“No! You can’t just waltz in here and start—”
He doesn’t wait for me to finish before he lifts me up and tosses me over his shoulder. My world spins for a second, and I can’t tell if it’s from literally being turned upside down or from feeling his hands on me.
As much as I’ve tried to distract myself, I can’t stop thinking about the kiss we shared. Though the memory is fuzzy, the feeling of his lips brushing whispered kisses along my skin is perfectly clear. His deft hands expertly moved around my body, as if he somehow knew exactly how to touch me. The momenthis lips dipped to my neck, is when my memory starts to become fuzzy, but the pieces I can hold onto are enough to make the area between my legs throb with a need I’m too ashamed to admit to.
So, even though my traitorous body clearly likes when he touches me, I still kick my feet and slam my palms into his back.
“Braxton, put me down!” I scream, trying to wriggle free.
“Gods, you’re squirmy,” he grunts as he grabs the book and carries me back to the table.
He carelessly plops me onto the ground before giving my chest a gentle shove, causing me to stumble back until the backs of my legs hit the edge of the chair I was sitting in and I drop into it.
“Sit.”
I glare at him.
“Stay.”
My eyes narrow and a rakish grin takes over his face.
“Good girl.”
My cheeks flush.
He returns to his seat and opens the book, finding my underlined passage in a matter of minutes. I figure it’s not worth fighting him on it, especially if this piece of information could actually be the key to my freedom.
His lips form a hard line as he scans the text one, two, three times. I watch his eyes as they move back to the top of the passage and work their way down again.
“How did I not know this?”
“Given your track record, I’m willing to assume you don’t know a lot of things.”
He ignores my jab and reads through the passage again. “So, according to this, the witch that hexed me had to tether her magic to some kind of object in order to do it.”
“I guess so” I murmur, purposefully being unhelpful to try and keep him talking.
I’m hoping the more he shares, the more I can find out about his curse without him realizing he even told me. So far, it’s obvious that whoever cursed him was a woman, and it sounds like he was somewhat familiar with her.
“Why would they have to tether their magic?”
I want to stay silent so badly, but it’s practically impossible when I know the answer. “It’s to create limits and boundaries.”
He looks at me, appearing no less confused. I puff a slow breath out past my lips.
“With magic, you have to have boundaries to keep it controlled in the realm. If you allow witches and wizards to use endless amounts of magic with no consequences, things get messy. So, they have to tether their magic to an object. It provides a limit for them on how much they can do. Typically, the more valuable the object, the stronger the magic that can be tethered to it, which is why you will see a lot of young or new magic wielders practicing with flowers. Flowers don’t hold a lot of value, meaning they don’t provide a lot of magic with them, making them the perfect tool for practicing unmastered spells. Think of it like they’re trading with the gods. So something free garners them a very limited amount of power.”
“So, let’s say a curse went on for centuries, and there was a finite amount of time before it would become permanent and unable to be undone…”
My eyebrows jump to my hairline. That was quite the clue he revealed.
“Whatever the magic is tied to would have to be an object the gods view as highly valuable.”
“What happens if the object is destroyed?”
“From my understanding, the magic will be destroyed with it. If the magic can’t be tethered to something, it withers away.”
“But what if the witch dies? Is it the same thing? The curse will go away?”
