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“You have nothing to fear—”
“Meaning you’re not behind the compulsion spell that’s been placed on me?”
My voice was matter-of-fact, and his sudden grin was warm and unrepentant. “I feared my Aedh charms might not have been enough to hold you, so I stacked the odds in my favor. But the spell is harmless, Risa.”
“Maybe this one is, but the next one might not be.”
He held up his right hand. “I promise, I will place no more spells on you.”
And you can trust every word out of a liar’s mouth, Azriel commented.
Have you ever heard the saying “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing?”
I do not believe so. Nor can I help commenting when he makes such blatantly unbelievable statements.
It was pointless saying anything further when I was never going to convince him that Lucian was remotely trustworthy, so I didn’t bother. Especially since I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of it myself.
I crossed my arms and said, “And what about getting other people to place spells on me?”
“I promise I won’t do that, either.”
“Does that mean there’s no other spells on me?”
“I did not need more than one.”
Which wasn’t actually confirmation that there were no other spells, just that he hadn’t actually needed them. I eyed him for a moment, then sighed softly and waved a hand. “Fine. Give me a closer look at the ward.”
He pushed it toward me. I studied it dubiously for several minutes, then gathered together the threads of my courage and reached for it.
No touch! Amaya screamed, the sound so high-pitched it made my eyes water.
At the same time, the Dušan swiveled around in my flesh, its head near my knuckles as it snarled at the ward.
I snatched my fingers away.
“I can’t,” I said, and stepped away from the counter.
Anger exploded around me, the force of it so fierce it stole my breath. My gaze snapped to Lucian’s. There was no anger to be seen in his expression, not even the merest hint, but it had come from him nevertheless. “Why the hell not?” he said, his voice as flat as his eyes.
I might as well have been looking into the eyes of death. A shiver that was part fear, part foreboding, rolled through me. “What do you mean? Didn’t you see that?”
“See what? What the hell are you talking about?”
I frowned, my gaze searching his. “The Dušan. It reacted to the ward.”
He glanced at my wrist sharply. Now that I’d stepped away, the Dušan had resumed her normal position on my arm. Amaya, however, was still eager to bite into whatever darkness Lauren had employed to make the ward, and she was letting me know it. Banshees had nothing on the noise she was currently making inside my head.
“Impossible,” he said.
“Not in this case.” I crossed my arms. “I can’t use the ward, Lucian. I won’t.”
He contemplated me, his expression still remote, then turned and faced Lauren. “It would appear you have wasted your time and energy. I’m sorry.”
Lauren rose and moved toward us, her long dress flowing around her legs like the gray tendrils of a web. Definitely a dangerous, dark spider, I thought with another shiver.
But one who wasn’t entirely surprised or annoyed by my actions, if her expression was anything to go by. My gaze returned to Lucian. Maybe she wasn’t worried because she would still extract the price of the ward from him.
“A foolish choice, but one that she nevertheless has the right to make.” Her gaze came to mine. “You may yet regret this decision, however. There are worse things in this world—and the next—than this stone and the magic within it.”
