Page 144 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“Let’s try this first. We don’t know exactly where we’re going, and too many points of entry could drag us to the wrong person or time.” He slid his gloves off. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She slowed her breathing. She could do this. She flipped that switch on her absorption, feeling it give as smoothly now as her slow motion. She turned it to off and let Graves’s magic settle into her skin.

She was leaving the library, a yawn escaping her little mouth as she walked between her parents to the elevator. She stumbled from exhaustion, and her dad picked her up. She laid her little head on his shoulder and fell asleep as if the night had been peaceful and she was safe and loved.

A tear leaked from the corner of Kierse’s eye as the memory faded to dreams.

“Should we stop?” Graves asked, pulling back.

“No.” She replaced his hand on her arm. “We need to keep going.”

“I’ll guide from here,” he said, his voice taking on a smooth, melodic tone.

How many times had he done this before? How often had he stolen information from someone’s mind byguidingthem? Enough. Enough, and it didn’t matter, because they needed the information.Sheneeded the information.

“You just woke up after leaving the library. What do you see?”

Kierse distantly felt his magic entangle with herconsciousness, encouraging her to show him what he wanted to know. She also felt an immediate instinct to fight his touch and cast him out, but she pushed that down and concentrated on what he wanted.

Her dad was putting her to bed on the couch, tucking a blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes fluttered open, and she yawned. “Did I fall asleep?”

“It’s okay,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s late.”

He ran a hand through her hair, and she closed her eyes again. But she was restless, once more opening them to look up at him.

“Is Mum going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry about your mum. She’s a strong one.”

“But if they’re after us…a spell isn’t going to hide her, too.”

“No,” he told her truthfully. “We’ll figure something out.”

It was the first time she realized that her father was lying to her.

She fell back asleep, but Graves’s voice was in her ears, already guiding her to a different memory. “You went to see the Druid, Cillian Ryan. Your parents took you to see him.”

Her mind whirled, sorting, processing, coming up blank. It was like a computer search engine looking for a name and finding nothing. But there shouldn’t have been nothing.

Her absorption switched back on, and Graves leaned back. He passed her a chocolate cookie. “Eat something. Switching your powers on and off will drain your magic.”

She took the offered food and finished it before sighing. “There’s nothing there.”

“We don’t know that. It was our first try. The rest has worked.”

She huffed in frustration. “Okay. You said it’d be harder, but…”

“This is not the toughest interrogation that I’ve done. It can take some time to get where we’re going. Trust me.”

And she did. He was darkness and winter and the villain of his own story. And yet she put her trust in him.

She listened in on her magic and saw that Graves was right. Using her absorption like this was draining her. They couldn’t do this all day.

Her powers winked off once more, and Graves was back in her head. That slight push as he directed her into her little New York apartment. Time seemed to move in fast forward.

Kierse recalled through his magic the rest of the next day with brilliant clarity. Waking up to her mum making an Irish breakfast, her dad complaining about missing the food from home. Dough proofing in a bowl nearby—her mum only baked when she was nervous, and today, she was making Kierse’s favorite: cinnamon babka. She’d have it ready after school.

Kierse went to school. She was a silent type who knew all the answers but refused to raise her hand. Hour by hour, her fear grew, and by the end of the day she sprinted out of the building and ran home.

---