“Is there really no way to speed this up? If holding hands is working, then what if we try — I don’t know — increasing physical contact?” I stopped. Immediate regret.If we increasephysical contact?Why?Why did I just ask that?
“Possibly,” Leland said in the measured voice of a doctor who had in mind a long list of sensible solutions before it was time to try the extreme ones. “But I don’t want you like that. There’s no rush. We can sit here. And if you still look this way in a few hours, I’ll throw some moonale on you and see what happens.” His expression softened somewhat. “I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable. But you’re in withdrawal. Tomorrow you won’t want me like that. So I can’t.”
But otherwise . . . ?
No, Ember. No.
He looked at me so intently, I was grateful for no blood in this form, so he couldn’t see me flushing with warmth. The truth was I did —most of the time— want him like that. Magic drove it. I knew that because I hadn’t given a second thought to the way his jeans bunched around his groinbeforewe went to the Circle of Seven. When his scent was a mere observation, when I hadn’t been so responsive and hyper-aware of him.
“Tomorrow?” I asked, remembering what he’d said.
“The solution I’ve been working on. Magic suppressants. They’re iron cuffs that go around your wrists to block your blood from searching the ether. They’re rare, so it took a minute.”
“Expensive?” I raised my eyebrows.Always giving me things, Leland.
“Not to me.”
“Because you have a rich godfather?”
“Yes, I do, but . . .” Leland laughed bitterly. “Jaxan’s never given me anything. I build. I make five hundred gold a house. I used to fight in magicless combat, and people paid a lot to watch me get hit. I Created an imitation leather and patented it. I work for the Echelons. Starvos pays me to teach. So I’ve got about” — his eyes crinkled in thought — “half a million?”
“Gold?”
He nodded, modestly, given the situation. If a gold was five hundred dollars, what Leland had was —two hundred and fifty million?That explained why he gave things away like he couldn’t take them with him when he was dead — it meant nothing to him.
That was the last thing we talked about for a while, until he asked, “What about you? Were you dating someone?”
“Not really.” I shook my head and laughed because there was Gray, but I knewhewouldn’t have used the termdated. “There was someone. Gray Fallsdown. But it wasn’t serious. It couldn’t be, because he was busy a lot. He was a friend, maybe. But . . . he’s the only person I’ve ever liked like that.”
Leland gave me a look.
“What?”
He shook his head.Sayingnothing.
“Leland,what?”
He changed the subject to the flask. I told him about the Dark Deal Jaxan asked me to make with him, and Leland’s muscles tensed, then untensed with relief when I said I didn’t.
“He cut the flask open with the Everblade after I wouldn’t say if I preferred to pledge you, Ash, or — ” I swallowed the tightness in my throat. “He said all Aspirants burn from withdrawals and it was time I got used to it.”
Leland’s jaw ticked. And just as he caught me noticing it, a white gift bag from Foxcross’s Aspiring Artifacts materialized on the edge of the armrest.
“Keep holding on to me,” he directed, needing to move his hand out from under mine to retrieve it.
I had no idea what I was supposed to hold. A leg felt too intimate, so I touched the tip of my pointer finger to his rib cage as he picked up the bag and removed a new flask from it.
“From the girl who asked toincrease physical contact,” he mused at the barely there contact of my hand. Then he took along drink, throat bobbing, eyes closed with his head tilted back.
“We get it,” I sighed, tired of watching him look this good drinking. “You got a new flask.”
He pulled it from his mouth with a grin and rolled his head toward me. “Yougot a new flask. It’s why I was in town.Vyrawas unplanned. And what you saw was me, in the nicest way possible, saying goodbye to her.”
“And you said you weren’t nice.”
“I’m not.”
Not a lie. Not a joke. I still didn’t want to believe it.
