Page 63 of Magic Betrayed

IknewI hadn’t said that out loud. So had that been a guess based on my posture and general skittishness, or had he actually…

He sighed. “Yes. Not the right time to talk about it, but… yes.”

I blinked at him in horror. “Yes?”

His expression went decidedly hesitant, and his eyes met mine briefly, only to dart away again. “I can… sometimes catch the edges of what you’re thinking.”

Hewhat? How? How much of what I was thinking? Had he heard any of my embarrassing thoughts about…

No. Crap. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about hugs. About his deep voice that made me feel safe. Don’t think about being in love. Anddefinitelydon’t think about pajamas…

“Not any actual concrete thoughts,” he hastened to clarify. “Just impressions. General direction.”

Well, the general direction of my thoughts lately wasnotsomething I wanted him to know. Not before I was ready to tell him.

And how did a shapeshifter have that ability, anyway?

“I thought that was just me,” I blurted out. “That it was my…”

Wait. No. I couldn’t confess to having siren magic. Not with the way Callum reacted to any mention of Leith, the wildkin king. He didn’t hate him exactly, but he didn’t trust him either, and I didn’t want him looking at me that way.

But I also owed Callum at least one piece of the truth.

“I can sort of hear you, too,” I confessed. “But so far only when you’re a dragon.” There had been a few times when he wasn’t a dragon that I’d wondered, but…

His reaction wasnotwhat I expected. His entire body went rigid, and his eyes snapped to mine, suddenly glowing like twin amber coals—bright and piercing.

“You’re sure?” he asked fiercely.

I nodded. “Back at the refuge… I heard you telling me not to fall asleep. That you were going to shift back.”

He looked… I couldn’t think of any way to describe it other than triumphant. As if some wildly intense emotion was barely contained within the constraints of his current physical form. As if the dragon was straining to break free. I saw him begin to reach out, then abruptly pull himself back.

Whatever was happening, we needed to talk about it. But not here and not now. Somehow, we had to find Logan and Kes before their captors ran out of patience—and before any of the mercenary crews found them first.

Then… Maybe then we would have time. Maybe I would find the courage.

Or maybe Callum would learn just one more damning fact about me and decide that it wasn’t worth it. That I wasn’t worth the constant worry and death threats and arguing and almost being blown up.

But I couldn’t let myself think about that yet.

We had a house to find.

FOURTEEN

How didone go about finding a single specific house within a six-hour radius?

Six hours encompassed a half-dozen major cities, plus a significant stretch of largely empty territory, particularly to the west. Directly to the north was mostly rural, which would be even more difficult to search. So we needed to narrow it down, but our only clues were locked in the mind of a capricious six-year-old.

Kira produced a pencil and paper and suggested Ari draw what she remembered, but my sprite was not an artist. Her house was a black square, with four widows and a roof, and the surrounding area was “scary trees.” She’d spent so much of her life below ground that trees were still an oddity that sometimes frightened her in the dark.

In desperation, I borrowed a tablet from Seamus, started searching house styles, and showed them to Ari.

“Like this?”

She didn’t react to craftsman, mobile, ranch, farmhouses, or cottages. I tried chateaus and Neo-classical and didn’t get so much as a pause until I pulled up a picture of a stately Victorian bed-and-breakfast with a turret on one corner.

“Like that.” She pointed at the turret with wide, excited eyes. “It had one just like this.”

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