He shrugged, unrepentant.
“It’s not much, but Dathal hardly gave me any warning, so I grabbed it on my way out of the office.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s like a perimeter warning stone. I use it to let me know if anyone’s approaching my office.” He looked sheepish. “So I can avoid them if I want to.”
“Handy.” I turned it over in my hand, studying it. “So it’s got magic in it?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” I couldn’t feel anything coming off it, but maybe that was normal with inanimate objects. “What range does it have?”
Nick smirked. “About forty feet.”
“So if someone approached the house, it would tell us?” The likelihood of anyone getting past Rys’s pack was negligible, but I didn’t say that.
“Yes. It’ll glow blue.” He pointed to where I still held it. “We won’t trigger it, so take it upstairs with you, put it by your bed. If nothing else, it’ll give you peace of mind that nothing’s out there.”
* * *
Thanksto the thick curtains covering my bedroom window, the room was dark, even though the sky had to be growing light by now.
I rolled onto my back with a sigh.
Fucking Talis.
Despite being exhausted enough to yawn every five minutes, I couldn’t fall asleep no matter how long I lay there with my eyes closed.
Every time I tried, my mind was flooded with images from the club.
Talis’s forehead pressed against mine, my name a soft whisper falling from his lips, so close I could’ve kissed him if I’d leant a tiny bit closer.
Rys’s interruption had saved us from repeating a mistake that had cost me his friendship, because I knew for certain that was where it had been heading. All my reasons for keeping him at arm’s length vanished when he looked at me like I was everything he ever wanted. The nagging voice that told me that would all change if he knew what my magic could do, quietened by the reverent way he’d said my name.
Fuck.
I scrubbed my hands over tired eyes and rolled onto my side. The stone that Nick had given me sat on the table next to my bed, dull and unassuming. I smiled, remembering Nick’s quiet happiness as he explained its purpose. The stone might be a small thing, but getting his magic back after so many years without was huge.
I hadn’t realised how much of him had been suppressed along with it.
He fit with Dathal so seamlessly, the way their magic intertwined was a thing of beauty, and I was so fucking happy that the high court hadn’t stolen that from them. That they got to have their happily ever after.
As loathe as I was to admit it, deep down in a place I kept locked up tight, I was jealous.
I thought I’d had that once, that connection, but I’d been so very fucking wrong it still made my heart clench when I thought of it.
Stop.
Forcing myself to push those thoughts away, I focused again on the stone. Like I’d willed it to do something, it began to change colour from the muted brown it’d been before to a soft blue, glowing in the darkness of my room like awel’athi.
My breath caught, heart racing as I stared at it.
I should call for Dathal or Nick. Both, probably, because someone was out there. Near enough to my house to set this thing off. But even as the colour deepened, the stone now lighting up my whole room, my breathing evened out, heart rate returning to its steady pace, because Iknew.
I knew who was out there.
Whether it was my magic calling to his or a gut feeling that Dathal told me I should always trust, I felt it in my bones.
I was out of bed before I’d consciously decided what to do. Dathal would no doubt call me stupid for going out there without confirmation of who it was, so I quietly opened the door and crept out onto the landing.
“Going somewhere?”
