The girl grins.Whoa is right. You’re lucky.She slips her hands into her hoodie pocket, pulling out a candy and popping it into her mouth, and Grayson settles her age toward the younger end of his original guess.
Did you have a question, or can I just get this over with? Geesh, that guy talks too much. Does he go on like this all the time?
All the time,Grayson agrees.Are you the Truthseeker?
Duh.
Does it get worse than this?
She seems to know exactly what he means.Nope.Theppops even in Grayson’s mind.That it?
Grayson wants to explain himself. Wants to tell her why he’s not been truthful. That he thought he’d been resigned to hearing that he was a liar in front of everyone, even if it had been for the good of his family. But now, here with her in his mind, he finds he’s having a hard time stepping over the threshold.
What’s your name?
That surprises her. She tilts her head again.Verity
Nice.
Yeah? Not going to tell me it’s ironic? Too “on the nose?”
No. It’s pretty.
She scans his intentions at the forefront of his mind, and he hopes she reads his sincerity.
Thanks.She nods toward where his family sits beside him, eight strong bonds pulsing with love through his connection with Nix.Are all these guys your mates?
Yeah.Favorite memories of his mates roll through his mind. Happy times with laughter and home.They’re pack, too.He tilts his head to where Nimue is picking at a thread on her robes while Ignatius’s head bobs, half asleep in his chair. Elysia’s gaze flickers to the door before she quickly glances away.
Whew. Lucky. You have kids, too?
I do.He lets images of his children come to the front of his mind. Mari shrieking that morning with her yellow sock and Rosie with her stinker-butt giggling when Finn changes her into her pretty rosebud onesie. And Skye, coloring or reading a book, his little lips moving with every word.
Nice.Her wistful tone is impossible to ignore.
I think so.He realizes that he doesn’t need to tell her that they’re why he hasn’t been truthful with the school or GASP.
She straightens in the doorway.Take ten seconds and lock down anything you don’t want me to see with some of the crime scene tape. I’m too young for that shit.
Grayson laughs but tries his best to put all of the non-minor-friendly stuff behind a bedroom door and close it tight. He doesn’t consider for a minute putting any of his magical fuck-ups there. For some reason, her trust in him matters.
She seems to know it, too, and a smile crosses her face.
Not everyone resists the urge to try and pull a fast one, but I appreciate it. Ready?
Percival is finishing up, and if he doesn’t get on with it, this process will take place in front of the spectators.
Do it.
Similar to what Leo had described in his experience with Skye, memories of every time Grayson had used magic flies by at the speed of light as if on a highway, and he’s watching them like billboards on the side of a high-speed rail. This, though, isn’t the untrained brute force of a toddler with good intentions. This is threads of The Plain wielded with the precision of a neurosurgeon picking memories apart, and while he watches, she weeds out the truth.
Grayson’s truth.
Not just the law, or where he knew he hadn’t been forthcoming. Not just where he shielded his power from Kirwan, butwhy.That the decisions he’d made had been, in every instance, his truth. Where Grayson had felt that it was either truth or lies, like Kirwan had challenged, Verity discerns the nuances.
She’s unbelievably powerful, and she is kind, too. As Ignatius had said, Grayson can feel her good intentions, as every part of Grayson is laid bare.
It takes less than thirty seconds, and she finishes pulling Grayson’s memories to a slow stop through the last few days. The classroom with his fellow students, Knox, and Bixby. The ice staff. Then, in the parking lot at Ruckus.
