Page 26

“Are you hurt?” Graves asked. His voice dripped with concern as he reached across the bed, still holding his magic tight. “Wren?”

“You helped them,” was what came out.

Graves pulled back, expression torn between bemusement and amusement. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

Kierse laughed at his incredulity. “You helped my parents.”

“Did I?” He raised an eyebrow.

She sat up in the bed and kicked her feet over the side. “They came to you, asking for your help to hide me. I was young. It was before I was on the streets.”

He frowned. “Many people did. Before all the monsters were out, there was always someone trying to hide their existence. The constant string of people begging for a solution that within a few decades worked itself out.”

“But not for the wisps,” Kierse said.

“No,” he agreed slowly. “No, they were hunted and killed.”

“They were coming for me and my parents. My mom…” She choked on the word. “My mom was alive. She didn’t die in childbirth. It must have been a trick of the spell. She said that the Fae Killer was after them.”

At that, Graves entire face shuttered. “She used those words?”

“Yes? Do you know who that is?”

Lines of frustration crinkled his forehead. “I was searching for them. My people kept coming up empty-handed, and as I got closer, the last wisps were killed and they disappeared. I had suspicions, but I never got close enough.”

“You think they killed my parents?”

“Yes,” he said flatly.

“But because of you, I survived.” It was still hard to even believe that was the case. “You sent them to a rogue Druid, Cillian Ryan.”

Graves’s frown only deepened. “Did you get names? Your parents’ names?”

“Shannon and Adair.”

“Fuck,” he said, coming to his feet and stepping away from her. He fisted his hair before quickly dropping his hand. He was still facing away from her when he said, “They died. You died.”

“I clearly did not.”

“Yes, but…I had Edgar follow up. I wanted to see if your parents made it to the Druid and if you’d been hidden. And he came back and said you were dead. All of you.”

Kierse tilted her head. “Do you think he lied?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted harshly. She could see him wondering if that was false, what else might have been a lie. The working of his empire unwinding before his eyes. “I’ll have to ask him.”

“Which is why you never went looking for me,” she said. “Why you would put the entire interaction out of your mind.”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“And why you didn’t connect me with what happened,” Kierse said, putting the pieces together.

“No, your stories were so different. Your mother died in childbirth. You’d been left to the streets.

It never clicked that you could have survived.

That my contact would betray me…or had been betrayed.

” His eyes found hers as he sank back into the chair.

“I knew you were a wisp when I found out about your absorption abilities. I thought that you’d been hidden by your lack of magic. ”

“My lack of magic?” Kierse asked.

“Wisps are powerful , Wren.” His eyes bored into her.

He seemed eager to have this conversation.

As if he’d been holding this back behind his teeth, waiting to tell Kierse when she was ready.

“There are levels of magic. The first is the level that all magical users possess—our ability to ward, enhanced senses like being able to see the glow of magic or scent it, and recharge. That is how I could train you in magic before we knew you were Fae. You have your Fae abilities, which are more on the monster side than magic—enhanced beauty, sight, scent, smell, your pointed ears, typically an aversion to iron.” She nodded in agreement.

“Then there are your wisp abilities. For all of your prowess in theft, your ability to absorb magic, and your slow motion, you weren’t displaying anything consistent with what I knew of their kind. ”

“Like pixie light or persuasion?”

“Precisely.”

“Oisín filled me in on what my powers should be, but I could only ever get half of them to work. Which makes sense,” she added, “because I am only half wisp.”

“Truly, I thought you were more human than Fae. You didn’t have the ears or the enhanced senses.

You only had a few abilities. When wisps have children with humans, the magic goes all sideways.

Sometimes they only get one ability, sometimes none.

Sometimes they have all the abilities, but they’re so slight they don’t even seem to manifest. Your magic didn’t conform to my expectations, and thus my expectation was that you weren’t a full-blooded wisp. ”

“And now we know that my father was human.”

“I’m amazed you can do as much as you can, to be honest.”

She’d never considered that being half human could mean problems for her magic. But she also hadn’t ever had enough information about her parents to make that judgment.

His eyes went distant. “When I broke the spell on you, it was the sword that saw the truth of the spell around you. That is its purpose, after all, a truth teller. It told me to break it and reveal what was underneath. I did not once believe you to be the same child that sat in my library. She was long dead in my mind.”

As she looked up into his gleaming eyes, she realized that Graves was being frank with her. Earnest even. If that was a word that was possible to describe him.

He had sent her to Dublin for answers. She wanted to make her own decisions and check facts against all he had taught her.

She would never regret that she had done so.

She needed the ability to discern truth from falsehoods.

