Page 244 of Storm of Secrets and Sorrow

Her hands were in her hair, tugging at the ends as she started to pace. She was muttering low under her breath, and even with his enhanced hearing, he couldn’t make out a word she was saying.

Suddenly, she spun to him again. The power around her wrists flared brighter, winding up her arms like golden thread. “What are you doing here, Luka?”

“I already told you. We were worried,” he answered, watching her carefully and trying to find any crack in her mental shields. It was there. A flicker of longing. He wasn’t quite sure what it meant, so he waited.

Theon was too impatient for this part of her, and to be fair, sometimes she needed that. Sometimes shedidneed someone to take care of her. Sometimes she needed to not think, to be out of her head and simply told what to do. No decisions to agonize over. But she also needed someone to simply trust she could do things on her own. Someone to believe she could make the right choices and figure things out. The thing was, she didn’t know what to do with herself when given that space and confidence.

“What else?” she asked. “You said there were a few reasons you came here tonight. Is it night?” She pulled at her long strands again as she asked it, gaze darting around the windowless room.

It had him stepping forward, unable to watch her inflict harm on herself anymore. He slowly reached for her hands, and she stilled the moment he touched her. His dragon was pacing in his soul, wings shifting beneath his skin.

Gently unwinding her fingers from her hair, he said, “I came to bring you something.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she cleared her throat as her hands dropped to her sides. “What is it?”

From a swirl of black flames, Luka pulled the gift Lord Jove had brought for her. It was still perfectly wrapped, and she blinked in surprise.

Reaching for it, she peered up at him from beneath her lashes. “You didn’t open it?”

“Does it look like I opened it?”

“No, but you’re talented enough. I’m sure you could re-wrap a gift,” she retorted, fiddling with the gold bow atop the white wrapping.

“Theon has Solstice gifts for you,” Luka said. “We have them at Arius House because we thought?—”

“I don’t want anything from him,” she interrupted, moving to the sofa and sitting.

“And the ones from me and Axel?”

“How is Axel?”

Now it was Luka blinking in surprise. Rubbing at his jaw, he said, “He’s worried. About a lot of things.”

“Do you think my visions are real?”

How they’d gone from Axel to her visions was beyond him, but he said, “It seems that way, but visions are just that. They can change.”

“Theon said the same thing,” she muttered.

“Cienna is a Seer,” Luka replied, taking a seat on the other end of the sofa. “We have some experience in the area.”

“He was going to take me to her. I guess we ran out of time,” she said, setting the gift aside. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “There is one vision I have more than others.”

He kept his face carefully blank and his emotions in check, but inside, he was more than a little surprised she was talking about this. He was afraid if he breathed wrong, she would shut down. So he propped his elbow on the arm of the sofa, resting his temple against his fist, and waited.

“Kat wasn’t always in it. Or Tristyn. But they are now. And last time…” She trailed off, and he watched her curl and uncurl her toes into the sofa cushion.

“Last time, what, Tessa?” Luka finally asked.

She turned her head, her cheek resting against her knee. “Last time Axel wasn’t there.”

“What do you think that means?”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t understand the visions. I don’t…”

Then she was on her feet again, pacing a few steps back and forth.

“I don’t understand them until they pass, and others keep changing. Some are underwater. Some are in the sky. There are Fae and angels and a dragon?—”

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