He pressed his mouth to her temple.
"Others can leave," he said.
The words were quiet. Almost gentle.
He snapped his fingers.
The wave was soft.
It was not violent — not the brutal snapping displacement of combat magic. It was gentle, in the way that weather is gentle when it is still enormous. A warm pressure that moved outward from him in a circle, spreading across the pool, across the courtyard, across the island's warm stone.
It found each of his women.
And it lifted them.
Veronica went first.
Her crimson silk snapped in a sudden wind. She rose — her feet leaving the flagstone, her red hair streaming upward, her eyes going wide with shock. She reached out instinctively, her hands finding nothing.
"Raven—"
She rose faster.
