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He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me disapprovingly.
I sighed. “Look, if it’s true that the Raziq have placed a tracer signal on the book, Lucian has told me a way of getting around it.”
“How would he know?” Azriel’s voice held an edge that sounded a hell of a lot like contempt. “He is neither a priest nor a magic user, and he was stripped of any Aedh powers a long time ago.”
“He wasn’t stripped of all of them.” The annoyance surging through me hadn’t yet reached my voice—but I suspected it wouldn’t take that long. “And what does it matter whether he should or should not know? If it works, we’ll be able to read the book without the Raziq dropping in on us.”
“If it works,” he said.
“If it doesn’t, what have we lost?” I snapped my chair forward and leaned my forearms on the desk. “What the hell is your problem?”
He paused. “I have no—”
“Bullshit, Azriel,” I interrupted. “Every time I mention Lucian’s name you get all huffy and hostile.”
He shrugged. “I do not trust him.”
“But why? He’s done nothing to prove he’s untrustworthy.”
“And he’s done nothing to prove he is.”
“Meaning you’ll trust him if this idea of his works?”
“No.”
I snorted softly. “Then you’re just being unreasonable.”
He didn’t say anything. No surprise there. This reaper could make a clam seem chatty.
Footsteps clattered up the stairs, and I knew by the sound it was Ilianna. She might be fleet of foot, but she had a heavier step than most.
“Whoa,” she said, stopping abruptly in the doorway and glancing between Azriel and myself. “Tension, much?”
I grimaced. “It’s just a disagreement about trustworthiness. Nothing major.”
Ilianna’s gaze centered on Azriel. “So who don’t you trust?”
“Lucian,” he said, calmly.
“Why?”
“Good luck getting a real answer for that one,” I muttered, at the same time that Azriel said, “Because he is one of the fallen, and they should never be trusted.”
“Is this experience talking, or merely word of mouth?” Ilianna asked.
“Lucian is fallen.” He said it like that one word explained it all.
“One mistake does not mean the man is pure evil,” Ilianna said reasonably, though it didn’t look like it was having much impact on Azriel. “Are you sure there’s no deeper reason?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I do not understand the question.”
Ilianna snorted. “Sure you don’t.” She glanced at me. “You wanted to see me?”
“Would you happen to know how to create a magical void around an object?”
She blinked. “In theory, yes, although I’ve never actually created one. Why?”
“Because—according to Lucian—that’s the only way we can stop the locating spell the Raziq have more than likely placed on the book.”
