Page 97 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“The room with the hole under the floorboards.”

He nodded encouragingly. “We’ll go back to the floorboards and we’ll try to see what comes after your nightmare. It might take a few tries.”

“I’m ready,” she told him, fear creeping through her at the thought of going to that dark place.

This time she kept the floorboards in her mind as she lifted her absorption again. This time her magic felt a little less like glue and more like peeling back layers. It was still sluggish, but it came more easily.

Graves’s magic touched her, and suddenly she could see darkness. There were screams in the background. She was under the floorboards. Now that she looked around, Kierse could see dim light coming from the room above her. It was cold. Winter. She wasn’t wearing a jacket.

The memory shifted to last winter. Lorcan’s magic rushing into her body, and Graves’s haunted face begging her to give him the magic.

Kierse gasped and released her powers. She was panting, bent over the couch as that memory sliced through her. The pain was visceral.

“What triggered the shift?” he asked.

“Winter. It was cold in the dream.”

“Ah,” he said easily. “You think of me with winter.”

“How could I not?”

A small smile crept onto his face. “We were there. Try to stay in the moment. See what happens next.”

Kierse nodded and pulled her absorption up again. It was even easier than the last time. Easier every time.

She was back under the floorboards. This time she kept her focus on what was happening. The yelling continued. A body thumped nearby. She couldn’t see who it was from her hide out. She couldn’t see anything. And yet something was happening. Her parents were gone and she was here.

“We know she’s here, Adair,” a smooth female voicesaid as heeled boots clicked on the hardwood.

“She’s long gone. We sent her away.”

The woman laughed, high and disbelieving. “You put up a valiant fight, but even I know you wouldn’t send away your precious daughter.”

“Maureen,” a female voice pleaded. Kierse’s mother. “Just let us go. We aren’t harming anyone.”

“Not you. But the child,” Maureen said. Kierse could hear the sneer in her voice. “The relationship is doomed anyway. He will wither and die, and you will stay young forever. Not much of a life.”

“It isourlife,” Adair snarled.

Kierse shook under the floorboards, wanting to come out and be brave like her parents. Suddenly she was trapped in another room. In a jail cell after the bank robbery had gone all wrong. Jason’s face staring down at her through the bars, his sweet scent wafting toward her.

“Guess you’ll have to get out of this one yourself, kid,” he taunted.

Kierse shut it off, and reality rushed back in. “Fuck him.”

“I agree. It was the trapped feeling?” he guessed. She nodded. “I felt the thread pull you through. Memories are like dreams in that way.”

“We were almost there. Do you know who Maureen is?”

“She was a wisp council member,” Graves said solemnly. “A powerful one.”

“And she wants to…kill me? For existing?”

“I would suspect so, but I don’t have enough information to speculate. Why don’t we continue and see?”

She shivered, not wanting to go back in there and at thesame time wanting answers to this nightmare.

Her absorption popped free seamlessly this time. She dropped back into the memory. Maureen was chiding them for their arrogance, believing they could get away with it.

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