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“No,” said Jace, “but that doesn’t matter when I do my thing.”
“Let’s get to it,” Rein urged, noting the time on his D-chip. He was already picturing a second shot at his mate.
Leaning against his chair, Braelyn smacked his head.
He snapped around in his mate’s direction. “What’s that for?”
“Insensitivity.” She treated him like a misbehaving child in need of a scolding.
Jace perched on the edge of the sofa. “Let me explain my process. When I touch an item, I travel to places it’s been. For some unexplained reason, I always know where I am, who I am, when it is. I see things through the eyes of the artifact’s owner. Crazy, huh?”
“Yeah. My interest in the process is limited. Since I’m not fond of unknown midnight visitors, I want the sneaky asshole who left the sword on my doorstep. If the rest of its history is important, great. If not, I don’t give a shit.” Rein crossed an ankle over his knee, trying to keep his short fuse from sparking.
Braelyn took a spot on the floor beside Rein, placing a calming hand on his thigh. He winced, prepared for her to pinch him if he did anything wrong. He hadn’t growled. His fangs were lodged in his gums. He was behaving. What more did she want? He was a vampire mix, not a fucking Boy Scout. A bad disposition was part of the territory.
He was probably being a bit of an ass. But damn. Somebody had snuck up to his door, rung the bell, and skedaddled. While Braelyn had been there. She could have been in danger.
“Can you skip to the end? Tell me the owner?” he asked.
With his fingers combing through his spiked hair, Tyr looked to Jace for the answer.
“No. What I see is linear. It starts at the beginning, moving from then until now.”
Rein muttered.
When Jace glanced Tyr’s direction, he removed his arm from around her shoulders. “Touching breaks her concentration,” he explained.
She curled a leg under her before she settled the sword in her lap. With a scrunchy from her robe pocket, she pulled her hair into a high, tight ponytail. One hand rested on the hilt while the other was on the flat of the blade. She closed her eyes.
While Jace concentrated, Tyr whispered, “She has a technique. Reminds me of a wine snob I knew. First, she sniffs the thing. Next, she tastes it, rolling it around in her mouth. Metaphorically, that is. Then, she reads it like a living history book.”
Jace’s nostrils flared when she inhaled. With her eyes shut, her tongue swept over her lips as if she were savoring a drop of wine.
Rein rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Great. I’m more used to winos who toss back the bottle and are done with it.”
His comeback earned him a smirk from Brae, who was still petting his thigh.
They waited while Jace did her thing. The room filled with steady heartbeats, soft breaths, and the hiss of fabric against fabric whenever the audience shifted positions.
After a while, she opened her eyes, jamming her shoulders up and down as if they ached.
Tyr moved to sit on top of the couch, a leg spread on each side of his mate while he massaged her arms, her neck, and her temples.
Jace angled her body to glance behind her at the warlock Firebrand. “Thank you.”
Rein dropped both feet to the floor. “Well?”
“You say it just appeared outside your apartment?” Jace asked, Tyr still massaging her.
“Yes.”
The warlock held up a hand. “How do you feel, babe?”
“Great. No headache. No nausea. I could use a drink of water.”
He raced for the kitchen while she stood, stretched side to side, and rolled her neck. “You wouldn’t think the process would be physically taxing. It is.”
When Tyr returned, Jace chugged a half glass before she sank into the couch again. “In my vision, I was a weapons maker in the Sumerian village of Kuara on the western bank at the mouth of the Euphrates River in 2431 BC. My job was to make battle axes and lances, but a stranger enticed me to form a weapon I had never seen. I had heard of bronze swords, but this man instructed me on how to use what he called blooms of steel. I heated. I hammered. Heated, hammered, and folded, shaping the double-edge blade, hardening it. Many, many days I toiled. Once I completed the blade, I prepared the hilt and sheath, decorating the pommel and cross-guard with rubies. With great reluctance, I handed my creation off to the man in the shadows, as I thought of him. When not obscured in the dark, he was always hidden by the hood of a cloak.”
