Page 28 of Dawn to Dusk
“Can you sense magic at night?”
“Yes.” I told him. Magic left its mark. No matter the time of day, I could sense it as well as I could hear or see.
“Put your feelers out.”
I did as he told me, still following his guidance. Not many mages, but lots and lots of beasts in the area. Beasts possessed magic too, their magic was simply another flavor; wilder, closer to nature.
“Are there any of those dark creatures here?”
“No.” I answered.
“No?”
I snorted at his fake questioning tone. “No.”
“What is there to be afraid of?”
“I can’t defend myself.”
“That’s not true. You’ve repeatedly outsmarted me in combat.”
“I have no magic. I’m a lot better with magic.” I only studied combat to cover my weaknesses. Magic was my life.
“Why does it scare you?” Whatever I did with my face made him growl a strange sound. It was threatening, but calming. The sound lulled me into a place of security that simply didn’t exist. Hell, that seemed to be Edur in a nutshell. “Just follow my line of questioning please.”
“At night is when all my worst losses are.” I swallowed.
“Such as?”
“My husband.” Those first few years of my marriage were the roughest because he knew I couldn’t protect myself after Mirneax was asleep.
“He died?”
“He hurt me,” and I left it at that.
Silence filled the air with tension. My eyes were tempted to open, but I kept them shut. If I opened them, I would go into fight-or-flight mode. Eventually, he cleared a growl from his throat. “Did you know he would hurt you?”
“Yes.” I always knew. Even as a young girl, he terrified me, especially when his eyes followed me across a room. “But I wasso young, my wards were not strong enough to protect me at the time.”
“Am I going to hurt you?”
“No.” I whispered.
“Are the people roaming around here going to hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will I let them?”
My fingernails loosened from their anchored hold on his shoulders. Something I didn’t even realize I had been doing until my bones complained as I relaxed my fingers. “No.”
“No.” His words were a solid promise that I could stand on. A balm over my nerves that relaxed me. He never broke a promise to me. Those promises were historically threats, but he always followed through, nonetheless. It was more than I could say for a whole slew of lovers.
He picked me up, and I felt the wind whoosh around us. I backed into the comforting protection of my wards. My balcony. I blindly reached back to open the door.
“He can enter,” I told the wards. “Whenever he wishes.”
My eyes opened as he cleared the golden veil separating my room from the rest of the world. His hooded eyes stared at me with a desire that covered my body in goosebumps.
