Page 95 of Magic Forsaken

Who was lying to me?

And what did it matter when I could no longer stand up on my own?

My knees finally gave out, but Callum never let me fall. He caught me, lifted me, and then I heard him explaining to the bystanders that one of his employees had fainted.

And curse it all, as he carried me out of the room and raced up the stairs, I feltsafe. My body let go and simply curled up in those powerful arms, content to be held—more than content. Almost at peace.

Meanwhile, my brain gibbered away, screaming of treachery in its bony prison, unable to reach my limbs or make itself heard.

I felt when he laid me down on a soft surface. Heard a phone ringing, his worried voice echoing oddly, and then…

Nothing.

I returned to consciousness slowly,slipping in and out of sleep a few times before I finally woke up for good.

I was in an unfamiliar room. Not a hospital. It was neat, but not particularly expensive looking. The decor suggested teenage girl, but nerdy, with gaming posters on the walls, fantasy books on the shelf, and a black bobble-head dragon on the desk.

If I’d been kidnapped, apparently it was by someone who was quite fond of RPGs and J.R.R. Tolkien, which made me somewhat less worried about their potential motivations.

Fortunately, before my imagination ran away with me, the door creaked open and Kira’s head appeared. Her eyes widened, and she positivelybeamedwhen she saw me looking back at her.

“Finally!” She practically bounced into the room, her eyes lighting up like it was Christmas morning. “I can tell my idiot brother to stop texting me every thirty seconds when he’s supposed to be focusing on all that boring political stuff.”

Speaking of focusing… At least my eyes seemed to be doing that part of their job normally again. And as for the rest of me…

I sat up and turned my head experimentally. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“How long have I been here?”

Kira sat—or rather bounced—onto the bed before landing in a cross-legged position and regarding me with fiercely narrowed eyes.

“First, I want to know if anything hurts. Are you dizzy? Feel nauseated?”

I took a moment to focus on my body. “No. Not right now anyway.”

“Oh good,” she breathed. “We were worried there might be some lingering effects.”

“Lingering from what?” I had to fight to conceal my anxiety over her answer. What could possibly have knocked me out so hard that I hadn’t noticed when they moved me to a completely different location?

Thankfully, Kira was all too ready to spill the details of the time I’d spent unconscious.

Apparently, it had been around forty hours since I collapsed at the welcome reception. Callum had taken me to his apartment, then called in an Idrian medical specialist. She’d examined me—in Kira’s presence—then said I seemed generally healthy, but had probably experienced an allergic reaction to something in the wine.

They tested the wine, tested the glass, but found nothing.

Callum had ordered a search of the entire building for intruders, as well as for Heather, who never returned with Angelica’s headache meds. When nothing turned up, they even alerted Faris’s network throughout the city, but our assistant to the assistants might as well have grown wings and flown away.

Though under the circumstances, it was more likely that someone else had done so and taken her with them.

Unless, of course, she’d served her purpose and been murdered to make way for an imposter, but I didn’t suggest that to Kira.

“And the Symposium?” I asked swiftly. “It’s going ahead as planned?”

Kira nodded. “The first day went well. Even better than Callum hoped. Today they’re just hammering out the details of the document they’ll all be signing tomorrow.”

That meant I’d missed an entire day. Missed my chance to ask questions. And it meant no one was there to watch Callum’s back if the saboteur got tired of waiting and decided to move ahead with his plan.

Unless I could haul my butt out of bed and get myself to the banquet tonight. It was my last chance to find out the truth. My last chance to determine whether I’d chosen the correct side.

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