Page 190 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“Gen, you’re in. Walter will fill you in on the system,” Graves said. “I’ll call the rest of the team in for a meeting.” She heard the door open and close behind them and the soft tread of Graves’s shoes as he approached her. “This doesn’t have to be the only way you meet him.”

“Yes, because after we steal one of his most prized possessions, I can just schedule a meeting.” She shot him a look.

“When you’re long lived, you have more than one opportunity to go after the things you want.”

She hung her head. Getting the cauldron was the priority, but she didn’t know if shewouldhave another shot at getting to meet the Curator.

“We have to try again,” she said on a sigh of frustration.

“To get past the block? Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“You just recovered your stores,” he said. “And you need them all for the heist.”

“Then I can go out and steal to replenish them.”

He studied her. “All right. I do think that it’s better for you to face this fear and try to break through the barrier than to walk into the heist wanting to meet the guy.”

“I wouldn’t jeopardize the mission.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

She laughed. “I neverplanto go off script.”

“The script just happens to be in rewrites whenever you’re on screen?”

“Exactly,” she said with a grin. She dropped her head and sighed. “All right. We’ll try again.”

“Good,” Graves said, guiding her back toward the chaise. “Where do you want to start?”

Kierse didn’t know. The doctor said that she needed to face what happened to her parents. But she didn’t know how to do that or even where to start.

Graves gave her a moment and then seemed to know she couldn’t answer. “Why don’t we just go back to the hallway and see if we can make it to the room? Don’t push against the block. I don’t want you bleeding all over my rug.”

She rolled her eyes at him and laughed. “Charming.”

His lips quirked. Kierse lay back on the chaise andclosed her eyes. The hallway. She wanted to go back to the hallway. She didn’t know how to face it, but what other choice was there?

She started to tremble. There was a reason that she’d been avoiding this. The fear seemed to creep up her throat until she felt like she was going to scream.

Was this what the trauma felt like? This relentless fear that she was going to see something truly awful and never be the same again? She’d survived abandonment and an abusive thieving guild and the Monster War. How much worse could it be?

And why did her brain say that this would break her? That this would be the thing that finally put her in the ground?

“Wren,” Graves said softly.

His bare hand touched her arm, but she hadn’t pulled her absorption down. She reached for it and nothing happened. Silence filtered through the buzzing in her ear. She couldn’t touch her magic. No, she could touch it, but it wouldn’t release.

“I can…I can do it,” she whispered.

With what felt like a rip, she tugged her absorption free and Graves’s magic settled into her.

She dropped into Graves’s library. The same place she was currently sitting, but it was her younger self looking up at him through suspicious eyes as her parents negotiated for him to take care of her.

She hadn’t meant to take them there, but the smell of the library had taken over her senses. They were back at the beginning again.

“Did you bring something to barter with?” Gravesasked.

---