Page 17 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

She flicked a glance at him and found him watching her. “What? Are you so surprised everyone knows you? I’m shocked you got away with a marriage ruse yet again. Perhaps it was just shocking enough to get her to believe it.”

“Perhaps it was,” he said stiffly. No expression change.

Kierse turned away again. No reaction from him shouldn’t matter. She wanted to get the cauldron for the thrill of it. If it cancelled out her debt for his help with the bracelet, then all the better. In fact, maybe he’d be inherdebt. Wouldn’t that be a welcome change of pace?

“What did you see when you looked at her?” Graves asked.

“A woman no older than me. Mid-twenties at most, with dark hair down in waves around her shoulders, and violet eyes. She was wearing a red gown and gloves. Did she not look the same to you?”

“She’s talented in hiding her appearance when she wants to. She usually has the violet eyes, but the gown was different. An expensive tiered pink thing that she used to wear back in the day, and fancy heeled shoes I’d recognize anywhere. Her hair was coiffed into this big elaborate…” He trailed off as he held his hands above his head for emphasis. “I wasn’t sure how much of it was fake.”

“I thought you could see through her illusions?”

Graves shrugged. “I can parse the truth from her magic when I touch it. For instance, I knew that the room wasn’t a full falsity from the authentic fireplace. And I could tell her dress was false when she hugged me.” His gaze swept over her. “But you couldn’t see the shape of her illusions?”

“No. I could feel her magic, though.”

“Interesting.”

He said it like it was something she should be able to do. But she’d never been able to discern the nature of someone else’s magic, just that they were using it. She was pretty sure that was part of the magical intuition that was on the other side of her wisp abilities.

“What game do you think she would have made me play if I had been willing or able?”

He shrugged. “Nothing you would have enjoyed. She uses her illusions to put people into difficult situations. She’s very perceptive. Her secondary magic is reading emotions between people, and then she uses what she sees there to her advantage. Generally entangling them or making themface hard truths through some kind of trickery.”

“If she can read emotions, then she would know we are not married,” Kierse guessed.

Graves arched an eyebrow. “Are we not entangled?”

Kierse swallowed at the heat in those words. “That’s a word for it.”

He bridged the distance between them. The entire world suddenly seemed to drop away in his presence. His bare hand came up to brush aside a lock of her hair. His magic breezed through the glamour as he tucked the hair behind her faintly pointed ears with a smirk on his perfect lips.

His fingers dipped down her jaw and to the pulse in her neck. His hand wrapped gently around her throat as he had done that first night they had met. When he had been testing his powers to find out her ill intentions and found silence instead. He still couldn’t discover what she was thinking with a touch of his hand, but that did not mean there were no clues.

“This heart beats for me.”

Kierse wrenched herself free. A heavy breath escaped her. She had been trapped in those stormy eyes and felt adrift at sea, his touch a lifeline in an endless ocean. But it was a ruse. This wasn’t real. Whatever he was doing was part of his games, and she didn’t want to play.

“If all she needs is a beating heart, then we’re fine.”

Graves dropped his hand. “It’s a secondary power,” he said, unperturbed. “Powerful emotions swing in either direction, and she cannot tell the difference between contrived emotions and reality. Though she is better at it with people that she knows.”

“Then I am safe,” Kierse said.

“Indeed.” Graves checked his phone for the time. “We’ll begin shortly. I would like her to believe us sufficiently out of her hair.”

“What are we going to do until then?”

Graves shot her a devious look. “We do have a bed. It would be a shame to waste it.”

“Then go to sleep,” she said.

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he said under his breath.

“Graves, could you be serious?”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

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