Page 33

“At the moment, I could probably smell it from Oklahoma.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “Whatever happened in that library, your magic liked it.”

“So did I.”

The admission left me before I could stop it.

Delia’s expression softened. “I know.”

A bell chimed somewhere deeper in the house. Once. Twice.

The heir assessment.

I straightened my clothes while Delia repaired my hair with a few impatient twists and enough pins to secure a hostile spirit. She scrubbed the last trace of Logan’s touch from the collar of my coat with her thumb.

“You owe me details if we survive this,” she said.

“If we don’t survive, I’ll haunt you with an extremely thorough reenactment.”

“There’s my favorite cousin.”

“Tell your sisters. I want witnesses.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

The assessment chamber occupied the oldest part of the house, where the walls remembered every Fortman who had ever spilled blood in the name of duty. My mother waited beside a waist-high stone pedestal. A shallow silver basin rested on top, filled with water drawn from the coven well.

Jacqueline wore crimson silk and an expression that suggested someone had inconvenienced her by experiencing free will.

“You’re late,” she said.

“By twenty-three seconds.”

“An heir is never late.”

Behind me, Delia murmured, “Time must be terrified of you.”

My mother’s gaze flicked toward her. “You may leave.”

“The rite requires a witness.” Delia’s voice became formally respectful, which was how I knew she was about to be technically correct and spectacularly annoying. “Coven law, seventh revision, section four.”

Jacqueline knew every word of coven law. Unfortunately for her, so did Delia.

“Stand by the door,” my mother ordered.

Delia obeyed. It was the least convincing obedience I had ever witnessed.

I approached the basin. The water’s surface remained perfectly still, but power gathered beneath it, cold enough to ache in my teeth.

“Place your hands in the water,” Jacqueline said.

“The quarterly assessment isn’t due until December.”

“This is not the quarterly assessment.”

Of course it wasn’t. The quarterly assessment tested my control. This one was designed to expose whatever she thought I was hiding.

I slid my hands into the basin.

Cold magic climbed my arms. The water turned gold around my fingers, then brightened as the spell searched through me. It brushed my shields, tested my loyalties, and pressed against the place where the mate bond rested beneath Delia’s concealment charm.