The Immortal Heights Read Online Free PDF Page B

option.
    â€œI’ve been sleeping for days and woke up not very long before you came upon us, Kashkari. So let me take the first watch. In fact, let me also summon some water. You both look parched—finish what’s left in your waterskins and I’ll refill them.”
    While a sphere of water spun and grew in the middle of the observation post, she cleaned and rebandaged Titus’s back, which had been wounded when they had passed through the Crucible the last time. It was getting better—but she was generous with the topical analgesic and he equally unsparing with the pain-relieving pilules.
    She tsked as she worked, murmuring mild criticism on how little he took care of himself. Her touch was efficient, almost impersonal, as she took care of the wound. But when she was done, she rested her hand against his upper arm.
    And he really, really wished they were alone. Kashkari was safeguarding them against known and unknown dangers, but he would give the man his castle in the Labyrinthine Mountains if he would go elsewhere in the base for fifteen minutes.
    If he would stay away for half an hour, Titus would throw open the Crown Vault and Kashkari could have any of the treasures therein.
    As if he heard Titus’s thoughts, Kashkari, who had already stretched out on his carpet, got up again to look out of a view port, his back to Titus and Fairfax. Almost immediately her fingers climbed up his arm to his shoulders. There her hand splayed open, as if she wanted to touch as much of him as possible.
    His breaths came in quicker.
    With her other hand she traced his spine upward, vertebra by vertebra. His fingers sank into the deep pile of the carpet, trying to hold on to something. And then she shifted—a muffled sound upon the carpet—and kissed him at the base of his neck.
    If she had struck him with one of her bolts of lightning, the sensation could not have been more electric. He barely managed to swallow a gasp. And surely she must have felt the tremor beneath his skin.
    Do it again. Please do it again.
    â€œI don’t know what’s going on,” said Kashkari. “But you two had better come take a look.”
    Were Titus capable of commanding lightning, he would smite every single Atlantean in a hundred-mile radius that very moment. And the Bane he would gladly throttle with his own hands, for his stupid underlings never knew when to leave Titus alone.
    She had to pull him to one side so he did not walk smack into the sphere of water. He half glowered at her, for the laughter in her eyes, for not physically suffering from desire the way he did.
    She flung one arm about his shoulders and kissed him on hischeek. He sighed, his frustration crowded out by sweetness and the simple pleasure of her company.
    It was with much reluctance that he took his gaze off her to look out a view port. Immediately the levity in his heart dissipated. The wyverns were flying drunkenly, nearly crashing into one another. The riders, who a minute ago had been upright and alert in their high-backed saddles, were now slumped over.
    Fairfax glanced at Kashkari. “Did your mages do this?”
    Kashkari shook his head. “Our mages would have been too busy sealing the entrances and taking up defensive positions.”
    Fairfax turned to Titus. “Our allies?”
    Titus could only shrug. He had no idea what was going on.
    Kashkari took out his two-way notebook and scratched a few words with his pen. He looked up after a wait of several seconds. “Amara says no—she already asked them.”
    â€œFortune shield me,” cried Fairfax. “Do you see what I see?”
    Titus pressed his face to the view port again and sucked in a breath. The wyverns were plucking off the riders and dropping them to the desert below.
    Bits of dragon lore, read long ago and practically forgotten, surfaced in his mind. “The riders are dead. Wyverns cannot abide cadavers—that is why they are helping one