Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
The soft gold of his magic swam into her vision. Just the lightest touch against her skin and she could smell the leather and books and feel his internal heat, the inferno that was always raging from his constant magic use. When she focused even harder, she could see the golden glow flow away from her, out into the library, out the door, out into the world. It was everywhere. His magic was everywhere.
“Focus,” he said gently. “Just here, Wren.”
She swallowed and reined it all back in. She could do this.
The magic was part of her. She could control it if she wanted. That was what she had been doing with her slow motion her entire life. She could walk in and out of that like breathing. This was the same, just a different ability.
Her own magic rose to the surface as she felt around for her absorption and the space where it was drawing in Graves’s magic.
“Good,” he said. “Whatever you’re working on, I can see it.”
She narrowed her eyes. There was a key turn here. When she went into slow motion, she pushed forward into it like flipping a switch. She needed to find the switch here.
She grappled with it like reaching for slippery soap until she felt her absorption magic settle over her. She gasped. It covered her entire body, like a blanket across her senses. It hugged her tightly, skin to skin, until there was no place where she started and it ended.
With reaching tendrils of magic, she tried to extend that blanket outward. Her hands shook as she fought with herself to stretch her power as easily as she slipped into slow motion, but she couldn’t do it. This felt like it was glued to her skin.
“Wren,” he murmured, his eyes warm on hers. “Steady. Just drag in a little bit. Don’t reach out with your entire body. Just where I’m touching you.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice trembling.
She focused on his hand. His magic. A tiny trickle in a giant river. All she needed to do was drag the river toward her. Just an inch.
She tugged and there it was. Graves’s magic open and waiting for her. Not a trickle—a torrent. A giant, unwavering, magnificent tidal wave of power. She could see past the stream he was offering her to the intense flood within him. So much magic it was blinding. He went from her dark winter god to a diaphanous sheen of golden light. Magic beyond measure.
Except…something was missing.
She didn’t know how she knew, only that there was a piece of that overwhelming abundance that felt…injured. As if someone had cut a piece out of it and it had never grown back. Which felt impossible. All magic could be rechargeable.
“Enough,” Graves grunted.
The connection abruptly severed. Kierse’s absorption switched back into neutral. The light suffusing his body disappeared. She felt suddenly bereft.
“I…”
“That was more than sufficient,” Graves said, rubbing his hands together.
“Did I take too much?”
“No. You didn’t take anything,” he said. “You…” For a moment, he said nothing. But he was looking at her with something like concern in his features. “You touched my magic.”
“Was that bad?”
“It was…invasive.”
“A taste of your own medicine?” she quipped.
He stilled at the thought. “Perhaps. I wasn’t sure how much more powerful you would be now that the spell is gone. You did that faster than I anticipated.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It’s good. But…” He wavered a moment as if he wasn’t going to finish his thought.
“But?”
“That is how wisps have killed warlocks in the past,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t want to give her this information.
“By touching your magic?”
“And then draining it.”
She blanched. “I’d never survive absorbing all that magic.”
“Let’s hope we never have to test that,” he said, brushing his hands down his suit pants.
He looked…uncomfortable. And how could she blame him? When he had offered to teach her magic, she had panicked about lowering her guard and letting him into her mind. But this was something else altogether. He had taught her how to…hurt him.
He could have skipped this step. He could have not told her what the end result would be, but he had. A light switched on in her mind. He’d handed her a truth that could hurt him. And he’d done it willingly.
She needed to trust him to do the same when she switched her powers the other direction and let him in. A vulnerability for a vulnerability.
“Now turn the powers off.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
She closed her eyes this time. She didn’t want to dive back into that rush of magic. To get lost in the currents of the enormity of him. All she wanted to do was feel…nothing. No absorption at all.
She wanted to let him in. Graves could come in. She would allow that.
The magic appeared to her like something she’d always known how to find. The off button slid into place like breathing. Graves’s hand on her wrist was fire hot. She opened her eyes to see the gold of his magic sliding past her defenses and into her skin.