She whirled on him. “Don’t! Don’t say it! I don’t want to hear to it. Not right now.”
He swallowed hard. “All right. Then come back to the keep with me. Please.”
“I can’t. I have to finish what I started.”
“But there’s nothing here! We’ve already been through this!”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
She took a deep breath then lifted her chin and faced him squarely. “I went to Phillp’s study. Have you noticed that he always has a bowl of water on his desk? Well, I discovered that it’s not just a bowl of water. It’s a scrying pool and he had a lock of your hair in the bottom of it. More than that, he has a secret stash of books in his study. Books on magic.”
A puzzled frown marred his features. “What are ye talking about?”
“He was using the scrying bowl to spy on you. And I think—” she hesitated “—I think he’s the one who was passing information to the pirates.”
Jamie’s brows snapped together. “Impossible. Phillip would never betray me.”
“Are you so sure about that?” She shook her head before he could answer. “Look, I’m not here to argue about it. I’m here to find proof—that’s the reason I left the keep.” She met his gaze. “Do you trust me?”
“Ye know I do. With my life.”
“Then trust me now. Thereissomething here; I can feel it. And I have to find out what it is.”
He said nothing for the longest time. She could almost see the thoughts turning behind his eyes, the disconnect between his desire to trust her and the evidence of his own eyes. But the trust won out. “All right,” he said finally. “Then I’m coming with ye.”
“But you’re needed at the keep.”
“Damn the keep! Damn the envoy and the king!” He stepped closer and looked down at her. “If ye are right, and thereissomething here, do ye think I would let ye face it alone? Ye know me better than that, Elise. No arguing for once.”
A wave of gratitude washed through her and it was all she could do not to fling her arms around him.
But she only nodded. “All right. Come on then.”
Leaving the horses concealed in the trees, they crept to the edge of the thicket and peered out. The same scene as before met Elise’s eyes. Empty beach. Empty sea. But it was lies. All lies. The sense of wrong was so heavy here she could hardly pull breath to her lungs.
“What are we looking for?” Jamie asked. “It looks no different than it did the other day.”
Elise didn’t answer. She no longer trusted what was in front of her. Screwing her eyes closed, she pressed her palm flat against the ground. Slowly, keeping tight control, she began trickling her power into the ground, sending her senses probing outwards, searching.
Jamie crouched beside her, his breath warm against her cheek. “Elise?”
“Wait.”
It was a slow process, and Elise felt like a blind woman trying to find her way through a maze as she slowly probed her way out onto the beach.
Finally, after an interminable amount of time that might have been hours or only seconds, her questing magic felt something. A shimmering wall of power stretched like a curtain over the bay—thin enough for her to miss the first time but strong enough to hide something massive.
She gasped. What she sensed was illusion. A glamour, dark and powerful.
With a thumping heart, she pressed her other hand to the ground, drawing more power, deeper and deeper, until herfingertips tingled painfully, as though she’d touched an electric current.
And then—
“I see it,” she whispered.
She pushed her magic outward, letting go her restraint and allowing it to flow out of her like a river of magma. It slammed into the shimmering curtain of the glamour and a crack split through the illusion like a jagged tear in glass.
