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My magic, my spark, was lit by the passion we created between us. It wasn’t really meant to take away from my consorts. But I’d read stories of witches who expended so much magic their consorts started to suffer during the replenishing. Building that power with me, releasing it to me, could take its toll.
That suffering was just the last thing I’d ever wanted to inflict on any of my consorts.
“What’s been happening?” I asked quietly. “How have you been feeling?”
Seth grimaced. “At first it was just a bit of pressure, just a tiny bit uncomfortable. But that’s grown and become more painful. I’m not sure it’d be a good idea for us to do anything… intimate for at least a few days.”
He looked so guilty saying that, my heart wrenched. I grasped his arm. “Of course. Seth, I’ve got four other consorts. If our luck holds, especially with Naomi with us, I won’t even need to use so much magic I’d exhaust one consort. The last thing I want is for our bond to be hurting you.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I hated to tell you. But obviously you needed to know.”
“I did. Thank you. I wouldn’t ever want you to keep something like that from me.” I dragged in a breath, and a fresh pang ran through my chest. “Don’t offer any more than you think is good for you. I won’t initiate anything until you give me the go ahead. And any time in the future, if it ever becomes too much again—”
He was already nodding. “I’ll speak up. Don’t worry. That’s why I’m telling you now—so you know that Iwilltell you, and that if I haven’t said anything, you can assume I’m fine. I won’t pretend I am when I’m not again. You can count on that.”
I held his gaze with a little smile of my own. “Promise.”
The corner of his lips curved up again. “Should I pinkie swear?”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
He hooked his little finger around mine, his face turning serious again. “I swear if anything about your magic is affecting me badly, I’ll tell you.”
His resolve rang through the words. The wrenching inside me eased, but only partly.
Seth had come to me with this—had been suffering, even if only in a small way, for days. What if he wasn’t the only one?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rose
“I’ve got to say again, this is quite the ride,” Kyler said, stretching out his arms along the back of the cushioned bench.
The colors of the bus’s interior were a little garish, neon blues and greens splattered across the dark gray, but I couldn’t complain about it otherwise. It was perfect for our purposes, with the two long comfortable benches at the front behind the driver’s area, two sets of curtained bunks beyond them where we could sleep, and another seating area at the very back. We’d swapped in and out of the bunks overnight after we’d started our hasty journey from the Levesque estate.
Naomi laughed. “It’s amazing what you can find on short notice around New York City. This was a band tour bus in another life.”
Damon sucked in a deep breath. “And I think I can still smell the booze and the weed.”
“Give me another few pit stops, and all you’ll smell is paint,” Jin said with a grin. A faintly tangy scent already hung in the air from the glyphs he’d been painting on the inner walls, using a few sketches I’d done for reference. As he finished each one, Naomi imbued it with protective magic to match the symbol. The goal was to shield and repel any destructive magic that came at us.
“It doesn’t maneuver too badly either,” Seth said from the driver’s seat. He patted the wheel.
Naomi slid her fingers around Greg’s hand where he was sitting next to her. Her consort had been taking this whole escapade in with a somewhat bemused expression, but at least he didn’t look upset about being here.
“So,” she said. “New day, well on our way—let’s talk plans. What can we get on this crazy faction of the Assembly to shut them down? And how?”
Gabriel tipped his head to Ky. “You managed to dig up that one incriminating file from their server in Portland. If you could manage to get in there longer…”
Ky nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m pretty sure I’d need to go right into the building to get full access. They detected the outside intrusion way too quickly last time. But with a little magic on my side, maybe that won’t be a problem.” He smiled, but I could tell from the tensing of his shoulders that the idea made him a little nervous.
“Figure out exactly what you’d need as well as you can, and Naomi and I will work out the best way to make that happen,” I told him. He shifted his smile directly at me, warmer now.
“And what was that thing the one guy said to you,” Damon asked Gabriel. “Something about a cliff?”
“Right!” I said. “We have some idea where that is thanks to Ky’s searching before. Charles Frankford has his property out there. If they’re doing something they can threaten people with there, it’s worth looking into. And they won’t expect us to know about it, so that might be a better place to start than trying to waltz right into the Assembly building.”
“Cliff?” Naomi said, sounding puzzled.
