A deep, warning sound proceeds Raiden stalking after her. “That’s not it at all.”
She waves him off, cracking her neck and shaking out her hands. “It’s fine, it’d be a fun change of pace to be a threat to anything besides someone’s sanity.”
Red scales shimmer up the side of his neck. “You most certainly are. The center burned past the point of salvaging, Amara.”
She grimaces. “Yeah, I already apologized for that, but keep rubbing salt in the wound, why don’t ya?”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw with a growl. “You’re missing my point. Carina and I wereboththere and couldn’t contain the damage. It should have been as easy as breathing for one of us, but together? We should have had it snuffed out before you even realized the building was on fire, and for the life of me, I don’t understand it. It was like trying to inhale embers through a pinhole-sized straw, and the flames were spreading like the place was coated in lighter fluid, but there wasn’t a trace of accelerant, and nobody there saw anyone matching Malcolm’s description.”
Thankfully he shuts up before mentioning the rumors spreading around town as quickly the fire did, the citizens of Khalida wondering if it’s actually as safe as they’ve been led to believe if Raiden couldn’t even stop one of his legion’s buildings from burning down.
Squirming, she latches onto Stone in an obvious attempt to lighten the conversation. “So, doc, I see you brought the industrial nipple clamps. Glad to see you’ve finally come around. Where do you want me?”
With a soft smile and shake of his head, Stone hands her two metal clamps, one with a red cable that leads to the decently sized box, the other black. “Start easy. Bring a small bit of electricity to your hands like usual, and we’ll see how many volts you typically put out.”
Watching the little screen on the box, she does just that, letting it hover at thirteen volts seemingly without any strain.
Stone studies the display screen. “On par with a car battery. This is the level you usually run when you’re making electricity dance on your palms?”
Amara nods. “Right around here at least.”
Raiden’s a mess. He can’t seem to decide if he should be pacing the perimeter of the mountain top to ensure no one sneaks up on us, or studying Amara’s face for any sign of discomfort so he can put an end to this and whisk her back home to sleep for another two days. Feeding off his restless energy, I reposition myself to watch both her, and one side of the mountain so my instincts will calm down enough to actually let me focus.
“What floor were you on when the lightning struck? What was happening just before then?”
She bites her lower lip and averts her gaze, heat rising in her cheeks. “Fifth floor. Door locked behind us, so Torin and I decided to search for another way out in case it wasn’t part of the training and maybe Malcolm had hacked into the system. I’d like to formally put on record, Kodi, that that floor is as awful as it is genius.”
Stone cocks his head. “What’s on the fifth floor?”
Raiden levels me with a glare like Iintentionallysubjected our mate to the one floor I repeatedly warned her to avoid like the plague. “Haunted house. People in various Halloween costumes jumping out randomly to test how trigger happy his men are so they don’t wind up shooting innocents in the field.”
Ignoring his disapproval because Amara’s right, it’s a super effective training exercise I’m proud of, even if I hate she wound up there of all places, I roll one of the metal rings in my ear. “But why would being startled be the thing to trigger you into smiting someone? You’ve spent your entire life being afraid and it never manifested that way before, even to help you when you were literally being tortured.”
Everyone pauses, lost in their own thoughts as theories run rampant. Raiden is the first to break the tense silence. “It can’t just be the gift from Stone amplifying her abilities, because back at Kodiak’s place before she received it, I startled her and she blew up the microwave.” A teasing smirk rises on his smug face, and I’m tempted to shove him off the side of the mountain, knowing damn well what’s about to come out of his mouth. “And the power surge when she came for me.”
Color stains her cheeks, but she straightens her spine, standing tall under his unrelenting attention. “Emotional spikes, then. Since I’m used to living in a constant state of anxiety, thatismy normal.”
Stone pulls a notepad out of his back pocket he brought to track the different levels we get from Amara and factors surrounding it like our mate is a damn science experiment. “Makes sense. It’s how I’ve adjusted to working in hospitals with so many grieving people, by reconfiguring my internal baseline.”
Pulling out my earring, I let the metal writhe and dance on my fingertip, needing a better distraction to get through this conversation without my other half taking over. “You always expect the worst of people, and with Malcolm, you knew what to anticipate, as awful as that sounds. Nothing he did to you came as a surprise because pain and misery were an everyday occurrence. But when you had strangers popping out at you, it was an unexpected terror that your body reacted to defensively.”
She blows out a weary breath, buzzing her lips. “Okay, one mystery solved. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I struggled to even conjure a spark and crashed for two days after the lightning bolt because it drained my reserves.”
The spinning, metallic blob on my fingertip goes careening off-kilter, splatting on Raiden’s bare chest. He doesn’t even react, perking up the same way Stone and I are. We keep our mouths firmly shut, though, sharing a discreet look with each other. Within seconds, we’re all in agreement about ditching our original plan for coming up here, following the new lead she unintentionally gave us.
It can’t be this simple.
Try as I might, though, I can’t help but hope.
Stone clears his throat, taking the cables from Amara and tossing them beside the battery tester on the stone slab. “While you’ve been recovering, I rummaged through my stash and found this.” He reaches down the collar of his tank top, withdrawing a small sphere of citrine tethered at the end of a long chain. “Originally, I wanted to give it several months for us to study your reaction to the gem I gave you, but since you haven’t had any adverse side-effects yet, it might help you channel your abilities easier.”
She narrows her eyes. “So all this time you’ve had a lightning dragon’s powers at your disposal, and just had fun watching me struggle?”
Not rising to the bait, he rolls his eyes. “I have nearlyeverydemon’s ability at my disposal,mo stór. But I was built to withstand their effects when the wrong combination or intensity can tear someone else apart. I appreciate irony as much as the next person, but strapping a lightning bomb to your chest and killing you with your own affinity was a little much even for me.”
Instantly, she looks down at her stomach, missing the tender look my brother sends her way.
“It may not be a perfect science, but I’ve been at this for a long time,” he says, softer this time. “Until you, I’ve never given anyone a gift since the incident that damned us, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t helped people using my talents. I just typically use one-off micro doses.”
