I try to read the words, but they refuse to make sense to my exhausted brain. “What does that mean?”
Kari steeples her fingers together. “You’re an earth affinity,” she begins.
“Yes. This I know.”
“You draw your power from the ground and anything in it. But that has its limits, right? Like if you’re locked in a tower with no windows, you don’t stop being a witch, but your magic is limited.”
Her hypothetical situation hits so close to home it makes my stomach twist. As much as I don’t want to tell her all the sordid details about what Mona forced me to do, if this information can help heal Taj and Calder, I can’t keep it to myself. “Yeah. I, um… I experienced that before. I could still brew potions, but I couldn’t really feel the intent of the herbs—if that makes sense.”
“Did you ever get weak like this? Even when you were brewing something super complex?”
“No. I mean, I might feel a little drained at the end of something really difficult, but it was different. The only other time I felt like this was after I met the guys.”
Kari sits up straighter, as if this information is exactly what she hoped to hear. “And last time, how did you get over the weakness?”
I clench my thighs at the memory of Taj coming to my motel room.
A grin spreads across Kari’s face. “You don’t have to answer; I think I know. Like I said, sexual bonds have their own kind of magic. That’s especially true in an anchor situation. In cases like this, one person works as a kind of focus for magical energy. The other provides strength and power through physical closeness.”
I try to follow what she’s saying. “And in this case, I’m the focus?”
Kari nods. “Taj and Calder are drawing on your energy when they use their magic to help heal themselves. Unfortunately, they’re draining you like a battery in the process.”
“And how do I get that energy back?”
She makes a circle with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand and inserts the pointer finger on her right hand through the hole.
I slap my hand over my mouth to keep from bursting with laughter. “But they’re unconscious. I can’t…”
She holds up her hands, giggling. “Well, it doesn’t have to be sex. Mutual physical closeness can work.”
I’m already trying to figure out how I can snuggle with Taj or Calder on one of the narrow healing ward cots when one of Kari’s words pricks against my ear. “Mutual. It can’t exactly be mutual when Taj and Calder aren’t awake.”
Kari lifts a shoulder. “You could always try someone else. What kind of shifter is Poe?”
It takes a moment for my sluggish brain to comprehend her suggestion. “Wait—Poe? Are you saying I can draw energy from him? You think I’m an anchor for… all of them?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “Maybe it’s just Taj and Calder. It sounds like neither of them have the greatest mastery of their abilities on their own. They require a focus to reach their potential. Daemons focus better when they’re bound to a master. I’m not sure focus magic works like that, so I don’t know if you and Silas could have that kind of connection. But Poe…” She shrugs. “Some shifters don’t shift because their animal side is too overwhelming when they do. They can’t control themselves. They lack…”
“Focus.” I shake my head. “He’s a panther shifter. At least that’s what Taj said.”
“Let’s hope he’s right,” Kari says. “Some shifters mate for life. Wolves. Bears. I mean, they can have sex without mating, but I don’t know if that would happen in this kind of situation. An anchor is kind of a big deal. And if Poe were one of those kinds of shifters, let’s just say it wouldn’t be very conducive to this kind of arrangement. But feline shifters are much more fluid about sex.”
I stare down at the book, but the words still won’t order in my head. None of this even sounds real. Can a person really act as an anchor for someone else’s magic? And what about me? I’m an earth affinity. I should draw all my power from the ground, not from a man. Or three men.
But if Kari’s right, Taj and Calder can’t heal themselves without using me to focus their powers, and that work takes so much energy out of me. Too much. I can’t be any help to them if I’m laid out in the healing ward with them.
Pressing my hands to the table, I push myself to my feet. “I guess I’m off to test your theory. Wish me luck.”
Chapter Twenty
Poe
The Temple of Theurgy is feeling more and more like a prison with each passing hour.
If I try to leave, I doubt they’ll stop me. But I can’t go—not without the rest of them.
Not without the staff.
I stopped by the healing ward this morning. Bryn was asleep in a crappy chair, her legs draped over one arm and her head resting on the back. According to the healers, she spent the night there.
Not that I expected any different. It’s clear to anyone with eyes that she’s in love with Taj and Calder both. For most women, that would be quite the conundrum. But not Bryn. She’s got both those guys wrapped so tight around her pussy they don’t care that they have to share it.
Not that I care. More power to the three of them.
The only problem is that so long as Blondy and the Englishman are out of commission, Bryn will be distracted. Which means it’s up to me and Silas to get the staff.
Which really means it’s up to me.
I’d much rather be outside enjoying the fresh air instead of cooped up in this closet of a room, but I can’t exactly bring blueprints for the grounds out into the open where any of the Order priests can see them.
No matter how many times I’ve gone over them, I feel like I’m missing something. And I can’t miss anything if I want to get that staff and have any chance of lifting this rivers-forsaken curse.
