“I don’t buy it.” Trinity shook her head. “Not for a second.”
“Yet Cian all but just confirmed it,” Raven reminded. “Which means my goal now should be to avoid the Forge at all costs.”
Avoid the Forge? Not become Tor’s fated mate? That seemed beyond impossible now. As though their dragons had already decided their destinies.
“You arenotto avoid the Forge,” the wizard said quickly and passionately enough that Tor wasn’t sure if he should be wary or thankful.
“Nor could you at this juncture,” Cian went on, echoing what Tor had thought moments before. “And I think you know that, Raven. Have known it since the moment Tor showed up at the Maine chalet on Vicar and Trinity’s adventure.”
“Um, pretty sure I wanted to kill him that time,” Raven reminded. “Pretty sure...”
She trailed off and narrowed her eyes when something seemed to occur to her.
Something that made them realize just how in control of things she had been from the onset.
Chapter Thirteen
“MY RESPONDING TO Torwith so much rage when he first arrived in Maine on Trinity and Vicar’s adventure was a seer safeguard,” Raven realized. “Mysafeguard.”
“Yes,” Cian confirmed. “A means to keep things on course. Vicar and Trinity needed to find their Forge first.”
Compelled to head higher and deeper into the mountain, they had started walking again. Skins of water and dried meat had been handed out for nourishment on their hike.
“So I can create safeguards.” That was one to grow on. “Which is why I was able to free everyone from the one earlier.”
“Correct.” Cian, at last, gave them more much-needed information. “It comes very easily to your dragon. It always has. You had to do little more than think it, and you could create magical pockets like what we saw when you saved us.”
“Magical pockets,” she murmured, thinking about that. Feeling it out now that she was aware of the suppressed power. “Which are really just illusions.”
“That’s right.” Cian followed her into another steep tunnel going upward. “Very believable powerful illusions. Especially yours.”
“If they’re just illusions, then they shouldn’t be lethal,” she began, only to sense how wrong she was. “I take that back.”
“Why?” Trinity asked. “Illusions are like mirages. Not really there.”
“You would think.” She was well aware Tor had somehow found a way to fall in right behind her, forcing Cian to walk behind him. “But these illusions, like you saw on the cliff path, are a heck of a lot stronger. It’s sort of like really dying if you have a dream you died. When you inevitably imagined falling off that cliff, your body would have died in sync with hitting the ground.”
