Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

going on,” Ambrose called over his shoulder. “You two ought to make sure your contingencies are in order, Magus, sharpish!”

“Contingencies?” Rihyani asked, staring into Milo’s face from where she’d landed on the floor.

Milo was up on hands and knees, with one arm reaching over Rihyani’s shoulder and one leg between her thighs.

“Uh, yes,” Milo said, acutely aware that he was having a hard time forming precise thoughts. “I, uh, I’ll need your help.”

“Sort of hard to do anything like this,” she said with a glance down the length of his body. “Or at least anything practical.”

He flushed and started to rise, a half-formed, half-meant apology on his lips, but Rihyani hooked her arm around his neck. For a second, he thought she was trying to use his body as leverage to pull herself up, then he felt her cheek against his and her lips at his ear.

“I love you,” she murmured. “Don’t forget that.”

Milo froze, Rihyani hanging from his neck as her supple legs entwined his thigh.

“The timing is awkward,” he said, his voice sounding breathless and peevish to his ears.

“You brute!” she hissed and nipped playfully at his earlobe. “That’s not how a lover responds to his beloved!”

Milo blinked, suddenly aware of how close she was, how much of her body he could feel pressed against him, and what she most certainly could feel pressed against her. It was absurd given the circumstances but had death and danger not been so near at hand, he wasn’t certain what he might have done.

Or rather, he knew exactly what he would do, but he was determined not to think about it.

“I love you, too,” he said, dizzy from the emotional rollercoaster he’d been on for the last few minutes. “But I will need your help to pull this off.”

Rihyani lowered herself back onto the floor and gave an immense roll of her eyes.

“What can I do for you, my love?” she asked with a sigh.

“Camouflage,” Milo said as he climbed to his feet with a grunt.

He bent and offered his hand, which the fey took kindly enough despite her efforts at pouting.

“To hide the train?” Rihyani asked, brows arching in doubt.

“Not for the outside,” Milo said as he pulled her to her feet. “For the inside.”

Standing eye to eye with him, the fey continued to look at him doubtfully. Then her eyes widened, and a sly look crept over her features.

“Especially the third and fourth car?”

Milo nodded, giving her a devious grin.

6

These Messages

Milo was standing at the end of the fourth car when Ambrose shuffled down the passage at gunpoint. The rain-lashed German soldier behind him couldn’t see the expression stamped across the big man’s face as he frog-marched the bodyguard down the aisle, gun pressed to his head.

“This better work,” encapsulated his feelings well enough.

The other patrons in the car sat very still, most not daring to look up from where they huddled in their seats. They were a motley collection of travelers, ranging from men in drab business suits to a pair of old women in the vibrant apron dresses common in the most rural parts of Belarus. They were bystanders, non-combatants suddenly and frightfully aware that they were caught up in a conflict not their own.

One or two whispered prayers with bowed heads while others leaned over children, offering what fervent if feeble protection their bodies could afford.

Despite this absolute inoffensiveness, or perhaps because of it, Milo watched the sodden soldiers shuffle behind Ambrose’s warden’s jeer, threatening the passengers. They hissed and snarled and carelessly swept their rifles this way and that, laughing as people cringed and lurched away. One even reached out with the barrel of his rifle and began to knock the hats off of those he passed. As the tormented stole frustrated and fearful glances at the bully, he snarled in German, “Look down, pig!” before moving on to another target.

Milo gritted his teeth, willing himself to maintain his composure.

Not yet, he thought. Just a little longer.

This plan may not be feasible, Imrah offered, and the wizard ground his teeth all the harder as Ambrose came to stand in front of him, the rifle barrel still pressed to his head.

“Look who came for dinner,” Ambrose said and bit back a curse as the rifle barrel was jabbed hard against the back of his head.

“Shut up,” the big man’s escort spat, glaring past his captive at Milo.

Milo’s temper flared, and the plan nearly failed then and there.

“Be careful,” Milo said, distilling his anger into a tone as cold and sharp as a flensing knife. “If you're here for me, you know I could kill every last one of you with a single word.”

The eyes of every soldier in the column in the aisle swung to Milo, and for a moment, no one dared to move.

“You’re not going to do anything as rash as that,” said a familiar voice in crisp German.

Milo looked at the front of the car, where the officer with the curly dark mustache from the general staff meeting stood watching him with glittering eyes. In the uneven light of the general staff conference hall, Milo hadn’t noticed that the man’s eyes seemed greedily amphibian. He might have been a handsome man of middle age if not for those bulging, glassy orbs watching the world as if everything might be his food. A twisted imitation of a smile wormed its way across the officer’s face as he continued to leer hungrily at Milo.

“You won’t do that because I have soldiers in the next car ready to kill every civilian present if things get out of hand. Do you understand?”

To illustrate the point, the soldiers in the compartment turned and leveled their rifles at the rows of seated civilians. The innocent gasped and shivered but stayed where they were, trembling and crouching.

Milo tightened his grip on his cane as his thoughts whispered to Imrah within.

Both compartments. Are we sure this will work and not get us killed in the process?

It is not a question