Page 98 of Iron Unicorn

“I mean, she’ll take that, but only with you, and since you’re stuck with her, she’ll cope with it. It’ll surely be a trial for her.”

I bet the king rolled his eyes, chuckled at his exasperated tone, and replied, “Do you think she’ll run to or away from me at this stage?”

“I’d bet away. She probably likes when you chase her.”

Encouraging her to run could be fun, and I did need the exercise to pass my physical fitness exam to return to duty. “I should fit some time in riding today, too, now that I’m thinking about it. I haven’t practiced roping in a while.”

“If you do rope my sister, please remember that you can’t actually flee across the kingdom with her right now, however tempting that might be. You need to wait until you bust into the Texan palace and run off with a queen and a princess at the same time. You must establish yourself as a man of legend.”

As I agreed with him, I said, “You’re right. I’ll just let her struggle for a while before setting her loose. I do need the exercise.”

“Why don’t you try a ride around the ranch? That’s less likely to land you on a couch.”

“The last time I tried to evict myself to a couch, it did not end well. I think I’m safe from that for the moment. Apparently, not even the threat of contracting some plague is a sufficient reason for me to go sleep on the couch right now.”

Will snickered. “Mackenzie tried to put me on the couch a few times. Do you know what happens? We both end up sleeping on the couch. Then our RPS agents yell at us for being idiots. And we have to tolerate being called idiots because we are being idiots. Sometimes, I think Mackenzie just wants to sleep on the couch and isn’t willing to admit it. Anyway, I’ll leave you to reading your books, wrangling a princess, and hunting lunch. Let me know when you’re in Dallas and where to send your package to, and I’ll handle my end of things.”

“Great. Thanks, Will.”

“And do go get your eyes checked. Your prescriptioniswrong. Make that an unattended errand and go to one of those one hour places. Make sure you get two pairs. Put the bills for your venture on the Montana card, and I’ll make sure they quietly disappear. And Terry? If subtle hints don’t work on Olivia, maybe try using one of the rings. But start with one ring. Pulling all of them out at once is a little excessive.”

“Just a little?”

The king laughed before hanging up on me. With the lunch bell due to ring soon, I decided I’d take matters into my own hands and seek out Olivia. Making sure the talent evaluators fed her was the least I could do.

TWENTY-THREE

“Was that the test that sent her running?”

For three days,Princess Olivia of Montana ran around the royal ranch to dodge her talent evaluation. Eddie, Carl, and the other RPS agents worked together, but they failed to bring her in. The evaluators, three of the best in Texas, thought the whole thing was hilarious. As they were terrified of Princess Melody of Maine coming for their heads, we handled the verbal portion of my evaluation while the princess endured worse suffering than if she’d just surrendered.

On the morning of the fourth day, I sought out the evaluators, and after locating one, I said, “Maybe we should get permission from Princess Melody to start my preliminary evaluation. That might bring Olivia in.” Well, maybe. Outside of meals and bedtime, I hadn’t seen the woman at all.

Without the dysphoria hampering her ability to cope with life, she’d become a bundle of energy in need of an outlet, and she’d decided to protest her evaluation. I questioned who would give up first.

I expected a draw, as Texans had quite the reputation for being stubborn.

Brenda, the lead of the evaluators, eyed me with interest, got out her phone, and sent a text. “You’re rested, so if we can get approval, I see no problem with starting. Perhaps you can convince her to settle down if she sees you being run through your paces.”

“At least my paces should be generally simple.” After a moment, I shrugged. “I’d say easy, but I’ve seen enough of the empathy tests to understand I’m signing Olivia up for a bad time. Are the other evaluators trying to catch Olivia?”

“Yep. They decided they haven’t had enough exercise lately and have joined the RPS in attempting to catch her. If they would just use the cuffs on her during meals, they’d have bagged her days ago. But no, they make sure she gets to see you and relax before they send her off to run them around again. I’m convinced they’re all a bunch of oversized children who want to play.”

Brenda’s phone pinged, and the woman chuckled. “I have approval to torture you, but she requests that I focus on your metalweaving and horse empathy. If we accidentally get some positives off your empathy, she’ll look the other way. She’d like me to test flameweaving on you.”

“Flameweaving?” I asked, frowning.

“She thinks your metalweaving is earthweaving and flameweaving melding together, much like Rachel’s is a combination of talents. That you’re melting the metal has caught her attention, and if you have flameweaving, it should be trained as New Yorkers tend to bring out flameweaving talents.”

The last thing I needed was to join the New Yorkers in having a strong flameweaving talent—and it took a great deal of work for flameweavers to melt metal. Prince Ian and my queen could turn metal to slag within seconds, and that ability was part of what made them Royal. “That’s concerning.”

“So it is. In good news, I have some specialty suppressors to play with for this. All of them have empathy leaks, and I have combination suppressors in addition to single talents. I’m going to put a suppressor on you, and then we’re going to have you do some work while you’re blindfolded.”

I found the tactic to be interesting. “You want me to make a figurine while blindfolded to see what happens when talents are suppressed?”

“Correct. Your general suppressor is an empathy leak and blocks everything else, so there wouldn’t be a way to really test your earthweaving. Montana RPS suppressors just tend to be generic with empathy leaks because it’s cheaper. And honestly, it’s cheaperandbetter for stronger talents. The specialty suppressors are unfortunately expensive, especially when tuned to the wearer. I will be observing you during each exercise. Should you manifest anything, I will remove it. I will have you manifest over a bin of sand.”

Sand would work; at worst, I’d make some glass. “All right.”

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