Page 33 of Binding His Fated Mates

Reed turned his attention to me. “Is there any magic you can do to help us figure out what’s going on with him? Or what might’ve happened?”

“I can try a diagnostic spell,” I said, already running through options in my head. “There’s a spell called the Sword of Helios. It illuminates a person’s magical history—if any magic was ever done on him, or near him, it’ll show up in his aura.”

Reed nodded, looking relieved. “Perfect.”

What I didn’t tell them was that the Sword of Helios was ordinarily cast by a group of witches or warlocks working in concert. Performing it solo was dangerous—it required channeling a significant amount of magical power, more than a single conduit usually possessed. Which was a polite way of saying it could burn me out if I wasn’t careful. But if there was possibly a monster in Crescent Springs stealing people’s memories, I needed to help.

“Alright, stand back. I need to create a circle.”

Everyone else stepped back to give me room. I set my messenger bag—which was filled with my on-the-go witchcraft supplies—on the table beside me and pulled out a piece of chalk. I began drawing a large circle clockwise on the floor around the tables Robert was resting on. I envisioned a sphere of light forming around me as I muttered an incantation for raising and containing magical power. The circle wasn’t strictly necessary, but it would help contain the magic I was about to channel into the spell, so it didn’t go anywhere else by accident. I was going to need every scrap of power I could muster.

When I closed the circle of chalk around Robert and me, the magic snapped into place and the atmosphere of the room shifted immediately, becoming denser.

Dr. Langley frowned at the boundary of the circle I’d drawn, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. “Well, I think this is my cue to head out and start analyzing the blood sample I took.” She glanced at Reed. “I’ll call you if—when—I have something conclusive.”

Reed nodded at her and walked her to the door. He closed and locked it behind her when she left.

“You don’t usually need to cast a circle,” Lee commented, frowning at me. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you do this before.”

“It’s just a precaution,” I said evenly. “We’ve got magical surges happening. This will stop that from continuing while I work.”

Only partially true and far from the main reason I was doing it. And from the way Lee and Hunter’s expressions both tightened in unison, I knew they didn’t fully believe me. But if I explained my real reasoning, they’d try to stop me.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Hunter demanded.

“I’ll be fine,” I replied, hoping that was true.

Without waiting for them to protest further, I positioned myself at Robert’s head, closed my eyes, and began to chant.

The spell was slow and fussy to cast—twenty minutes of sustained incantation, each syllable carrying a thread of power that I wove into the diagnostic framework building around Robert’s body. I spoke carefully because even a small mistake would’ve meant starting over from the beginning. The room faded away from my awareness as I worked, until there was nothing except the spell and the unconscious man it was affecting.

By the ten-minute mark, I could feel the strain of it taking its toll on me. A dull ache that started behind my eyes, a tremor in my hands, the sensation of my magical reserves draining steadily away, channeled into the spell. All to be expected. I pushed through.

By fifteen minutes, the ache had sharpened into outright pain that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. My vision blurred at the edges. My heart began to pound in my chest.

I was dimly aware of Hunter’s presence shifting closer to the edge of the circle, which meant he’d probably clocked the change to my pulse, but I blocked it out. I couldn’t look away from the work for even an instant. He didn’t try to interrupt me.

At the twenty-minute mark, after finishing the last word of the incantation, my head was pounding, my vision was blurry, and I felt so magically depleted and exhausted that a wet noodle could’ve done more magic than me right then. But the spell was complete.

I felt a surge of satisfaction—the Sword of Helios was one of the trickier and more unforgiving spells out there and I’d cast it word-perfect from memory.

Take that, family, I thought triumphantly. No matter what you guys think, I do have a little bit of power to work with.

A moment after I finished, Robert’s aura ignited with a bright golden glow as more magic flooded out of me and into the spell I’d just cast.

Too much, in fact.

In the same instant, I felt sudden warmth and wetness trickling from my nose.

I touched it and my hand came away bloody.

I wiped my palm on my jeans, hoping no one else noticed.

No such luck. Hunter stiffened on the other side of the circle, his wide eyes locked onto my face. “Dammit, Daniel!”

Beside him, Lee’s expression was pinched tight with concern. Like his twin, his gaze was zeroed in on my face. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” I told them both, feeling sweat break out across my brow. My legs suddenly felt weaker than they had before. I gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Don’t worry. I can do this.”