Page 80 of Degradation

“No,” Garron said. “She doesn’t lack control. She loses control when she experiences extreme emotions. There’s a difference.”

“True,” Getaina said. “Were you at her hanging?”

“I was.”

“Was it you who broke the queen’s casting stones?”

“It was.” I hesitated for a moment. “I couldn’t save her. Pogwid. She wouldn’t let me.”

“I should think not. You have too much potential to waste like that.” She folded her arms over her stomach and leaned back into the chair. “Do you know how to search people’s minds?”

“I do.”

“Good. You need to search mine. I have eighty years of knowledge you need, and we have no time for me to teach you. Look into my mind.”

“So you can look into mine?” I asked.

Her wide grin answered my question.

“You might be offended by what you see,” I said.

“I’m old, girl, and you’re dressed like a lad. I doubt anything I see will be offending.”

Garron set his hand on my shoulder. “If I have a vote, I’m against this. We don’t know her.”

“Smart to be wary,” Getaina said with a nod.

“You do have a vote, Garron,” I said, patting his hand. “One for it, one against, and no tiebreakers other than the fact we’re running out of time.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze and released me.

“Do not harm her,” he said.

I knew his warning was meant for Getaina but found myself worrying regardless. The time I’d looked into Pogwid’s mind, my abilities had still been caged by Maeve’s spell. Joining with Liam had broken it, and understanding the true nature of energy had freed me even more.

When I carefully touched my energy to Getaina’s well, it felt different. So very different. I could see everywhere with little effort and could control where she was looking in my mind. I let her see everything from my youth, fearing nothing found there, not even the trouble Eloise and I caused from time to time. However, I kept the intimate time with the princes hazy.

While she learned from me, I learned from her.

Everything. Her sad childhood, neglected by a father with too many children and a second wife fresh in the grave. Her first marriage when her powers were still growing. I watched her daughter marry then die in childbirth.

With each memory flooding me, so too did the emotions associated with them. They became my own. Tears trailed down my cheeks. I felt Getaina’s terror over the last two decades and her heartbreak over all the innocent lives lost. So many children. So many wards she’d made that the queen always found a way around.

“Lend me your wisdom,” I murmured. “Help me.”

Spells—failures and successes—bloomed in my mind between one blink and the next.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

“Stop.Please. I beg you. I can’t.”

The words were a distant ripple in my mind.

The crack of Garron’s hand across my face wasn’t. I shot to my feet and struck his nose with the heel of my hand. He grunted and stumbled back a step.

“You were hurting her, Kellen,” he said. “You weren’t answering.”

A chaotic storm of thoughts, not all my own, tumbled around in my head, making it ache and hard to understand what he was saying.

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