Page 3 of Magic Claimed
A moment later, the first fire truck rolled up, and a handful of firefighters made their way into the building. As we watched and waited for the all-clear, Ethan spoke up in a flat, despairing tone.
“It’s going to happen again.”
“It won’t,” Kes said resolutely. “We’ll siphon your magic every night if we have to.”
She didn’t make that promise lightly. Taking someone’smagic was incredibly painful unless she acted as a conduit and deposited that power into an object of some kind. And I knew Kes would never do that again—not willingly. Far too much damage had been caused by the misuse of such magic-imbued objects, and she would far rather accept the pain.
Ethan did not look comforted. His expression went flat in response to her declaration, and while I didn’t feel like I knew him well yet, I suspected he hated relying on her strange power as much as I did.
“You’re fools to trust me,” he said quietly. “Idon’t even trust me.”
The pain of that cut me to the core and brought my guilt surging back—guilt over how I’d chosen not to save him when I first escaped the fae. I’d been too afraid, and whether my fears were justified had nothing to do with the regret I now lived with.
“That’s why we’re working on finding you a new bracelet,” I reminded him. “We just have to hang on until then.”
Ethan lifted his left hand, pulling his sleeve back to expose the woven wire cuff wrapped around his wrist. “It’s like…”—his head tilted as he searched for a word—“earplugs. The magic still screams, but the screaming is quieter.”
The bracelet Ethan wore now had originally been made for Kira—intended to keep her and the rest of the world from finding out that she was actually a bronze dragon shifter. It blocked her from using her shifting magic, and we’d hoped it would do something similar for Ethan.
And it had proven marginally effective. Thus far, it had at least prevented his magic from controllinghim. But he stillneeded Kes to drain his power from time to time to keep it from overflowing, and as we’d just seen, the bracelet was no barrier to his subconscious mind.
“We’re trying to hunt down whoever made it,” I told him. “That’s just been a little… trickier than we thought.”
For one thing, the bracelet had been commissioned by Kira’s treacherous Aunt Jaida, who’d nearly cost Kira, Morghaine, and so many others their lives. She’d died in the same battle as Elayara, so it wasn’t like we could ask her.
Also, we suspected the bracelet was the work of a fae metalsmith, and things at the Fae Court were not exactly safe for outsiders at the moment.
About a week ago, someone had attempted to overthrow Dathair, High King of the Fae, who also happened to be Draven’s father. Draven and Rath—his half brother and heir to the fae throne—had rushed to the fae enclave in Colorado, only to find that Dathair had been poisoned and was now in a coma.
Since then, Rath and Draven had remained locked in a desperate and delicate struggle both for Dathair’s life and the future of the Fae Court—a struggle that had huge implications for the future of all Idrians on Earth. Last we’d heard, at least three different court factions were jockeying for position and power, which, among the fae, could mean anything from words to poison to blades in the back in the dark.
Thus, the cancelled wedding, Kira’s fear for her mate’s safety, and our inability to pursue a new solution for Ethan.
“We’re going to figure it out,” I promised. “Don’t lose hope yet. It’s only been a week.”
Easy to say, so much harder to do.
As I had every reason to know.
It had been exactly a week since I’d last seen Callum.
Only one week since the king of the shapeshifters told me he had feelings for me—that we were forming a mate bond, and that he wanted me to share his life.
And one week since he returned to the Shapeshifter Court to deal with the potential threat posed by the upheaval among the Fae.
If that were the only challenge we were facing, I might have felt more at ease. But only a few weeks ago, the shapeshifters had labelled me a potentially dangerous criminal and demanded that Callum summon me for questioning. He’d refused, leading them to insist that he take “administrative leave” as a sort of punishment for his insubordination.
Never mind that he probably could have eaten them all if he’d wanted to. That wasn’t the kind of king he intended to be, which meant we had to deal with this challenge the right way.
Even if the “right way” seemed to mean that I’d barely heard from him since he left.
“A week,” Ethan said softly, “can be an eternity.” He looked at me, the curtain of his hair parting to reveal dark eyes glimmering with a hint of gold. “And it might be all the time we have.”
I wasn’t sure whether the shiver that shot down my spine was from the portentous certainty in his words, or the sudden itch between my shoulder blades that suggested we were being watched.
I’d felt that same itch on a near-daily basis lately. Given the hour, it was probably just our angry neighbors, but I still threw aglance into the shadows surrounding us, alert for any sign of potential danger.
Kes, of course, noticed me looking around. “What’s wrong?” she asked, shuffling nearer as if for protection.
