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Despite my queasy stomach at Rainey’s ominous words, I managed to finish my food much easier than Byron expected me to. Rainey excused himself, leaving the book carefully on Adrienne’s bed in order to get Barnes to create whatever potion I needed to take.
“You know,” I said, leaning against the chair and angling my torso in Byron’s direction. “If this potion kills me, you’re going to be the person I come back to haunt.”
He arched a brow. “You don’t think you’ll cross the bridge?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’d want revenge on you so my anger would keep my spirit rooted here,” I said. “And since the lifespan of shifters are long, you’ll be stuck with me basically for eternity.”
He chuckled, surprising me.
“You know,” he said as he dropped his gaze to the empty plate, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human girl eat as much as you do. Where do you put it?”
I glowered at him. “You think I want to be skinny?” I asked. “My mother’s biggest thing was strength. I can’t be strong if I can’t pull myself up a tree or swim an ocean or –”
“Don’t you think you’re being dramatic?” he asked, dropping his gaze to my body without being skeezy about it. “There are ways to build muscle, but the most important one to work every day is this one.” He tapped his temple. “It’s your mindset. Your beliefs in the world around you and yourself. You are your own master.”
That actually made sense. My mother taught me about that too, but she would put it in a different way. Something about how the body might be broken but if the soul was still intact, that was all that mattered. Bodies could heal, souls couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if I believed her at that point, but hearing what Byron had to say made me gravitate towards it more than I had.
“You think I could be a physical threat?” I asked after another moment. There was doubt in my voice, doubt I tried to mask because I didn’t want him to think I felt sorry for myself because I didn’t.
“I think you could be anything you want, as long as you put your mind to it,” he said.
Heat flooded my face. I didn’t know why I was blushing. This was the same guy who told me he had no idea whether or not I killed Lucy because he didn’t know me. But his words mattered to me. His opinion mattered to me.
“What happens if it shows I do have magic?” I asked in a whisper. I picked up my glass and looked inside it. There was a bunch of pulp gathered at the bottom. “What then?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
I set the glass down, frowning. “How could I not be worried about it?” I asked. “The way Rainey – Captain Rainey – made it seem, magic isn’t thought to exist in humans, even though there are clearly books written on the subject, books you guys seem to take seriously.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It seems as though it’s not exactly something sought out here in your community.”
“It’s not something we understand,” he admitted. I was surprised by how honest he was being when he didn’t have to be. He also wasn’t lecturing or brooding silently. Maybe I was making some kind of headway with him. Maybe this might actually work between us, this sort of guardian type of relationship. Or maybe I was thinking too much on it. I didn’t think me and Byron had any sort of relationship, but he was the person I knew best here, and being around him helped ground me. I had to admit that much. “There is already magic within shifters, but it’s magic that’s natural to us. It’s something we’re born with. Other magic can be manifested in different ways. The problem is, we’re unfamiliar. Anything outside our knowledge makes it difficult for us to wrap our head around.” He winced. “I don’t think I’m making any sense.”
“You’re not,” I agreed.
“It’s like this,” he said. “We can shift into an animal. By the natural order of things, that’s a type of magic. But there are other types we don’t understand, types that are vastly different from simple transformative magic. That’s what’s different. That’s what makes it hard to believe in.”
I still didn’t get it. If shifters believed in the magic they already had, why was it difficult for them to understand other magic? Unless it was like religion. Everyone believed in their own god and couldn’t fathom another. That was the only thing I could think of, though I wasn’t sure if that was what Byron meant.
“And there’s concern I might have that other magic?” I asked.
“It’s not only that,” he said. “If you do — and that’s a big if — there are certain types of people, people who believe in that magic, who might use you.”
“Use me?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “For what?”
Byron sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “A plethora of things,” he said. “It’s not something for you to worry about —“
“Why not?” I asked, throwing my arms out and glancing down at myself. I still couldn’t believe I might have magic inside of me when I looked so…normal. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around. In fact, just thinking about it made me feel ridiculous. “I mean, if it’s inside of me, why wouldn’t I worry about it?”
“Because we don’t know if it’s the case,” he said. “Why worry about something uncertain?”
I opened my mouth to respond before shutting it and blowing hair out of my face.
“Well, it bothers me,” I admitted, shifting in the chair. “I don’t think…there’s no way I could…” I swallowed, trying to get a hold of myself. The last thing I wanted to do was overreact even more than I had already done in front of Byron. “I didn’t kill them. I know you said you didn’t know me well enough —“
“I know you didn’t,” he said quietly. His eyes were back on my glass rather than on me. “You care far too much. It’s annoying.”
I wasn’t sure whether to feel relief or offended.
“I thought you said you didn’t know me well enough to know for sure,” I said, leaning back in the chair.
