Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Graves winced. “Sometimes I hate that you’ve known me this long.”
“I need this whole story,” Kierse said with a laugh.
“He blew up a whole building!”
“I owned the building,” Graves argued. “It didn’t matter.”
“He fumbled the magic, and people heard it for miles instead of silencing it.”
Kierse put her hand to her mouth. She couldn’t imagine that version of Graves. Someone still training his abilities and fumbling through them rather than so utterly confident in every aspect of his life.
“So what happened?”
“Nothing!” Kingston said. “I persuaded the police that it was an accident, and they simply forgot to charge anyone. He was lucky I was around.”
“I could have gotten out of it just fine.”
“Perhaps, but my methods are quicker. You couldn’t have erased all their memories at once.” Kingston glanced between them with a wince. “She does know that you do more than read people, yes?”
“I do.”
“Erasing memories is an inelegant solution, and I avoid it at all costs,” Graves said stiffly.
Which was what he had told Kierse when she had learned about his ability to do it while working through her memories. He had erased Emilie’s memories of her soulmate, and inevitably it had killed her. A mistake that he was trying not to make a second time.
“That isn’t exactly how I remember it,” Kingston said under his breath.
Graves shot him another murderous look, but they honestly didn’t work on Kingston. He raised a toast to him and kept right on talking.
“Let’s take a step back,” Kingston said. “How did you first discover that you could portal? Where were you? Where did you portal?”
Kierse glanced to Graves. They couldn’t tell him that it was because of the cauldron or that she had the powers because of her Fae abilities.
But she hadn’t actually confided in Graves that she had portaled once before.
He tilted his head to the side as if he read her, even though that was utterly impossible right now. But he knew her well enough to see that she had been keeping something.
She sighed. “About a month ago, I was being followed through the streets. I was on Sixth Avenue, and it was congested, but I could feel that I was being followed. I kept trying to avoid them, but it didn’t work. I used all of my stealth moves from when I was full-time thieving. No go. And so…I don’t know…I just jumped.”
Graves’s eyes were guarded by the end of her story. He knew exactly who followed her—Lorcan. That day she had been alone, pickpocketing tourists through the busy intersections, and she had felt him through the bond until it drove her mad.
“Do you mean you portaled without a door?”
“No. There was a door like yours. I didn’t draw it or anything. I wanted to get away, and I knew that there was a place at Sixth and a Half Avenue that would do the trick.”
“Sixth and a Half?” Kingston asked.
“It’s a pedestrian walk between Sixth and Seventh for a handful of blocks through the busiest part of Midtown. I’ll take you next time.”
“Excellent.”
“So yeah. I thought about going there, and then the next step through was to that spot. I evaded the person following me.”
“Hmm,” Kingston said. “Do your powers usually react to danger?”
She laughed. “I’m a thief. It’s common territory.”
“You are not going to put her in danger for this,” Graves argued immediately.
“What? You think I need to be in danger to manifest my powers?”
Kingston grinned. “It’s worth a try.”
…
Kierse stared down at the tube platform for Marble Arch on the Central Line and heard the disembodied voice say, “Mind the gap,” for the third time since they arrived at the station.
“This may be the most reckless thing I’ve ever considered doing,” Kierse said. “Jason pushed me off a roof once. I’ve gotten arrested so I could break myself out of prison. I robbed Graves.”
“The last one is quite humorous, though,” Kingston said.
Graves shook his head. “We’re not doing this.”
“We tried to throw knives at her, but you’re too good of a shot,” Kingston said. “She didn’t even flinch.”
“I wasn’t in any real danger.”
“See?” Kingston said.
Graves narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re playing with her life.”
The train rolled past, but they came as frequently as they did in the subway back home. So another would roll in within a few minutes. They’d waited to try this after exhausting their other options, and it was late enough that the platform was empty. Kingston’s persuasion had redirected anyone who came near them. Very handy. She’d almost asked him how it worked a few times, but she was too worried about him discovering their secret.
“She’ll be fine,” Kingston said.
Then without another word, he shoved directly between Kierse’s shoulders. She dropped hard onto the train tracks and continued her momentum forward through a roll before coming back to her feet. She glanced up at the platform to see that Graves had Kingston lifted up by his collar.