“They won’t hurt you,” Autumn murmured, once again cutting into his train of thought.
He turned to her, narrow-eyed.
She tugged on his arm, smiling. “So you never randomly thought of something that came true later?”
David shrugged. Was it really her business?
In the distance, the trappings of combat training occupied the forest—fighting rings, target dummies, archery ranges. The place was crowded but organized.
“I take it that’s where Exorcism school happens?” he asked.
She nodded. “The training grounds.”
To his right, crinkling leaves brought his attention to an animal almost like a fox skittering from the brush, silver and gleaming. He blinked as it dove into its burrow. “Are there—unicorns here?”
A confused divot formed between her brows. “What’s a unicorn?”
“Never mind.” He shook himself and refocused. “What about Morgan’s magic? Where does that fit in?”
The ever-present smile on her face darkened. “All those in the Manae family have been blessed with varying degrees of Morgan’s magic. The last bloodline to possess it.”
“Who exactly is Morgan?”
“She’s one of the ancients, like the Queen, though she’s not been seen in centuries, so she’s likely passed into the Light by now. Her magic deals in manipulating the private places of the mind. Intuition, emotion, volition.”
Volition.
There it was. The word he’d been searching for. He could take a person’s volition. He’d been doing it, unknowingly, for the better part of his life. When he spoke, people obeyed.
His father’s dark laughter sizzled in his ears.
How do you do that with your voice, son? You’re my get-out-of-jail-free card.
Autumn’s arm threaded around his elbow and she pulled him close. Her voice lowered to a near whisper. “It wasn’t right, what he did to you.”
David’s gaze shot to hers, and they slowed to a stop.
He searched her face, the gold in her eyes, the scattered freckles across her nose, the twist to her mouth that, even in her consternation,stilllooked like a smile. “If I asked you to stop listening to my thoughts, would you?” he asked in his flattest tone.
She touched the tip of his nose with her burning finger. “I don’t have a choice.”
Against his wishes, a host of disturbing memories rose. He didn’t want people knowing this about him. Didn’t want to look her in the eye and know that she’d seen the filthy things staining his past.
Shard by shard, he iced himself over. He shut it all down, closed it off, and threw on his insouciant overlay, waving a lazy hand toward her. “So you like eavesdropping?”
The brush of her heated fingers slid over the scar on his forehead. “I hear them like you’re speaking them to me. I don’tlikeit.”
The innocence of the forest clashed with the tainted images in his mind. His jaw clenched.
Autumn grabbed his arms, pulling him close. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t have a choice.”
Refusing to look at her, David’s gaze played across the sparkles in the air. The sunlight was too gold. The leaves too green. “Yes, I did. There was always a choice. I chose what was easy.” He’d wanted to do the right thing, but he always succumbed to his father’s demands. Obeying was simple. Defiance was grueling, exhausting work.
“Hey, you!” called the man with the dagger.
David and Autumn turned as one, and she shifted to stand protectively in front of him. He almost laughed at the display.
The emotions from the stranger hovered somewhere in the region of hostile rage, smelling of burned embers. His comrades tried to restrain him, but he broke free and marched David’s way. “Go back to where you came from,” he spat. “We want no Followers here.”
