Maddox rotated mid-air, arms still locked around Guinevere.
His back hit stone twenty feet from where they'd been standing, breaking her fall. Both decisions, the rotation and the grip, had been made in the same half-second and neither had been optional.
His ears rang with a pitch that swallowed every other sound. Every person in the ballroom was on the floor. Flat. Pinned. The gold in the hall flickered to darkness, like a snuffed candle except for one woman who was currently on top of Maddox and probably had no idea she was still lit.
"Are you okay, baby?" Maddox pressed his mouth to her ear and kissed it. "I won't let anything hurt you."
She didn't answer. Her hands found his arms where they were locked around her and held on like they were the only architecture left standing.
