Page 240 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

She dropped her head. “The Curator was expecting me. He kidnapped me and had me bound in iron.”

“Fuck,” he whispered.

She swallowed and lifted her gaze. “The Curator isJason.”

Graves’s eyes widened. “Jason? Your old mentor? But you killed him.”

“I thought I did, but it just paralyzed him. He’s gone through a lot of therapy and uses magic so he can walk with a cane now, but it’s him. He’s taken on many identities. Cillian Ryan, Jason, Curator. All the same person.”

“No wonder he’s scrubbed his identity from the web.”

“I think it’s why I kept skipping through memories at the scent of the pine and lemon,” she explained. “I’d think of the smell and go to Jason. It was showing me the truth all along, but I thought it was the block.”

“Did you kill him?” he asked, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“He got away. And the reason for the block—the reason he completely erased my memories of that day, instead of just hiding them in the spell—was that the spell wasn’t actually to hide me from the Fae Killer. That was a handy-dandy side effect to him siphoning my powers away and giving them to Jason instead. That’s why I looked weak before you broke the spell.”

“Fuck, I should have seen it.”

“And he knows who the Fae Killer is.”

Graves blinked in surprise. “He knows their identity?”

“He said he did. He suggested that I did, too, but in the memory when he kills my parents, I don’t see his face.” She shrugged. “And now I can’t lift my absorption to look again.”

“We’ll find a way around that.”

She doubted it.

“Had Jason done that spell on others?” he asked.

“Yeah. I bet he’s done it on the people in his cult, too. He’s using them as a replenishable energy source.”

“You know what that means?” he asked. When she stared back at him blankly, he continued, “You might not be the only wisp.”

The revelation staggered her. Tonight had been almost too much. Too much bad news. This almost didn’t feel possible. The very thought that somethingpositivecould come out of all the shit she’d endured was too much.

“And if there are, we’ll find them,” Graves told her. “Together.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“What I don’t understand is, if you were chained with iron, how you got away. How he got away.”

“I phased. That’s what Lorcan called it. He said Saoirse had the ability after a hundred years. I guess I got it out of necessity,” she explained. “And then Jason ran away in fear. I followed him, but he got away before I could kill him.”

“These are some massive magical leaps happening to you. No wonder your magic was drained.”

“Drained just enough for Lorcan to come and kidnap me.”

“And he knew where you were because of the soulmate bond.”

She winced. “I…called out to him when I was tied up.”

“You…did,” he said slowly.

She turned away from him. “I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t know that I even could. I only called out to you when Lorcan had me tied up for the binding because he’d suggested that you’d gotten into my mind and fucked it up.”

Graves cleared his throat. “Is that right? And youbelieved him?”

---