Page 134 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

He caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Are you babying me?”

“Perhaps you need to be babied,” she said as he nipped at the pad of her thumb.

“I’ve lived a long time,” he said with a slow, deadly smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“You ingested a lot of wish powder. The antidote only helps so much. You still feel like shit.”

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, going for another kiss. “I’m more worried about you.”

“A little shaken up,” she admitted.

“What happened in there? And what exactly are you wearing?” He tutted, fingering the little tree emblem. “I don’t like you wearing oaks.”

She laughed softly. “Well, you don’t have a holly clothing line, do you?”

“I’ll put it on the list.”

“See that you do.” She chuckled. The levity helped. “They’re clothes from a tree cult.”

Graves’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah. Decided to join, in all my spare time.”

“Wren.” He twirled his finger around a lock of her hair.

“I think I know who the curator is,” she said shakily.

He froze. “Did you meet him?”

“No, but the tree on this robe and the cult I just escaped—it was called Sansara.”

Graves’s eyes widened. “But Sansara was destroyed.”

“So we were led to believe.”

“And you think it’s…”

“Cillian Ryan.”

Chapter Forty-One

Half an hour later, George pulled into the underground garage. They exited the bullet-ridden limo without a backward glance and took the elevator into the brownstone. Graves grabbed two protein bars from the empty kitchen—Isolde had long since gone home and wouldn’t be back for another hour or so—and passed her one.

“Gross,” she said with a laugh as she tore into it on the way up the stairs.

“If you’ve lost half as much magic as I have, you’re probably starving.”

“Yeah. The cultists offered me cake, and damn did I want cake,” she told him around a yawn. “You can win a girl over with some quality cake.”

“Noted,” he said with a smirk.

Kierse felt surprisingly better after having even the smallest amount of food. Her magic wasn’t empty, but the events of the evening had been straining. She could feel it guttering with the need for recovery. Physically, mentally, and magically.

They reached the landing for the second floor only to find Gen passed out in a chair. Kierse shook her gently awake. “Hey, sleepyhead. We made it home.”

Gen jolted awake. “Kierse, what time is it?”

“Morning.”

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