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Not really a strategy most shifters would use, but for a psychic surrounded by soldiers whose enchanted jewelry stopped her from being able to walk through their minds, it was logical to have a secondary line of defense.
Darla was more suited for espionage work than I’d thought.
“Yeah, it’s time. I need you both in my quarters.”
“Ayla, sweetie, I know you’re being really crazy and allowing yourself to interact with people like a normal cryptid, but I’m not sure you should jump straight to a threesome.”
I rolled my eyes so hard, I almost caught a glimpse of my actual brain. “Are you coming or not?”
“I’m coming. By all means, lead the way.”
Both Kai and Darla obviously knew the way to my quarters, but they seemed content to follow along as I quickly marched there. Darla and Kai were both taller than me, and their strides much lazier.
Somehow, we made it to the door without anyone interrupting us—a miracle all on its own—and I hurried them in. Once inside, they both looked a bit surprised at the state of my room. Before I’d left that morning, I’d pushed my bed all the way into the corner and gently flipped it on its side, then pushed my dresser into the bathroom. The extra space allowed me to draw the necessary ritual circle I needed right onto my floor, which was a whole lot easier than carving it into stone or painstakingly digging each rune into the dirt.
“Did some redecorating, huh?”
I nodded, hurrying to my desk to grab my supplies and begin setting up my burn bowl. “Kai, can you put some of your hair in the center of the circle, then can both of you stand in the bathroom doorway?”
“You just need my hair? You don’t need me in the middle of it or anything?”
I shook my head, piling up the bit of driftwood, lemongrass, coal, and bone ash in my burn bowl, then lighting it with a burning sprig of willow wood.
“Nope, just your hair. If I needed you in the circle itself, I never would have been able to cast my curse the first time.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you did and just wiped it from my memory.”
“I’m not a psychic, and memory spells aren’t so specific. Even with how hard I worked on the last spell, and how many times I recast it or made improvements, you still were eventually able to break it on your own just by the nature of how our minds work.”
“I’m not a witch, but I’ll add on here,” Darla said. “Even as a psychic, memories are always complicated. You could bust your ass and really pull off the best wipe of your life, and then your subject will catch a particular scent, and that’ll bring it all back.”
Kai nodded. “That’s fascinating. I had no idea our minds could be so resilient, even against magical influence.”
“Us magic users are more inclined to let people believe that it’s easy because it makes us seem a lot more powerful.”
I couldn’t agree with Darla more. “In a world where a lot of people have claws, fangs, wings, or giant beast forms who’ll rip our throats out in 0.3 seconds, we need every advantage we have.”
I did have the advantage of being a half-shifter, but I’d spent years only allowing my inner wolf out in private, meaning most cryptids thought I was human.
“Huh.”
“Never thought of it before?” I said as I put my fresh ingredients around the edge of the circle.
“Not really. The court is entirely shifter, and although we have some high-level magic users in our support staff, they’reall regarded with suspicion. I’m pretty sure my father has something on them, just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked curiously.
“In case they get uppity,” Darla said, her full lip pressed into a thin line. “A lot of us have heard about this. You can join the service of the palace and live a life of relative luxury, but you’ll always perpetually be under someone’s thumb, an outsider.”
Was that what it was going to be like for me? I didn’t care about money, but being an outsider meant people would leave me alone and try to pretend I wasn’t there.
Sounds like Heaven.
Darla and Kai continued to chat while I narrowed my focus. I let their words fade into background noise, but there was something lovely about it. I usually operated in total silence when I did my magic work, because who did I have to talk to but myself? I always thought that was how it should be, but this…
The truth was, I liked it.
I needed to be careful, however, about always being social. About havingfriends.I was letting things lax a bit because we were in a complicated situation, but I had to keep a lid on it.
