Page 74 of Body of Echoes

“You trust him?”

He nodded and tucked a stray lock of hair out of my face. “He just pledged to you.” He kissed my cheek again, winked, said, “Bye, princess,” then vanished.

I looked back to Mirin, still bowed on the ground. I stepped through the barrier and placed a hand on hisshoulder, pulling him up. “I forgive you. And I need your help.”

I stepped into his quaint home where there were machines and engines and trinkets of devices spread out across long tables that lined his home. The unfinished projects lay on white cloth with different colored stains. The circular windows offered very little light as the sun was directly overhead. Strung up around the perimeter of the ceiling were glass jars filled with a handful of flying insects that emitted soft yellow light.

Mirin rushed over to some of his projects, attempting to tidy up. “My deepest apologies. I did not expect company—royal company.”

I waved a hand at him. “It’s fine. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eyes to myself.”

He smiled with relief then put down some papers he had been straightening. He stepped to me and stuck up a finger. “I’ll be right back. I have an idea of where we can start. Please, take a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the forest green, two-seater couchbehind me. When I sat, Mirin left and closed the front door behind him that had an arched top.

A few minutes later, Mirin strode in with two heavy containers under each arm. I got to my feet to help him set them down. “Okay. Got them,” he grunted out while closing the door with his foot.

“Why didn’t you just teleport here?”

He bent over, setting the boxes down with gentle chimes of glass clinging together. His brows pulled up. “I cannot teleport.”

My eyes knitted together as I straightened. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged then smiled. “I mean that I was not born with the ability to teleport. We all have our shortcomings though.”

“We do?” I blinked at him, waiting for him to feed my knowledge.

“Perhaps not you. Royalty acquires any discovered ability of our people the day they are born.”

“I did not realize there were magic limitations.”

He grinned and lifted the lid of one container. “Now you do.”

I peeked in, eyeing the stacks of small glass tiles packed neatly into the box. “What else can you not do?”

A chortle escaped his lips, citrine eyes narrowing to slits with his smile and dimples on either side of his face deepening. “Why don’t you ask what I can do.”

I bent to open the second container for him. “What can you do, Mirin?”

He stood, stroked his chin, and looked into the distance as he counted on his fingers. “I can break objects, teleport others, breathe underwater, detect where crystals are, and camouflage with surroundings.”

I watched as his skin spiraled with purple magic before it darkened and scattered to match my perspective of the door behind him.

“See?”

I giggled. “That’s pretty cool.”

He reappeared and shrugged. “That’s all I’ve discovered for now anyway.”

“So everyone has five abilities?”

He shook his head and crouched near the containers, gently pulling out a stack of four-by-four tiles and placing it on the ground beside my feet. “No. Some have one, some have a hundred. The amount is determined by genetics.”

If that was true, I wondered what Fletcher’s genetic makeup was. What powers did he have before me? How many? Had he used them? Did he miss them?

Mirin huffed. “Okay. When I got back to Elizy, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I think,” he knelt, picked up a single tile, and gave a huge smile as if he had been waiting for this day, “we need to see if you can make this glass indestructible before we start experimenting. If your magic can bind the glass, then we can work on finding a way to break it.”

My heart sank as I bit on a hangnail. “Oh… uh, there’s a bit of a problem with that.”

His brows creased. “What is it?”

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