Page 113 of Inflamed By an Incubus

His head snapped up and his eyes cleared as they locked with hers and he whispered, “Like a key.”

Evelyn took a step towards him when a thought struck her, but Fenix gripped her wrist, holding her back. She looked over her shoulder at him, catching the worry in his green eyes, and eased back a step. She could understand his caution and knew she needed to be cautious too. Trusting Archer could be a recipe for disaster, but in her heart she believed what he had told her. He had come to view her as a friend and the thought of having to kill her had upset him. Still upset him.

Maybe if she could suggest another way to free the sorceress, if they could find this key he was missing, then she would spare them both pain and they could return to being friends.

“What about Brink?” she offered.

“Brink?” His dark eyebrows met hard, forming a crease between them.

She nodded. “That’s the name of the dragon mate of Aryanna.”

His frown melted away. “The one from the note?”

“Maybe he’s the key. If they’re mated and she’s held in a prison of dragon magic, maybe he can help her. I know dragons can’t be in this world, but maybe…” She shook her head slightly as her brow furrowed. “Is there any spell you could do that would stop the curse from affecting him?”

Archer’s eyebrows pinched again and he cast his dark gaze at the ground, and then sighed as he sank back onto the bench. “I don’t know.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose and massaged the bridge with his thumb and index finger as he closed his eyes.

“It’s not that easy. It’s like standing at the entrance of a vast library you’re unfamiliar with and just asking the stacks whether they have some obscure book in it. I can’t tell you.” He let his glasses fall back onto his nose and scrubbed his forehead instead, as if he was getting a bad headache and was trying to ease it away before it fully hit.

“I don’t get it. Surely you should remember what spells you’ve learned?” She had the feeling he didn’t though and that feeling only grew as he looked up at her, his hand dropping to his thigh, and he heaved another sigh.

“It’s not that simple,” Rosalind said, her voice soft, not a trace of the disgust that had been in it before lacing it as she drew Evelyn’s focus to her. The witch kept her blue gaze trained on Archer. “He didn’t learn most of the spells at his disposal.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. How do you know spells if you didn’t learn them?” She shifted her gaze back to Archer.

He sat a little straighter, squaring his shoulders, giving her the impression he was bracing himself. “They were passed to me.”

“Stolen,” Rosalind muttered.

He narrowed his eyes on her and Evelyn realised this was the reaction he had been bracing himself for. He had known Rosalind would twist whatever he said to make it sound as if he had done something terrible.

And in turn make him feel as if he was something terrible.

“I stole nothing. I didn’t ask for this.” That wasn’t the first time he had said that.

When Rosalind opened her mouth to say something, Evelyn shot her a look that told her to back off, because tormenting Archer wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“I was only going to say he’s got several thousand years’ worth of accumulated knowledge in his head,” the witch muttered and pouted.

Vail patted her on her shoulder and looked ready to murder Archer, as if he had been the one to upset his mate.

“How is that even possible?” Evelyn’s gaze darted back to Archer and she braced herself as an answer hit her. “How old are you?”

He reached into his pocket, causing both men behind her to tense, as if he was reaching for a weapon. As if he needed one. He had attacked both Rosalind and Vail without even moving a muscle. When he pulled out his pack of cigarettes, took one out and lit it, neither man relaxed.

Archer sighed, blowing smoke into the still air, and then waved the cigarette slightly as he rolled his wrist. “I don’t know. Two hundred and eleven… no… two hundred and twelve… I think. You sort of lose track.”

She stared at him, her eyebrows rising. “I can imagine.”

It was better than him being thousands of years old, but still, the thought that Archer was one hundred and eighty years older than she had thought was quite the shock. But then, who was she to speak? According to Fenix, she was far older than she had imagined.

Which still messed with her head.

“And you came to have thousands of years’ worth of spells in your head.” That messed with her head too.

“I inherited them.” He took a long pull on his cigarette and she noticed his hand was shaking. “It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch your family being murdered… hearing your sister screaming and crying as men—and thinking you’re going to die and then suddenly everyone else is dead and you don’t know what happened and there’s a hundred spells clamouring in your head and—I was a child. I was a child.”

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