Graves may have hidden her identity from her, but he had led her to all other answers.

And perhaps…there might be a way to even more answers.

The kind that only a warlock of knowledge could provide her.

Part of her job was knowing the worth of a thing.

She had seen her father’s knife, and while it was clearly sentimental and of good use, it was not worth a name and a Druid amulet.

Graves had given the amulet to her parents as a show of good faith, a way to help.

He’d justified it as payment. Sometimes she forgot that he’d also helped the world by initiating the Monster Treaty.

He’d put things into place to end the killing and set the world back onto the correct path.

Perhaps both were motivated by selfishness. After all, he was not all good or all bad, just as she was not one or the other. But he had helped a small child when she was in need, for less than the value of the aid. He knew her parents. He helped them. And now she had a name.

She had the who of her story, if not the why .

“So…do you still have contact with Cillian Ryan?”

“Not since the war,” Graves said, putting space between them. “But we can find him.”

“Oh, it’s we now?”

He shrugged. “You have the scent. If I know you at all, you’re not going to let it go now.”

No, she wasn’t. She had to have her answers.

“Won’t you be busy with the cauldron?”

“Ah, the cauldron,” he said as he pecked at his phone. “I have my people on it.”

“I can help. That’s why you came here, right?”

Graves arched an eyebrow. “I’ll admit I wanted your assistance. It wasn’t the only reason.”

Part of it was because of her. She was beginning to see that he wasn’t completely bullshitting her.

“Do you expect me to walk away from a really great score any more than the clues from my memories?”

“Obviously not.”

“You need me, anyway. I’m an asset. And I don’t think for a second that you’re going to go buy the cauldron at an auction.”

He tipped his chin up, denying nothing. He had the same look in his eye as when he’d entered negotiations with her parents. “And what is the price of your help, little thief?”

She could ask for anything. She knew what he’d offered for her to get the spear—ten million dollars and her freedom. She’d thought then that she would die for obtaining the thing. And instead, it now belonged to her.

This time they were on more even footing. He wanted her help on the cauldron, but she wanted to be in on it. So the negotiation should be for something that he also wanted to give her. The thing he’d already offered.

But she hesitated, even knowing the answer scared her.

“I need help with my memories,” she said finally.

“I thought you didn’t want me in your head.”

“I don’t, but we did it my way,” she said truthfully. “I didn’t get half as much as I wanted out of this bargain, and I risked my life more than once to get it. So it’s time to do it your way. However, you’re the sticking point.”

“Ah,” he said slowly. “Because you still hate me after what happened this winter.”

She crossed her arms. “I certainly don’t trust you. But I’m resolved to believe that you are part of this journey. After all, with all the memories I could have plucked out of my mind, the one that appeared was about you. Convenient, isn’t it?”

Graves’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that I changed the direction of your memories?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

He blew out a breath. “I can’t touch your mind. Not unless you let me.”

She knew that to be the truth, and yet…she couldn’t let it go.

Not after what he had done to her. She didn’t know how to let him in.

She didn’t know how to need him without giving him everything.

But the truth of the matter was that she did need him.

How else would she get her answers? She couldn’t go back into the market. That much was a fact.

She met his gaze. “How do we do this? How do I get past what happened?”

The question hung in the air between them.

Kierse had always been fiercely independent.

It was something Jason had loved and hated about her.

It was what had kept her alive. But if she was going to work with someone like Graves, who kept his own company and his own secrets as close as she did, then how could they carry on?

“I would earn your trust back,” he said finally after a moment, his voice hoarse and full of sincerity, “if you’d let me. I know where I went wrong the last time, and I will do better. Let me prove it to you. I am here for you , Wren. For you.”

“Not the cauldron?”

“A convenient excuse,” he admitted. “While your skills are valuable, I would do everything in my power to prove that it is the woman that I want and not just the little thief.”

Kierse tilted her head. There was no way to ensure that he kept his word—no sacred vow that she knew of that would make him do what he said. And would she trust him if he had to vow to be true to her? No, there was a measure of faith here.

Their eyes met. The weight of the tension between them turned warm and inviting.

“Fine. Prove it to me, then.” She lifted her chin. “My help with the cauldron for your help with my memories.”

“Sounds fair,” he said, offering his hand.

She swallowed hard, staring down at his outstretched hand with apprehension. Was she making a mistake? Putting her faith in someone who had already betrayed her? Someone who had kept secrets, hid his motives, and worked against her? She didn’t know. But she felt as if she had no other choice.

“Trust me,” he said like a death toll.

“Okay,” she said and took his hand, hoping she was making the right decision to enter another bargain with her winter god. “Time to go home.”