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)
As she looked up into his gleaming eyes, she realized that Graves was being frank with her. Earnest even. If that was a word that was possible to describe him.
He had sent her to Dublin for answers. She wanted to make her own decisions and check facts against all he had taught her. She would never regret that she had done so. She needed the ability to discern truth from falsehoods. Graves may have hidden her identity from her, but he had led her to all other answers. And perhaps…there might be a way to even more answers. The kind that only a warlock of knowledge could provide her.
Part of her job was knowing the worth of a thing. She had seen her father’s knife, and while it was clearly sentimental and of good use, it was not worth a name and a Druid amulet. Graves had given the amulet to her parents as a show of good faith, a way to help. He’d justified it as payment. Sometimes she forgot that he’d also helped the world by initiating the Monster Treaty. He’d put things into place to end the killing and set the world back onto the correct path.
Perhaps both were motivated by selfishness. After all, he was not all good or all bad, just as she was not one or the other. But he had helped a small child when she was in need, for less than the value of the aid. He knew her parents. He helped them. And now she had a name.
She had the who of her story, if not the why.
“So…do you still have contact with Cillian Ryan?”
“Not since the war,” Graves said, putting space between them. “But we can find him.”
“Oh, it’s we now?”
He shrugged. “You have the scent. If I know you at all, you’re not going to let it go now.”
No, she wasn’t. She had to have her answers.
“Won’t you be busy with the cauldron?”
“Ah, the cauldron,” he said as he pecked at his phone. “I have my people on it.”
“I can help. That’s why you came here, right?”
Graves arched an eyebrow. “I’ll admit I wanted your assistance. It wasn’t the only reason.”
Part of it was because of her. She was beginning to see that he wasn’t completely bullshitting her.
“Do you expect me to walk away from a really great score any more than the clues from my memories?”
“Obviously not.”
“You need me, anyway. I’m an asset. And I don’t think for a second that you’re going to go buy the cauldron at an auction.”
He tipped his chin up, denying nothing. He had the same look in his eye as when he’d entered negotiations with her parents. “And what is the price of your help, little thief?”
She could ask for anything. She knew what he’d offered for her to get the spear—ten million dollars and her freedom. She’d thought then that she would die for obtaining the thing. And instead, it now belonged to her.
This time they were on more even footing. He wanted her help on the cauldron, but she wanted to be in on it. So the negotiation should be for something that he also wanted to give her. The thing he’d already offered.
But she hesitated, even knowing the answer scared her.
“I need help with my memories,” she said finally.
“I thought you didn’t want me in your head.”
“I don’t, but we did it my way,” she said truthfully. “I didn’t get half as much as I wanted out of this bargain, and I risked my life more than once to get it. So it’s time to do it your way. However, you’re the sticking point.”
“Ah,” he said slowly. “Because you still hate me after what happened this winter.”
She crossed her arms. “I certainly don’t trust you. But I’m resolved to believe that you are part of this journey. After all, with all the memories I could have plucked out of my mind, the one that appeared was about you. Convenient, isn’t it?”
Graves’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that I changed the direction of your memories?”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
He blew out a breath. “I can’t touch your mind. Not unless you let me.”
She knew that to be the truth, and yet…she couldn’t let it go. Not after what he had done to her. She didn’t know how to let him in. She didn’t know how to need him without giving him everything. But the truth of the matter was that she did need him. How else would she get her answers? She couldn’t go back into the market. That much was a fact.
She met his gaze. “How do we do this? How do I get past what happened?”
The question hung in the air between them. Kierse had always been fiercely independent. It was something Jason had loved and hated about her. It was what had kept her alive. But if she was going to work with someone like Graves, who kept his own company and his own secrets as close as she did, then how could they carry on?