Page 45 of Unveiled

Connor’s jaw flexed. He looked away for a long, silent moment, battling some thought Adrian couldn’t read. Then, “Let me see it again.”

Adrian jerked as if burned. “Absolutely not.”

“Adrian.”

“No.”

“Adrian.”

“What part of no—”

“If it’s getting worse, we need to know what it’s doing.”

Adrian bristled. “It’s my skin. My body. It’s not…”

Connor stepped even closer. Not looming, not crowding, but radiating a stillness so steady it made Adrian’s pulse trip over itself. “I’m not asking to take anything from you,” Connor said quietly. “I’m asking to help.”

The mark pulsed again. Harder. Hotter. Adrian winced involuntarily, and Connor’s hand shot out, steadying him with a warm grip on his arm.

“What the fuck?” Connor’s face darkened. “That’s not normal. I can feel it too.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening either.”

Connor nodded once. “Then we’ll figure it out.”

“We?” Adrian echoed.

“You’re not alone in this,” Connor said. A simple, unarguable truth. “Not anymore.” He smiled as if thinking of some old memory. “Believe me, there are others looking out for us.”

Something in Adrian’s chest tightened and warmed at the same time. A feeling he refused to examine too closely. He stepped back. “Thank you. But I should speak to Xiathen first. They know more of the old symbols than I do.”

Connor’s eyes softened. “Aye. And I’ll come with you.”

Adrian blinked. “No. Really. You don’t have to.”

“I’m coming.”

Adrian threw his hands up. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re stalling.”

Adrian glared.

Connor didn’t budge.

They were halfway around the bend of the Apothecarist’s workshop when the raised voices reached them: sharp, indignant, and not even remotely subtle.

“You cannot put that much mandrake into anything meant for human consumption,” Luciana hollered from inside the shop.

The Apothecarist retorted, scandalised, “His face already turns the shade of a ripe tomato at the slightest provocation. What harm could a little extra mandrake do?”

Adrian slowed, then stopped entirely. “Oh no.”

Connor sighed. “Oh aye.”

Then a third voice, smaller, miserable, and quite alive, drifted out. “Please stop talking about my face.”

Laird.