Page 96 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

He stilled at the thought. “Perhaps. I wasn’t sure how much more powerful you would be now that the spell is gone. You did that faster than I anticipated.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It’s good. But…” He wavered a moment as if he wasn’t going to finish his thought.

“But?”

“That is how wisps have killed warlocks in the past,” hesaid slowly, as if he didn’t want to give her this information.

“By touching your magic?”

“And then draining it.”

She blanched. “I’d never survive absorbing all that magic.”

“Let’s hope we never have to test that,” he said, brushing his hands down his suit pants.

He looked…uncomfortable. And how could she blame him? When he had offered to teach her magic, she had panicked about lowering her guard and letting him into her mind. But this was something else altogether. He had taught her how to…hurt him.

He could have skipped this step. He could have not told her what the end result would be, but he had. A light switched on in her mind. He’d handed her a truth that could hurt him. And he’d done it willingly.

She needed to trust him to do the same when she switched her powers the other direction and let him in. A vulnerability for a vulnerability.

“Now turn the powers off.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

She closed her eyes this time. She didn’t want to dive back into that rush of magic. To get lost in the currents of the enormity of him. All she wanted to do was feel…nothing. No absorption at all.

She wanted to let him in. Graves could come in. She would allow that.

The magic appeared to her like something she’d always known how to find. The off button slid into place like breathing. Graves’s hand on her wrist was fire hot. She opened her eyes to see the gold of his magic sliding past herdefenses and into her skin.

She lifted her chin to meet his eyes, and suddenly the memory of them in this room rose to the surface. Him on his knees before her. Her looking down at where his fingers invaded her core and brought her to ever-higher peaks. The look on his face as she came. The torture of not going further. The want. The need. The…

The memory switched off, and with it her absorption came back online. Her cheeks were flushed. His eyes blazed with an intensity she almost couldn’t handle.

“Well, well, well, that was a pleasant memory.”

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” she snapped.

“That isn’t how memory works.”

She felt in over her head. “I don’t want you to see memories like that.”

“Then concentrate on what youdowant me to see,” he said. “Think of your parents this time. Guide my powers to where you want them to be.”

“Is it that easy?”

He flashed her a dirty smirk. “Never.”

“Reassuring.”

“Most people think of what they don’t want someone to see, and then when I’m in there, that’s what I see. That’s how minds work. You need to concentrate on the memory you’re looking for. What are you looking for?”

Kierse tried to clear her mind. “My parents.”

“Be specific.”

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