Page 21 of Claws for Celebration
"Much better, thanks to your excellent field medicine skills." His voice carried warmth that made her stomach flutter. "I owe you breakfast at the very least."
"You don't owe me anything," she said quickly. "I just did what anyone would do."
"Not anyone," he corrected, his dark green eyes holding hers with an intensity that made the rest of the café fade into background noise. "Thank you, Moira. For taking care of me."
The sincerity combined with the way he was looking at her as if she'd done something remarkable rather than simply applying basic first aid, made her chest tight with emotions she wasn't ready to examine.
"You're welcome," she managed, acutely aware of how close he was sitting, how the morning light caught the slight wave in his dark hair, how his presence made her feel both grounded and off-balance simultaneously.
"Well," Twyla said with obvious satisfaction, "isn't this cozy? Nothing like a little emergency medicine to bring people together."
As Moira sat between Twyla's knowing smiles and Lucien's careful attention, surrounded by the warm atmosphere of the small-town café while her mind reeled with questions about magical books and mysterious injuries, she realized that her carefully ordered academic life had become something she no longer recognized.
The only constant in the chaos was the man beside her, whose secrets seemed as deep as her own growing abilities, and whose presence had become the anchor that kept her tethered to sanity in an increasingly surreal world.
Whatever was happening to her, whatever she was becoming, Lucien Vale had somehow become essential to the process. Realizing the vulnerability of caring about someone whose true nature remained tantalizingly hidden behind dark green eyes and gentle smiles was overwhelming in multiple senses.
13
LUCIEN
Lucien noticed the changes in his bookstore before Moira did. Subtle at first: the way dust seemed reluctant to settle on surfaces near her workspace, how the afternoon light lingered longer in the rare books section, the fact that his most temperamental ancient volumes had stopped their restless shifting and settled into peaceful quiet.
Now, three days after their intimate morning at Twyla's café, he could no longer pretend the magical disturbances were coincidental.
"Damn," Moira muttered from her usual table, frowning at a particularly faded page in the Shadowheart Codex. "I can barely make out this genealogy entry. The ink's too degraded."
As she spoke, her right hand moved unconsciously through the air, fingers tracing elegant patterns that left shimmering trails of golden light. The sigils she drew without realizing it were protection runes, ward-work that would have impressed Council members with decades of magical training.
The faded ink on the ancient page darkened in response to her gesture, becoming legible once again.
Lucien's panther went absolutely still, recognizing both the power she was unconsciously wielding and the danger that such uncontrolled ability represented. His rational mind insisted he should contact Varric immediately, report that Moira's magical development had accelerated beyond their most optimistic projections.
His heart demanded he protect her from the Council's potential interference.
"That's better," Moira said with satisfaction, apparently oblivious to the fact that she'd just performed advanced blood magic without conscious intent. "Sometimes these old documents just need the right lighting conditions."
"Indeed they do," Lucien agreed carefully, though what she'd needed wasn't better lighting but rather the awakened magical heritage that was reshaping reality around her one unconscious spell at a time.
He moved through his afternoon routine of helping customers and managing inventory while keeping careful watch on her magical emanations. The protective spells she wove around herself had begun extending outward, encompassing the entire rare books section in a web of golden energy that made his shifter senses tingle with awareness.
Mrs. Henderson, browsing the romance section, paused mid-reach and blinked in confusion. "Is it just me, or does the air in here feel different today? Lighter somehow?"
"Mountain weather," Lucien said smoothly. "Barometric pressure changes can affect the atmosphere."
But he knew it wasn't weather making the elderly woman feel more energetic. Moira's unconscious magic was creating an environment of enhanced wellbeing, the kind of protective ward-work that took master practitioners years to perfect.
"Lucien," Moira called softly, "could you help me with something?"
He made his way to her table, noting how the golden traces of her magic seemed to recognize his presence and intensify in response. His panther purred with satisfaction at being welcomed into her unconscious magical space, territorial instincts satisfied by her trust.
"What do you need?"
"I'm trying to cross-reference this family tree with the land ownership records, but I can't reach the genealogy section from here." She gestured toward the shelf of heavy volumes across the room. "Could you grab the Thornwell family history? The one with the green binding?"
"Of course."
But as Lucien started toward the indicated shelf, Moira's attention returned to her work, and he watched in fascination as her left hand gestured absently in the direction of the genealogy section. Her concentration remained fixed on the Shadowheart Codex, but her unconscious magic reached across the bookstore with confident precision.
