Page 9 of Hateful Prince

“Why haven’t you mentioned this to me before?”

I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair. “I forgot?”

“Dahlia . . .”

“Okay, fine, I didn’t want you to think I was nuts.”

The disapproving scowl on her face had me sinking into my chair. “Right, well, we need to address this. You need a line of defense. Cain won’t always be with you.”

That made a little pang of heartache stab me in the chest. “Are you gonna give me a potion or something? Joffrey took my necklace.”

“You don’t need an amulet of protection. That’s what your powers are for. I think it’s time you learn how to use them.”

“You keep saying I have powers, but all I can do is see some ghosts.”

“How do you know that’s all you can do? Have you tested the theory? When you arrived here, you could only see them, but not even a minute ago, you said you can speak with them now. If you’ve never properly explored the limits of your ability, how can you say with any certainty what they are?”

“Well, if you’re going to get logical about it.”

She stood and strode to the wall of carnivorous plants, standing in front of them for a moment before sweeping her palm in an arc through the air. As I watched, the plants turned to a mist and revealed shelves filled with all manner of witchy odds and ends.

“Wait, you’re a witch?”

Masterson stared at me, then turned back to her shelves. “Obviously.”

How the hell had I missed that?

As she perused the contents, she continued our conversation with a vaguely distracted tone. “So, aside from your ghosties, have you been able to do anything else?”

“Besides my exceptional ability to craft the written word?”

“Is this a joke to you, Dahlia?”

“No,” I grumbled. “Sorry.”

“It’s just the ghosts speaking to you. That’s surprising. Usually mediums have more psychic abilities. Telepathy, telekinesis, compulsion...”

I chewed on my bottom lip for a second. “Well, I guess there’s the scream, but that’s not really?—”

“The scream?”

“You know, from the premiere, and the night my dad tried to sacrifice me. Oh, and with Tor.”

She went still. “You’ve used it since the premiere?” The way she turned and stared at me had me squirming in my chair.

“Yeah. On accident. I didn’t hurt him. I swear. Just knocked him out a little.”

Her shoulders drooped, her arms falling to her sides as unmistakable emotion washed across her face. The disappointment was so sharp it made my stomach cramp. “Dahlia, when are you going to trust me enough to share these developments with me?”

All I wanted to do was get back in her good graces. “I just did. And I mean, to be fair, I didn’t know they were developments, so you can’t really hold it against me.”

She rolled her eyes and returned to her desk, an object concealed in her hands. The guilt ate at me, so I racked my brain, searching for anything else that might be of interest. “Oh! Cain called me a banshee.”

The laugh that burst from her was so sharp it startled me. “You’re not a banshee. Honestly, men think they know so much.”

“So I just have a mind-melting scream. Cool.”

“Telepathy can be fatal. If you don’t know how to control it.”

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