The knock at my door is so timid, I’m sure it’s one of the Order priestesses come to ask me if I’d like some tea or buttered bread. But I catch Bryn’s scent when I’m still two steps from the door and my stomach sinks. Has something happened in the healing wing? I can’t imagine anything but tragic news would peel her from her spot between her boyfriends.
But when I swing open the door, she doesn’t look upset. She gives a small smile before raising her chin. “Can I come in?”
I hold open the door and she passes under my arm, making slow but steady progress toward the tiny desk centered on the back wall.
She doesn’t speak until I’ve closed the door again. “Why don’t you shift?”
The question throws me. I can’t remember the last time someone brought it up. The elders know damn well why I don’t go furry, and I’m far from the only one of their bounty hunters who chooses to stay human all the time. “What are you talking about?”
“Taj says you’re a panther, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you shift—not even when we were battling Mona’s guards in the forest.”
I’m not sure where her sudden fascination with my furry side comes from, and I don’t trust it. There’s usually just one reason for a shifter not to shift, and it’s not something they bring up in conversation. Has someone in here been planting ideas in Bryn’s head? I bet Kari put her up to this. There’s something about that empath I don’t trust.
I roll my shoulders and try for my most disarming grin. “I’m just as dangerous with my hands, kitten.”
She turns, her brow scrunched. “Are you really, though? I mean, yeah, you’re a great fighter. But a big cat like that has stealth, speed, and teeth that I just don’t think your human form can compete with.”
My defenses go on high alert, and I cross my arms over my chest. “Why do you care?”
She shrugs. “I’m just saying your animal form could be useful. Have you considered that your panther might be able to get in and out of the staff room easier than a human form?”
“No, actually, I haven’t. Cats are great at many things, but opening doors isn’t one of them.” I lean back against the door. “Where
’s this coming from?”
“I’m just curious,” she insists. “I want to know if there’s a reason you’re afraid to shift.”
The accusation stings because it hits so close to the mark. But afraid is a mild way to put it. Terrified is more like it.
It’s none of her business. I don’t talk about it with anyone—even other shifters. But for some reason, an explanation works its way up my throat, getting lodged by my Adam’s apple before wriggling its way clear.
“I can’t control myself when I shift.” I can feel her eyes on me, but I keep my gaze trained at the far corner of the room, just above the bed. “The panther takes over completely. That’s… That’s not how it’s supposed to be. The human mind is simplified during a shift, but it’s never totally silenced—at least with most shifters. They stay themselves in their core. Not me. I’m lost until the panther passes out and my consciousness can grapple control back.”
“That sounds scary,” she says, her voice soft. “So, you can’t ever shift?”
I lift a shoulder. “Sometimes if I’m exhausted to the bone and forced to sleep somewhere too cold to do anything but sleep, I’ll risk it. Otherwise, I don’t dare unless there’s no other choice and casualties aren’t an issue.”
I hold back the rest—that casualties are always an issue. It’s how I ended up in the elders’ service to begin with. When I was thirteen, my buddies and I traded words with a gang of nom kids one night when we were in town at the local theater. My friends thought it would be a laugh to give the kids a scare for harassing us. We followed them as they walked back to their neighborhood and ambushed them on the playground of the local elementary school.
My friends insisted we all had to shift. The sight of five panthers was sure to make the nom kids wet themselves. I’d only shifted once before at that point, but my buddies told me everything would be fine.
Except it wasn’t. The next thing I remember is waking up, cold and naked, on a cot in the basement of our pack leader’s house. The nom kids were dead, along with two of my friends. The other two were fighting for their lives.
I was tried before the elders, and they sentenced me to their service. I haven’t seen a single member of my old pack since.
I’m so lost in my own head I don’t notice Bryn’s on the move until she’s less than an arm’s length away. I expect a hand on my shoulder or some other placating shit kind people do when they’re trying to make a monster feel like a man, but she doesn’t stop by my side. She steps directly in front of me, not quite as close as I stood beside her last night, but not at a polite distance either. She’s so close her spicy, earthy scent fills my senses, rousing my cock from its slumber.
“What if I could fix things?” she murmurs. “What if you could shift without fear?”
I try to respond, but my throat is suddenly dry with dread or anticipation—I’m not sure which. I swallow and try again. “How do you propose to do that?”
She bites her lower lip as she places one hand in the center of my chest. “In a way you’ll like. I promise.”
My cock swells and I do my best to stay still, not wanting to pitch a tent when I’m not sure we’ll be camping. Because she can’t be coming on to me right now. It doesn’t make any sense. Her boyfriends are laid out in the healing ward, and she was so worried about them she slept in a chair all night so she wouldn’t have to leave their sides. It doesn’t track that now she wants to fuck me.
Except the look in her eyes indicates that’s exactly what she’s come here for. She slides her hand up my chest and around the back of my neck, pulling me gently toward her as she goes up on her toes to meet my mouth.
When her lips crash over mine, my thoughts scatter like birds chased by a dog. But when she steps in closer, trapping my ever-expanding dick between us, reality crashes over me like a wave.
