Page 103 of Iron Unicorn

I stumbled, halted, and stared at her. Flabbergasted, I dragged her to Brenda and said, “She’s concerned she is not of royal rank.”

The evaluator raised a brow, eyed the princess, and said, “You’re of royal rank. I’ve already verified your first results as of the appropriate level. I need to verify if you have missed talents like Terry does along with testing the strength of some of your lesser talents. I already tested your royal ranking, which has had a slight general increase. Had I known anxiety was the issue rather than the common dislike of getting zapped during testing, I would have addressed this earlier. Would you prefer if I did Terry’s final testing first?”

Chaos would follow my testing, although I expected Olivia would react poorly enough she’d be exhausted and unable to run by the time Brenda finished with me. “I’m fine with going first, but I’m going to have to insist on Olivia holding my hand. I do not want to do this.”

Brenda chuckled. “She can hold your hand and keep you company during the very scary and unsettling empathy refinement tests. Olivia, I will need you to remain nice and calm for me during this test, all right? I will be restraining his empathy in a series of three tests, and it’s easier on the empaths if those around them are calm while this happens. They tend to become rather upset if they’re monitoring someone who is upset and can’t anymore.”

I admired the woman’s cunning and trickery.

Olivia sat in the sand, which had dried overnight, and within a few minutes, she’d managed to calm herself. “Okay. I can handle this. If this goes well, it’ll be easier to handle for me, too, right?”

“We can do your empathy test after his,” Brenda said, and she smiled. “And he can hold your hand through the entire process. With luck, he’ll done in two and a half hours, and two hours of it will be sitting here monitoring. I have brought cards.”

“Terry needs two hours of monitoring? Why?”

“We have to test his new horse empathy talent along with his regular empathy,” Brenda explained. “We want to make sure his horses are comfortable, and I’m confident he has two horses who will become quite upset if I shut down his horse empathy talent.” She waved her phone, sent a text, and said, “And speaking of which, we’re going to start there. I have the other evaluators waiting in the stable with his horses to see which ones get upset with us and how badly they become upset.”

“The grullo and the mom?” I asked.

“There is some slight concern one of the Standardbreds may end up being one of your horses, but I’m sure your queen will not be upset for you making off with one of them.” Brenda showed me a picture of one of the blacks, the worst off of the lot I’d needed to spend more than a few minutes coaxing into the trailer. “The vets are trying to hide that the horse has a weak hind end and was likely heavily trained for showing.”

Damn it. “I’m sure she won’t mind, but I’ll tell her as soon as we have a confirmation either way.”

“Try not to stress yourself over it, Terry. Having three bond candidates is not a bad thing, and you’re a powerful generalized empath. It’s absolutely not surprising that a talent of your strength has sought out an additional outlet. It spreads the load, and animal empathy and generalized empathy are closely related. You have been documented numerous times as being a lover of horses.”

“He wanted his own RPS horse since he was five and started wearing suits all the time. There are pictures. They’re adorable.” Olivia gave my hand a squeeze. “Horse empathy is perfect for you, Terry, especially since you’ll be in charge of the RPS stable in New York.”

I appreciated Brenda’s ability to put Olivia at ease. “I’m not going to complain about horse empathy. I know what horse empathy is. It’s the only reason I need to keep six horses at the New York palace’s new stable they’re building. It’s also all the reason I need to spend a lot of time at the yard.” I grinned at her. “The yard is getting mowed, Olivia. It’s being turned to a proper pasture, and they’re installing security.”

“Someone is happy about this.”

“I am happy about this. I’ll be able to take my walks in the yard with horses now rather than in the front where Daphne can ambush me.”

Olivia giggled. “And with Rachel stabilizing, you’ll be able to spend a good chunk of your day working with the horses and selecting the mounted RPS for New York.”

“The parades are going to be a concern at first.”

Brenda cleared her throat. “You two can discuss this after I get the suppressors on you and we’ve determined when you start becoming uncomfortable, Terry. I’m going to start at the bottom. While three bonding candidates is starting to get up there, we don’t know if you’re flare bonding, exertion gave the horses opening andthey’rethe empaths, or if you’re just a walking fluke right now. I’m going to need to know if you start feeling edgy. Honestly, the horses will probably react before you do. That’s normal.”

I held out my free hand and made myself comfortable on the sand. “This beats the other tests, Olivia. She’s absolutely willing to test lightningweaving in a soaked arena.”

“You survived,” Brenda replied, and she started with securing the first of the suppressors around my wrist. She checked her watch, and after a minute, she added another one.

Six suppressors in, the edgy feeling empaths tended to get when something began to interfere with their talents started up, and I said, “There.”

“Excellent. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being an immediate desire to beat me with the suppressor, how edgy is it making you?”

I considered the suppressor, and I shrugged. “A one or two. It’s just noticeable. I would have no problems dealing with this level of unease long term.”

“I am going to keep a hold on the suppressor when I secure it until you tell me that you think you can handle the next level. I want you to be at around a four on that scale—uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable you can’t stand it for more than an hour. Five should be starting to get to the intolerable level. With you becoming uneasy at this stage, it’s either this level or the next one I’ll tune you for.”

“All right. I’m ready.”

Brenda secured the suppressor, and sure enough, the uneasy feeling intensified, although it remained tolerable. “I’d call that a three maybe heading towards four. It’s definitely noticeable, and I doubt I’d want to deal with much more without becoming a beast. And yes, I know I am sometimes called the Iron Beast when I get in a mood.”

Olivia giggled, and she gave my hand a squeeze.

The evaluator released the suppressor and sent a text. A moment later, a reply came. “All right. You have three edgy horses in the stable, and the Standardbred is reacting the most, so it’s time for you to go visit her. She needs to be exercised, and physical proximity with the suppressor on will work well for this experiment. We’ll all keep an eye on you. Olivia, I would like to monitor you at the same time I’m monitoring Terry. Like with him, I’ll start you at the lowest tier. However, I want you to close your eyes for this. I want you to just sit there and stay relaxed. When you start getting uneasy or edgy, like you feel something is wrong but you don’t know why, tell me. For your test, we will be stopping the test when you have no more than a rating of two on the scale. This suppressor limits empathy and is a good way of confirming a basic empathy talent. Once we have a confirmation of empathy, we’ll go from there.”

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