Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“Exactly,” she said with a grin. She dropped her head and sighed. “All right. We’ll try again.”
“Good,” Graves said, guiding her back toward the chaise. “Where do you want to start?”
Kierse didn’t know. The doctor said that she needed to face what happened to her parents. But she didn’t know how to do that or even where to start.
Graves gave her a moment and then seemed to know she couldn’t answer. “Why don’t we just go back to the hallway and see if we can make it to the room? Don’t push against the block. I don’t want you bleeding all over my rug.”
She rolled her eyes at him and laughed. “Charming.”
His lips quirked. Kierse lay back on the chaise and closed her eyes. The hallway. She wanted to go back to the hallway. She didn’t know how to face it, but what other choice was there?
She started to tremble. There was a reason that she’d been avoiding this. The fear seemed to creep up her throat until she felt like she was going to scream.
Was this what the trauma felt like? This relentless fear that she was going to see something truly awful and never be the same again? She’d survived abandonment and an abusive thieving guild and the Monster War. How much worse could it be?
And why did her brain say that this would break her? That this would be the thing that finally put her in the ground?
“Wren,” Graves said softly.
His bare hand touched her arm, but she hadn’t pulled her absorption down. She reached for it and nothing happened. Silence filtered through the buzzing in her ear. She couldn’t touch her magic. No, she could touch it, but it wouldn’t release.
“I can…I can do it,” she whispered.
With what felt like a rip, she tugged her absorption free and Graves’s magic settled into her.
She dropped into Graves’s library. The same place she was currently sitting, but it was her younger self looking up at him through suspicious eyes as her parents negotiated for him to take care of her.
She hadn’t meant to take them there, but the smell of the library had taken over her senses. They were back at the beginning again.
“Did you bring something to barter with?” Graves asked.
“Yes,” Shannon said.
Her father removed a hunting knife from a sheath at his belt. He dropped the heavy tool onto the table. It was long, sharp, and used, the leather of the handle worn. An emblem—a stag’s antlers inside a Trinity Knot—was burned into the metal.
“Is this sufficient?” Adair asked. “It was blessed by the Fae.”
A sob escaped Kierse’s throat at the sight of her parents there together. Her father offering his own hunting knife for her safety.
The connection broke, and her absorption snapped back into place. She covered her face as all the joy of their faces bled from her.
“Hey,” Graves said, reaching for her. “This is too much. You do not have to do this right now.”
She looked up at him with glassy eyes. “You said yourself, I’ll have it at the back of my mind the whole time I’m at the Plaza if I don’t face it.”
“You might. But if you’re this upset at this one memory, will we be able to be able to work through the block? Will you be better or worse if we accomplish what we’re after?”
She bit her lip, unable to answer. She felt like she was going to crack in two at the very thought.
“Worse.” The word escaped her lips before she could stop it. She didn’t feel ready. She felt like she had to do this thing to get past it. Not that she was prepared.
“That’s all I need to know.” He retreated with a nod. “Let’s get through the heist. We can deal with the Curator and your memories after.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Stealing from tourists wasn’t doing it for her today. She needed to be back at nightfall for the final meeting before Monster Con tomorrow, but she still wasn’t fully recharged. It should have been easy enough to walk around Midtown, considering the size of the crowds, but she’d gotten bored. And most of the Upper East Side was away at the Hamptons or wherever the ultra-rich jettisoned to escape the summer heat.
Kierse sighed as she sank into a seat on the Mall in Central Park. Bustling tourists paraded through the avenue lined with park benches. A saxophonist played across from her. A female mer swirled a soapy, five-foot loop of string on two poles, creating child-size bubbles. A nymph breakdancer was showing off farther down. Monsters and humans. As the Treaty had always promised them it would be. And yet it all felt tenuous.
Maybe it was just frustration. Another failed attempt with Graves. Another block in her memory. Another day with no answers.
She tilted her head back and looked up at the summer sky. Here she was in Central Park, and still she felt heartache for a past that was stolen from her and she couldn’t even remember.