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“Stop it!” Connor shouts, snapping sufficiently out of the trance Gabriel had thrust on him to speak but not yet to move. “Stop hurting her.”

“She can stop it herself, with ease,” Gabriel replies.

“Gabriel, please. I know you’re angry at Brendan and upset about your dad, but don’t do this. Fight me if you want to fight. Or hell, burn me where I stand while I can’t fight back. Just leave her alone.”

“Interesting,” Gabriel says to me. “Is he terrified about what Philip Sadler is going to do to him if he doesn’t bring you home in one piece, or have you found yourself a little admirer?”

I don’t reply. I can’t formulate an answer in my head, let alone speak one out loud. The pain is driving everything else out. And perhaps even more terrifying, I can feel my dormant magic starting to rise in response to the trauma, with no intervention from my conscious brain. It’s the practitioner equivalent of a flight or fight reflex.

For a second, the intensity lessens, as the power inside me forms a shield around my skin and pushes back the waves of flame. With a little more force, I could put them out entirely. Really make an effort, and I could turn them back on my assailant. Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to do just that, and the thought is almost unbearably tempting. Nothing seems to matter more than stopping the pain. And inflicting it on Gabriel would be satisfying as hell.

“That’s it,” Gabriel whispers. “Protect yourself. Hurt me. I want to feel your power.”

There seems increasingly little point in keeping up the charade of being “Kate the human lawyer from London”, but I have to try. I grind my lips together and squash my magic down into a tiny ball. The second I do, the pain hits me afresh, stronger than ever, drawing another scream from my burning mouth. The burn of the fire is almost matched by the pressure of fighting my own magic. Not using it in a situation like this is like forcing yourself to hold your breath until you pass out.

“Stop it. Give in. Fight me. You know I’ll let you win. If the Greenfire doesn’t break you, suppressing your magic like that will.”

Is that a hint of panic in Gabriel’s voice? Perhaps he expected me to defend myself immediately and blow my cover before any harm was done. Cruel but efficient. But I’m holding out, and he can’t back down.

I close my eyes again and try to breathe more deeply. Doing a core mediation is going to be incredibly difficult in the midst of this agony, but if my mind is in the earth, I won’t be able to feel the pain, and my magic won’t get out of control.

I plant my feet more firmly against the pavement, try to count backwards from a thousand (the numbers make no sense in my head), and let my mind slip.

“I can see what you’re doing!” Gabriel shouts. “I don’t know why you think this will give you away any less than just blasting me.”

His words are far away, as is the pain.

“Gabriel, I’m begging you,” Connor pleads. “Leave her alone.”

“So, which is it?” he says to Connor. “Is this purely professional, or have you got a little crush?”

“You’re going to kill her,” Connor screams.

“I really hope for your sake that you’re trying to get into the Sadlers’ good books, not get into her pants,” Gabriel says. “Because firstly, trusted acolyte or not, I suspect Philip Sadler would kill you if you so much as kissed her. And secondly, she belongs to me.”

I’m beyond all feeling now, safe in the earth, too far away to really understand his words. But however distant my mind is, my body is still reacting to the danger, and at long last it has the decency to plunge me into unconsciousness.

“Wake up, Kate.”

I open my eyes. Connor is shaking me. All of the pain has gone, and so has Gabriel.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You passed out, and I think that bastard realised he’d gone too far. He stopped attacking you, released his grip on me, and disappeared with Nikki, his bodyguard.”

I almost smile at the way he’s trying to explain the situation without explicitly referencing magic. Without that in your frame of reference, none of it would make any sense. Gabriel revealed a lot about me—not just my name, but his fervent belief in my ability to use magic. Connor clearly didn’t hear a word of it. His hearing wasn’t blocked, as he responded to the comments Gabriel addressed to him, so my initial suspicion must have been correct—Gabriel was speaking directly into my mind.

If I were really trying to keep my persona intact, I ought to ask a few wide-eyed, leading questions. But there seems little point now. I can take some moral satisfaction in the way I didn’t give in to Gabriel, but it’s clear he knows who I am. And even more worryingly, that he still puts some credence in the idea of the lien.

On the other hand, I can’t face the drama of explaining to Connor who I really am. I’ll do it soon, but that conversation needs careful handling, at the right time.

“When I took this case, I was told to expect some things I couldn’t quite understand or believe. I guess I know what they meant now.”

“I’d explain it if I could. But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Don’t worry. Just get me back to the hotel.”

Connor puts a hand on my shoulder. “Any chance you could avoid telling Mr Sadler about this? It might make him attack the Thornbers, and that’s not going to help Brendan. And I’d be punished for failing to protect you. God knows I deserve it, but I don’t want anyone else trusted with the role.”