Page 30 of Enchanted Shadows (The Enchanted Kingdom #6)

Within ten minutes I held two things to be true. Princess Kessara was not afraid of the dark. And she also preferred her shadow magic to her palm one.

And a third more dangerous truth came a moment later: unfortunately, my wife was attractive as hell.

I had just sent another vine out to snag her and sent a low rolling log out to rattle her focus and see what she’d do with it, when I noticed her stumble a step.

Dammit. What was I thinking? I remembered her saying how she had been suppressing both Enchantments and how difficult that had been for her. While the rest of us were used to throwing around this much power, she wasn’t. Using both like this, she was probably already nearing burnout.

“Kessara,” I warned. “Dial it back.”

“What? Why?” she groaned, as the shadows flicked my vines away like they were nothing.

Instead of sending another vine, I sent several out, this time to catch her just in case she fell over. “Burnout.”

“I never reach burnout this fast,” she defended as she threw some shadows wrapped in gold at me.

I was so busy watching her that I allowed it to hit me, landing on my own ass this time. It felt like I got rolled into with a gigantic lead ball.

“Kessara,” I warned again as I strode for her.

“I’m fine,” she snapped as she brought more shadows toward her.

I quickly covered ground, moving to grab her.

Just as I got there, she stumbled another step. And before she could go down, I was there.

She took a deep breath, her head rolling to the side like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

“You haven’t been using this much of your power for a long time,” I told her gently.

“And burnout isn’t something to mess around with.

I should’ve warned you to ease into it.” The good news was that she wasn’t bleeding out of her nose yet.

The bad news was that our wedding reception was coming up.

She didn’t have a lot of time to recover.

She flopped her head to the other side like she didn’t have full control of her neck. “It felt good to use the shadows. And I just wanted to impress the team. Impress you.”

She was sleep drunk, hence the honesty. I gestured for Wren and Molly. “Grab her water, would you?”

Kessara must have been feeling self-conscious, as she tried to stand on her own, stepping away from leaning on me.

But then she almost went down in the other direction, so I was there, again catching her.

Wren ran over with her water while Molly stepped on the other side of her, helping me hold her up.

“Too much too fast?” Molly asked concerned.

“Apparently,” Kessara groaned.

“Burnout, a likely story,” Elsie joked.

I would take most of these jokes in stride, but not when someone was clearly hurting. Even Sam, as mouthy as she got, knew better. So I snapped, “Burnout is never a joke. ”

She rushed out to say, “Sorry.”

I knew Elsie was a sweetheart most of the time and just wanted to get in on making fun of us today, so I let it drop. To my wife, I added, “I guess you just got yourself another night with me, because you’re going to need to nap this off.”

“But the couch,” she mumbled.

“Will suffice.” I put Kessara’s arm around me and ordered to the others, “The rest of you head in.” If I was the one about to collapse from burnout, I wouldn’t want the whole team standing around watching me.

Molly and Wren stayed to talk to Kessara while Vivian asked me, “You need help getting her to your cabin?”

“I’m good,” I told her with a nod.

“Owen,” Kessara said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I can walk that far. Can I just nap here?”

“No,” I tipped my eyes to the sky. “I’m going to carry you, I just wanted everyone else out of here because though we are technically married, they haven’t let us forget about it for more than three damn seconds today.”

Molly wiped Kessara’s stray hairs out of her face. “We may have went a little hard today, sorry guys.”

I lifted Kessara into my arms and I knew she was already out of it because she didn’t say a word about it.

“We will do better,” Wren promised. “We just want the both of you to be happy and we—” she shook her head. “We overdid it.”

Kessara was already asleep. “Well, she was in such a rush to make it up to you all and be seen as valuable to the team that she pushed herself to burnout.”

“She was valuable to us before she used her Enchantments at all,” Molly argued.

“I know that,” I told her. “Getting Kessara to believe it is another story. ”

Wren offered nicely, “Do you want us to come to your cabin and sit with her? If you have to go to the castle?”

“No. I’ve got it.” They were sucking up to me, but it wasn’t working.

I was too tired and too pissed that Kessara burned out because of silly reasons.

I loathed burnout and avoided it at all costs.

I liked the rush of adrenaline as much as the next person, but with Enchantments, you had to know your limits.

The last four years had proved to me that you always had to respect the balance of power.

“Love you,” Wren told my back.

“Love you, too,” I told her. Because I might be pissed off, but I wasn’t a total prick.

I put the sleeping princess in my bed, pulling up the covers to wrap around her and keep her warm. I wanted to use my magic to warm her also, knowing the chills and general achiness of burnout was the part I hated most, but I felt I should at least have her agreement for that.

I stepped back, trying not to stare at how peaceful she looked when she slept. In my bed.

On second thought, I considered that maybe she needed to be among the shadows for her burnout to recover faster, so I drew all the curtains closed, making it darker despite the fact that sunset was still hours away.

Knowing she wouldn’t wake for a few hours, I headed to the cabin next to mine to check in with Emric and hopefully Miles too.

The maze planning was well underway, which would be the day following the wedding reception.

Since word of Calix’s possible arrival, I had all of Team Three moved to the wall to help, and all of Team Four out to Nerede to help the team there keep watch at the docks. There were lots of moving pieces.

Day one of being married, and I found I wanted nothing more than a long shower and some food.

Calix could have her over my dead body.