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"Are you human?"

"Something like that."

"And you think you have the power to grant me the answers to my prayers?"

"I think the gods have the power to answer your prayers. Unfortunately, I am their hands and feet." She tried not to let too much of her sour attitude seep into the words. "Please just pray."

His beautiful hazel eyes drifted closed and he shook his head frowning. Once again she expected to hear the murmuring of the gods. The chanting of everything he prayed should've repeated to her as he spoke it, but it was quiet. Damn. They’d granted her silence.Please, please!She pleaded with both Sylik and Greshta. Anyone.

"Well?" Shelby asked.

Oh gods…oh gods…she'd done this to herself. Ace squeezed her eyes shut tightly cursing herself and begging for an answer all at once.

"Does it usually take you a while to hear from them?"

"Be quiet!" she snapped, suddenly feeling the weight of her helplessness. She couldn't keep Shelby at knifepoint all night, that was not how her plan was supposed to go.

"The longer you stall the less I believe you," he grumbled, more and more skeptical by the second.

"I—"

Then a far off voice answered her call. A whisper of a god she hadn't heard from before. A voice soft and nearly so sweet she thought for a moment she'd tasted sugar on the back of her tongue. One word. An answer.

Freedom.

Oh, Ace beamed then. She smiled so big it made her cheeks ache. That grin faltered when she really registered what the god had said, what it was exactly that Shelby was wanting.

He wanted to be free. Ace knew the feeling all too well.

The single word was quickly followed by another image. A boy—no, Shelby as a child—screaming as Fae pressed a red iron rod into his side. Scars. He had scars. And he’d been enslaved longer than the queens had ruled.

"Did they…do you…" Shelby swallowed as he watched her expression grow, then melt away.

Would the gods favor Shelby?

"You want freedom," Ace stated plainly. "I'm assuming from the queen."

Shelby took a step away, his back flattening against the wall. He swept his gaze from side to side as if looking for someone who might have heard. If anyone had been around they probably would have said something sooner about the fire-eyed girl holding a butcher knife at a warlock twice her height.

“You were burned.” She pointed to his side. “By Fae.”

"You are a witch."

"Witches don't exist. You know that." Magic was only passed down from man to man, never a woman. Witches, as he'd said, never existed.

"What do you want with me?"

"Well," Ace lowered the knife, "I didn't want anything from you but you so rudely interrupted my perfectly good plan."

"And that plan would be…to steal the appetizers?"

"No." One word; a feeble attempt at defending herself.

He deadpanned, waiting for her continued response. Ace caught herself taking in the entirety of him, the wide shape of his shoulders, his height that made her feel like she was straining her neck, his square jaw, and the cut of his cheekbones under his naturally sculpted eyebrows.

Clearing her throat, she started again. "I need a grimoire from the spellbinding room."

"Why would you target the castle when you could target the market again?"

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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