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Mira hated not knowing the details of this mysterious assignment.
“So, what are we doing?”
“We’re taking a little field trip.”
He held out a hand, and she raised her eyebrows at him, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“I was going to coin travel us,” he explained.
She pulled the coin from her pocket. “Perfectly capable of doing that myself.”
“Are you? Last I checked you refused to use magic.”
As he balanced his coin between his fingers, the silver gleamed in the moonlight. It moved along his slender knuckles too fast for her to see, but she was certain his was handed down from his family dynasty. Solid silver suggested it. Not something her family could afford. Not that it mattered. The type of metal was immaterial to coin travel. Hers worked just as well.
“And yet, you require my help. How embarrassing for a Wielder.”
His jaw tightened, and the silver in his eyes seemed to cool.
“Just tell me the address,” she insisted.
He straightened the knot of his tie. “It’s inconsequential to you since you don’t have the clearance to coin travel there. Would you like to debate the matter further while we stand out in the cold?”
She was convinced the Dawson scion didn’t mind the winter air. If anything, he seemed in his element. Perhaps what flowed in his veins wasn’t blood but ice.
“Fine.” When she offered her hand, he took it, and she was thankful for her glove, which kept her skin from his.
He pulled her close. “Last chance, Winters. You can still turn around. Tell Obryn you’ve made a terrible mistake and you want to just go back home to little Yharvan and never think of magic again.”
This close to him she could make out the design of his coin as it traveled along his long fingers with ease. The symbol of Dark Magic on the front. On the back was a dragon mid-flight, its wings splayed wide. His family crest perhaps?
“And leave you hopelessly lost with your assignment? I couldn’t live with myself,” she countered.
He smirked. “As you wish.” He flipped the coin. It sang through the night sky with a high-pitched whistle, and everything went dark as they disappeared.
Coin travel with someone else was always nerve-racking because she wasn’t in control. His magic felt dark and cold. Like a winter’s night in a forest.
They arrived seconds later at a medical facility of some kind. He walked in wordlessly and she followed, mesmerized by all the state-of-the-art equipment. That’s when she noticed the body on the metal examination table. She froze.
“You could have warned me we were going to see the body.”
Dawson kept walking, seemingly unbothered by the dead man, covered from the neck down with a white sheet.
“I’m telling you now. Thomas Buckley. Forty-eight years old.”
Did he kill him? Was this his big dilemma, that he had to get rid of the body somehow? Erase the spell from the corpse? No, Obryn would never help him with that.
He noticed her silence. “I didn’t kill him. If you ask nicely, I’ll tell you how he died.”
She’d rather cut out her tongue. Instead, she cast an elaborate diagnostics spell that would give her the answer. It had been years since she had used one, and for a moment she was worried even her White Magic might betray her, but when she held her palm over the body, she could see the results in her mind.
“Heart attack,” she concluded. “He died of natural causes. What do you need me for?”
Dawson stood on the other side of the counter with poise. It seemed everything this man did was like a well-rehearsed dance move. Elegant. Precise. Never losing control.
“We have reason to believe the heart attack isn’t the actual cause of death. It’s been impossible to figure out what poison could have that reaction. We’ve been scratching our heads for weeks. Including Obryn.”
She stared at the unmoving body. Obryn had said her research was what he’d been looking for.
