Chapter 23
Velario scrutinized theedges of the banknotes for several moments. Reyn took advantage of his distraction to study him.
He had told her not to worry about the bank today and focus on finding her answers about sirens with Lisca. Then he had gone home and found an answer, or at least the clue that helped Lisca find the answer for her.
Somewhere between him insulting her in the middle of the street after the opera and last night, something had changed. It was tempting to ascribe the change to when they had sex the first time, but Reyn knew that wasn’t fair. If he hadn’t already revised his opinion of her, at least a little bit, then he wouldn’t have cared about seeing to her pleasure first. It had been more than pride that had motivated him.
Just like his suggestion of a distraction the night before had held more than a touch of tenderness.
Reyn watched as he leaned forward, a lock of dark brown hair falling over the eye uncovered by the loupe. She wanted to brush the hair back. She wanted to let her fingers trail through his hair.
Velario straightened and dropped the loupe on his desk. He grinned at her like she had just given him a present, not observations on counterfeit banknotes. “Reyn, I could marry you right now.”
She didn’t let the effect his words had on her show, but she still felt the thrill. He didn’t mean it, not really, but hearing him say it impacted her more than the effusive compliments other men had given her. With difficulty, Reyn responded with a single raised brow.
Velario smirked. “Enzi Sablon was here just before you. He threw these in my face and claimed he had found them in three different spots throughout the city. Then he threatened to tell the Assembly what a horrible job I am doing at the bank.”
“He’s setting you up?” Reyn asked. Then she shook her head. She didn’t need him to answer. She found it easy to believe the other lord would frame Velario. With the crown as a prize, Enzi wouldn’t hesitate to strike at his rival. That he had risked the national bank in his scheme even seemed plausible. “He wants to swoop in and save the day.”
“So it seems. It isn’t enough for him to make me look incompetent; he also went to the trouble of framing my Family. Even with that in place, he felt the need to confront me directly and threaten me. He won’t be able to stand aside and let his scheme drag me down on its own. He’ll be there to gloat and paint himself as the savior.”
“Let’s turn the tables on him, then.”
Velario leaned his hip against the desk. “Go on.”
“You said it yourself. He seeks attention. He wants an audience. We’ll give him one.”
“With absolutely no insult to your charms intended, I think he is unlikely to welcome your attentions, Reyn. Not after what happened at the opera.”
Reyn concentrated on her voice. In the hours since she and Lisca had found confirmation that sirens had existed, and the brief description of their magic in Lisca’s ancestor’s journal, she had finally discovered how to use her lure reliably. All of Khiran’s lessons and explanations of his lure had clicked into place with a simple shift in her thinking. She felt silly that it had taken her so long, but they had never considered that she had to speak in order to lure. Neither she, nor Khiran, nor Lisca had ever realized that her experiments were only successful when she spoke.
After only half a day of practice, she could not invoke any emotions but lust, but now that she knew to infuse her voice with the power, she could invoke it whenever she wanted. Of course, her control wasn’t good enough that she could call it up without her tone of voice changing to match.
“Because of what happened at the opera, Enzi will fall over himself to welcome me at his side,” she purred.
Velario was halfway around the desk, eyes glazed, before the effect of her lure faded enough for him to think clearly. He jerked to a stop. “What was that?”
Reyn grinned. “A siren is a mixture of air sprite and succubus magic. The lure is pure succubus, but the delivery is all elemental. Now that I know to focus on my words, that the vibrations carrying my speech also hold my power, it is easy to call up my lure.”
She and Lisca had spent a good hour trying to understand how siren magic could even exist—well, Lisca had, and explained everything to Reyn. Based on the journals they had read, there had only been a single siren identified. Unlike Reyn, she’d had identifiable magical ancestors. Her maternal grandfather was an incubus, and her paternal great-grandmother was an air sprite. The magics had weakened as they mixed with mundane human bloodlines, but had not disappeared. Her brothers were all born with a weak air affinity or with the last remnants of the incubus bloodline. She was the only one who had somehow inherited both powers.
Lisca’s ancestor had proposed several theories for how the siren magic came to be. Lisca had eventually summed it all up for Reyn.
“There must have been a sensitive somewhere in the human bloodline.” Lisca had explained. “For generations, the human magic didn’t manifest. Human magic is odd like that; sometimes it skips every other generation. Sometimes only the women of a bloodline inherit the power. Other times, it crops up out of nowhere.”
“What does that have to do with sirens?” Reyn had demanded.
“However it happened, the human magic, air sprite, and incubus powers all mixed at the same time. And only in the sister, not the brothers. Because human magic mixes with other powers, something strange happened and air sprite and incubus magic combined in a way that most would say is impossible.”
“And there were no other sirens?”
“The human magic must have disappeared in the next generation again, taking the siren powers with it.”
Reyn wasn’t sure she truly understood Lisca’s explanation, but that didn’t matter. Because knowing that her power relied on her voice and traveling through the air had made the pieces fall into place for the first time. She understood the difference between her call and what Khiran had described for the lure.
Velario clasped his hands together behind his back. “You figured it out. That’s wonderful, Reyn.”
“I still can’t use it for anything besides lust, and I may not even have power over other emotions, but I don’t need anything else to control Enzi. He won’t be able to resist if I approach him and let him think he is winning me away from you. Then I can follow the money. You know he won’t be able to resist showing off.”
