the words of the spell. Light appeared through his fingers and illuminated her skin through her clothes. He saw blood spilled inside her stomach disappear, broken ribs knit, a punctured lung mend.
    He moved his hand, repeating the spell over her head, and then again over her arms and her twisted legs. He was careful, though, to make sure it was only internal injuries that got healed. External ones had to remain. She would remember the fall and think it suspicious if she didn’t have scrapes and bruises.
    When he was done, he felt dizzy. He sat down and put his face in his hands. He had forgotten how draining using real magic was.
    But he wasn’t done. He had to make the ledge disappear before the seasoned rafters noticed it and realized it was new, and then he had to get the woman to a place of safety.
    He scooped her up in his arms. She was lighter than he expected. He could feel her muscles beneath her skin. She moaned as he picked her up. Her eyes fluttered and then opened.
    They were a rich green, almost an emerald color, and they were natural, not contacts at all. The color enhanced her ivory skin and her auburn hair. He found himself staring at her as if he had never seen a woman before.
    “My pack,” she whispered.
    Her pack? It must have broken off after she started to fall the second time. He didn’t see it anywhere.
    “It’s got everything …” Her voice trailed off, but he could still see the concern in her eyes. She wouldn’t rest until he told her what happened to it, and if she didn’t rest, he wouldn’t be able to get her off this ledge.
    “It’s fine,” he lied. “I’ll get it after we get you taken care of.”
    She smiled and mouthed “Thank you” before closing her eyes. Her body went limp as she lost consciousness again.
    He cradled her to him, feeling her warmth against him, then recited a levitation spell. They rose up the cliff face.
    A yellow raft made its way down the river, and one of the guides stared up at him. The guide tapped someone beside him and pointed. At that moment, they hit white water, and the guide nearly toppled out of the raft.
    Darius reached the edge of the cliff and landed on a safe area away from the slide. That guide would remember what he saw, but he wouldn’t be able to prove anything.
    Still, Darius felt careless. One of the many rules of the magical was to avoid calling attention to himself and his spells. He should have used a location spell. Obviously, he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he would like. That irritated him. But the proximity of this woman, the nearness of her death, and the fact that he had used more magic in this one afternoon than he had used in the past hundred years was clouding his judgment.
    He would have to be careful from now on.
    He raised his hand, balanced the woman against his hip, and used the spell now. Their surroundings vanished. For a brief half second, they existed in darkness, and then they appeared in the guest