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“You wouldn’t happen to have proof of your magic, would you? It’s slightly more likely than your other high tale.”

Nostrils flared, blood thrumming with anger, Loren pulled her phone out of her purse. “No one sees my magic until I’ve established that I can trust them.” She unlocked her phone with her thumb print and pulled up her photo album, her nail clinking on the screen as she scrolled up, rows of photos speeding by. Every photo that had Darien in it made her heart ache. “But since you don’t seem to trust me either…” She enlarged a recent photo of her sitting in Darien’s lap at the Forbidden Beach, a peaceful and secluded area he’d taken her to on a clear night shortly after Kalendae.

Thoughts of that night made her throbbing heart threaten to split in two, the memory briefly transporting her back in time. She remembered every vivid detail—how his strong body had kept her warm against the night as he hovered over her, one of his hands pinning both of her wrists above her head while the other gripped her waist; the texture of the blanket under her back as the sand shifted under it with every hard thrust; how the stars had dusted the sky behind his head, wreathing him in tiny diamonds; how he’d kept his chest so close to hers that she could feel the chains he wore around his neck whispering across her skin.

Blinking away the memory, she turned the phone around so Agatha could see the screen—could see that Darien’s arms were wrapped around her possessively, his intense stare locked on the screen as he kissed her on the cheek. “Is this proof enough for you?” she gritted out. “Or would you like to see more?”

The way Agatha blinked, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, told Loren that she’d got her point across. And photographs did not lie. “I don’t…I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll teach me. Say you’ll teach me, and that you’ve learned your lesson about mocking others.”

“I’m truly sorry,” she spluttered.

Loren put her phone away. “Sometimes I get really tired of it,” she said quietly, but not weakly. “Of people treating me like I am less than them. I didn’t ask to be human, you know.”

Agatha had nothing to say.

Loren concluded, “I will accept your apology and your lessons, if you are willing to work with me.”

“I am more than willing.”

“I have one more stipulation to make.” The hedgewitch waited, apprehension in her stare. “Darien is never to hear about this.”

Her brows shot up. “That, I can’t agree—”

“Yes, you can, and you will,” Loren said, her words just shy of a shout. “He is worried about me using my magic, but it’s not his decision to make, it’s mine. Wouldn’t you agree?” She had to make sure she was ready before she showed him the truth, and no slipup from a stranger like Agatha was going to wreck that for her. There was no room for error here, not when his life was on the line.

Another rapid blinking of green eyes, and then Agatha was nodding.

“Great,” Loren said. “When do we begin?”

34

“You did good,” Gaven said.

Darien was standing in the same room in the Devil’s Advocate as the last time he’d met with Gaven. This place was really beginning to get under his skin, tempting him to light the whole damn thing on fire just so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

The route Gaven had given him—the same route Darien had shared with Finn—had gone smoothly. Sylvan and Valen had seen the whole thing through to the end, right to when the crates of Blood Staves had been delivered to a group of men driving a windowless black van that had no license plates. They’d managed to get a few photographs for Darien to pass along to Finn, but it would take more than one route to figure out where Gaven kept his supplies.

Hopefully it would be this next route—whatever route Gaven was planning on giving him tonight. Enough pissing around—Darien wanted this over and done with. Properly.

Darien said, “Good enough to make you want to leave me the fuck alone now?”

The prick smirked up at him from where he sat at the table. “I have a special run I’d like you to make for me.”

“I don’t run, I arrange for others to do it for me. That was our deal.”

“And I’m making one slight modification to that deal,” Gaven said, lacing his gloved fingers on the table, the emerald ring he always wore bulging through the leather. “You are to make this run for me, Darien. Just this one.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“It’s a delivery for a very important client. You are to meet with a man who goes by Al at the Iron Dock at sunset tomorrow. Take what he gives you to the old Casa Brewery on Deep Run immediately.” He slid a sealed envelope across the table and gave him an ugly smirk. “For your troubles.”

Darien snatched the envelope up and walked away.

“Oh, and Darien?” Gaven called.

Darien half-turned in his direction, knuckles itching with the need to break bones.