“What in rivers’ name are you doing?” I ask, pulling my face from hers.
Her brow knits. “Kissing you?” Her eyes search my face.
I lean away from her. My cock, clearly not getting the message that something weird is going here, twitches against Bryn’s stomach and I take a step back. I need space to think. “Your arrangement with Blondy and the Englishman is unconventional, I’ll give you that. But I didn’t take you for the kind of girl who’s so desperate to get fucked she’ll climb onto the first warm body she comes to when her usual lovers are unconscious.”
Hurt flashes across her face and regret flickers in my core. “It’s not like that,” she says, blinking rapidly. “It’s… Kari and I were talking and she found something in a book about magical focuses. And it makes sense with what’s been happening since we all got cursed.”
I’m not following anything she’s saying, but she’s going too fast for me to get a word in edgewise.
“Taj and Calder need to use their magic to heal themselves, and they’re focusing it through me. But it’s too much for me. They’re taking too much. So I thought if we… You know… Then I could fix you and help them, and everyone would win.”
Her words cut me like a blade. For a single fleeting moment I thought maybe—maybe—she was here because of some feelings for me. I know for a fact my dick would be okay with knowing it’s not the only one paying homage to her pussy—if her motivation was pure. If she said she was here because she wanted me, I’m not sure I’d care about the other men in her life. But that’s not her reason at all. This is all about Calder and Taj. And while I’m not sure how fucking me could help either of them, she seems convinced.
And the fact that she’s trying to sweeten the pot with an offer to “fix” me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Sounds like some made-up fantasy bullshit to help loosen my belt.
In another situation, some utilitarian reason for sex might be enough. I do want Calder and Taj to heal up, and not just because hauling their asses out of here once we’ve got our hands on the staff will be nearly impossible if they’re still out cold. We’re a team for the moment, and if there’s one thing that’s imprinted into my DNA, it’s that you don’t leave a team member behind.
But even if I knew with one hundred percent certainty that getting balls deep inside Bryn would wake the two of them up, I don’t know if I could do it. As much as I’d like to say it would just be sex, I don’t know if I’d be able to separate myself from the act as much as I’d need to. Since our first night on the grounds, when our bodies were pressed together in that net, I’ve imagined hundred ways I want to take her. Hard and fast or slow and sultry, one thing has been constant—I don’t want it to be a one-time thing with her. I don’t want to fuck her to get it out of my system; I want to take her again and again, day after day, night after night.
Clearly she doesn’t feel the same way. Fucking me now is a means to an end, and once her boyfriends wake up, she’ll forget all about me. It’s going to be hard enough saying goodbye when this is all over and I have to go back to the elders. But if I get a taste of her first, I’m afraid I’ll starve to death once we’re out of each other’s lives.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I say, the words coming out rough against my throat. “Let the healers do their work.”
Her face falls. “But… I don’t think you understand—”
“I don’t want to fuck you,” I growl. “Now get out of my room.”
She sucks in a breath and spins on her heel, but not before I catch a glimpse of the moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes. Regret surges inside me, but before I can say anything, she’s out the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bryn
Though my hands are shaking and my gait is slow, my feet are silent as I step through the temple hallways. The chanting coming from the meditation room is louder than usual, and my guess is every available priest is calling on the spirits after last night’s failure.
Good. The more people praying, the fewer people left to glimpse me creeping around the building.
I’ve seen the blueprints in Poe’s room so many times that altho
ugh I’ve never been down this way, I know exactly where to find the short flight of stairs that leads to the shadowy hall and the guarded door beyond.
My mouth goes dry as I descend. Maybe going for the staff in the middle of the day is insane—or maybe it’s genius. Who would expect a theft in broad daylight? We could plan for months and not script a better chance at the element of surprise.
A voice in the back of my head warns that I shouldn’t be doing this alone, but I shove it down deep. I have to do this. I have to get out of this place, to get back to Twin Rivers and to Elowen and have her break this curse. The sooner I can do that, the sooner Poe can leave and go back to his life, since he clearly doesn’t want anything to do with me.
Embarrassment burns my cheeks. I thought I had a good read on him. Since the night we spent trapped in a net together, his actions and words have been almost sweet. He never misses an opportunity to touch me—a hand on the small of my back as I pass him, a squeeze of my knee when we sit together at a meal. And the way he looks at me sometimes…
It must have all been in my head. And then I went and made a complete fool of myself. Now I have no hope of helping Taj and Calder, and I can’t simply sit around while they continue to focus their magic through me. My exhaustion ebbs and flows, but even at my best times, I’m still tired. If they remain unconscious for days, there’s no telling how much energy they’ll drain from me.
This is the only way. If I can get the staff and take it back to Elowen, maybe I can convince her to heal Calder and Taj in the bargain. Getting them back to Twin Rivers could be tricky, but as long as I play it cool once I have the staff, everything should be fine.
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