Page 222 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

It didn’t get any stronger, though. Still just a soft hum. She focused her entire attention on it. She let it build inside of her. Coaxed it to life in a way she never had before. The only time it had felt like this was when he was touching her.

She hesitated. She needed the connection to be stronger. As strong as when they kissed. But to do that…she’d have to let her mind go there. She’d have to think about him…wanthim.

Her stomach twisted. She didn’t want to want him. But if she wanted his help, then she would have to try. She’d have to let herself delve into that place she had ignored all thistime. She had no one else she could reach right now. There was only Lorcan.

She let her defenses down, peeling back the layers of her mind until she exposed that small part of herself thatdidwant Lorcan. And maybe…it wasn’t that small. Maybe it wasn’t just a sliver she ignored. Maybe it was all of her in that moment.

She swallowed hard as she let that connection, that feeling, that man flood through her. All the things she had ignored and pushed aside and cut off from herself. The first time he’d smiled at her when she’d met him at his restaurant. The way he’d caught her stealing. How he could barely keep himself from touching her. The ease of his presence when they talked. The look on his face when he’d realized who and what she was in Graves’s library.

Even then, she’d known. Deep down, she’d known. Her anger had been a living, fire-breathing dragon inside of her, and she’d refused to see it. Now she couldn’t ignore it. The feel of his hands on her skin. The summer sunshine on her face. Those cerulean eyes boring through her. His insistence that she should live in Brooklyn with him, with her family, with his family. That they were connected and she couldn’t deny it. Now she wasn’t denying it. It was there.

Still, she pushed further. To that moment by the Oak Throne, wearing his faerie crown, his hands cupping her face. The devotion in his eyes. The irreverent king wanting nothing more than his irreverent queen. Then the kiss. His lips against hers. The way her entire being had been turned inside out. She shuddered at the memory, at the way his touch, the way their magic rose up, could conjure a storm within her. It ached to look at the memory. She’d made herchoice, and still,thiswas here. This thing she couldn’t seem to carve out of herself.

The magic rose like the tide. The connection strengthening in a way that she feared she wouldn’t be capable of dissipating. But that was a fear for another day. Not when she was bound by iron and helpless.

Right now, she needed him.

Lorcan, she pleaded silently, reaching through their connection.Please.Help.

She waited and waited and waited. Nothing happened. She didn’t know what it would feel like for him to hear her, or if he could even reach back through. Could he talk to her? Were her words reaching him? Still she pushed, pleading and begging and coaxing, using the force of their connection to reach for him. Anything to get him to come back.

Don’t go to Brooklyn.Don’t leave me, she said in her mind.Come back.Help me.

The lights flicked on.

Her eyes were closed, and still she winced at the sudden brightness. It severed the connection to Lorcan she’d been trying so hard to hold on to. The magic faded back to its normal dullness as he continued to get farther away. She hadn’t reached him at all.

She slowly peeled her eyes open and got her first real look at the hotel meeting room. She was facing the door with her back to most of the room. There was a kitchenette against one wall stocked with drinks, and a small round table and chairs. She tried to wrack her brain for the floor plan and guessed she was on the second or third floor, in one of the smaller rooms off the ballrooms. The hallwayoutside connected to elevators near the bathrooms. If she could just…get out, then she could escape.

But there was no time for that. The door was creaking open. A black boot appeared through the gap. Kierse rattled against her bindings, ignoring the pain that shot up her arms and legs as the iron worked hard against her skin. But it was no use. There was no escape from whatever was about to come.

The man who’d knocked her out stepped through first. She still didn’t know why he seemed familiar. Maya followed behind him. She pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled warmly at Kierse.

“Good to see you again, Shannon,” Maya said as she took up a position to Kierse’s left. The other man stood sentinel to her right. Two other guards she didn’t recognize took up stances by the door.

“Her name isn’t Shannon,” the guy barked. “It’s Kierse.”

Thetap,tap,tap, of a cane against the floor announced the arrival of their leader. “Shannon was her mother.”

All of his goons dropped to a knee and said as one, “Curator.”

Kierse froze at the sight of the man who entered. The Curator. Cillian Ryan. A rogue Druid and the powerful magical user who had cast a spell on her and stolen her memories. She recognized the face that hadn’t aged in the nearly ten years since she’d stabbed him in the back and left him for dead.

“Jason?”

Chapter Sixty-Five

“Hello, Kierse.”

Jason was larger than life, his upper body broad and muscular, clothed in a sharp black suit. He’d always hated ties, and he didn’t wear one now, just had his button-up undone at the neck. He’d scrapped the clean-shaven look she’d seen recently in her memories for a full, dark beard. His eyes were as dark and deadly, but a new scar ran through his eyebrow and lid toward his jaw. A scar she had given him. His mouth was set in a way that had always made her walk on eggshells. The tilt of his head revealed the clever snake hidden in his mystique.

No wonder she hadn’t been able to place the familiar Sansara goon. He was one ofJason’sfrom the thieving guild. She hadn’t even known his name.

“What…what are you doing here?” she asked. She willed her body to stillness, but it wasn’t listening.

She hadkilled Jason.

It had been her only mission after he’d beat her to within an inch of her life and left her for dead. Gen had found her and saved her. She hadn’t understood why Kierse had wanted revenge, but she’d needed it to be able to move on.

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