I suppose I expected them to immediately shrink away from it, especially now that it’s been drawn to their attention.
Yet Lucian stares at the book as if he’s more puzzled than anything else, his forehead puckered and lips pursed. He gives a small shake of his head. “Is that the same book? It doesn’t hurt to look at it…”
Anarchy and the others wear similar expressions, even Jonah, all of them muttering quietly about the fact that it looks like an ordinary book.
“Where has its power gone?” Anarchy quietly asks, taking her eyes off Halle for a moment to bend and peer more intently at the book. When she rises, her head is tilted and her forehead is deeply creased.
My pack’s reactions unsettle me even more than Halle’s incredulous stare.
I’m now wondering why the book has remained in its torn-up condition. If it can alter its own form to create vines and daggers, then surely it could rearrange itself to bind itself back together?—
“No.” Halle seems to get a hold of herself before she firmly shakes her head at me. “No, dearest, you can’t have broken it.”
Again, Emil speaks up. “She did.”
Halle shakes her head harder. “Not possible. Not even remotely likely.” Her speech is rapid and sharp and far jumpier than I would expect from the Goddess of Death herself. “The four books of magic have an internal power source created from magic that doesn’t exist anymore.”
She holds up a finger as if she’s giving him a talking-to. “They can react to their surroundings, even choose to become volatile and destructive. They can change their own form, but they are inherently untouchable. Theycannotbe physically altered by any power that exists today?—”
“It was,” Emil says. “Altered.”
More than anything, I wish he’d look up because my need to understand his intentions has reached desperation levels.
Inwardly, I sigh because the reality is that even if Icouldsee his expression, it could be a façade. A visual lie. I may never be able to correctly interpret his body language ever again.
“No!” Halle snaps at him, seeming to dig in her heels. “The only way Veda could alter that book is if she?—”
Halle suddenly stops speaking and reconsiders me, her focus flashing from my claws, up to my face, and then back to my claws.
My shoulders tense at her increasingly wary expression, and my anxiety only worsens when Emil finally makes a move.
Where before I was hoping to understand his motivations, now I would prefer if he had stayed exactly where he was.
He rises from his kneeling position to his full height, his white clothing settling around his muscular form, making him appear even taller and more broad-shouldered. More imposing.
I’m half-turned toward him while attempting to keep the hounds in my sight. I’m conscious that my pack members are doing the same, each of them tense as they appear to brace for attack from both sides.
Emil lifts his head, his pale green eyes visible through the silvery strands of his hair. His focus strays to me for all of two seconds, and my body reacts in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
Heat floods me. As if he reached out and ran his hand up the side of my neck and to my lips. A soft touch that contrasts sharply with the fear I should be feeling.
Emil approaches and stops a disconcertingly short three paces behind me.
Halle takes a quick step back, her face deathly pale, which is saying something for the Goddess of Death.
“That face…” Halle’s voice is strained as she continues, “Keeper, why are you wearing that face?”
“Because it’s mine,” he says.
She swallows visibly. “But if you…” Her focus flashes to me. “And Veda…” Her focus flashes back to him. “And you…”
“Yes,” he says.
I have no idea what he’s confirming.
Every member of my pack appears even more confused about the conversation between Emil and Halle than they were about the book. Their tense postures tell me they aren’t sure which threat to worry most about right now: the keeper, Halle, or the hounds.
I’m not sure I can, either.
