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Even Gen seemed perplexed by the problem of how to salvage what had happened with Ethan.

It likely would have gone better had she been in attendance, but it only made Kierse doubly sure that taking Gen there was a bad idea.

Lorcan wanted all three of them, desperately, the way Graves wanted to collect the magic objects.

Neither of them thought it was a good idea to be collected.

Though they had a feeling they would have to return to Lorcan eventually to further their training. There was only so much they could do alone, and unfortunately, Graves had no experience with a triskel.

When Gen had asked about what she’d walked in on in the library, Kierse had just given her best bluff.

She didn’t know how it had happened, only that it had, she’d enjoyed it, and she wanted to do it again.

Not only because of the sex, but also because Graves was opening up in ways she had thought impossible last winter.

In fact, she hadn’t really thought it was possible even when she had bargained with him.

But he had said he would prove she could trust him, and at least this was a step in the right direction.

Kierse returned to the scene of the crime, toeing the library door open while she held an oversize mug of tea. She wanted something to fortify her before she began memory work. It still terrified her to think of Graves digging around in her mind. If he even could. Why had she agreed to this again?

Edgar was in the library, fluffing pillows on a dark blue chaise. “Miss McKenna,” he said at her entrance. “I set up your arrangements for today. If you require anything else, do let me know. I can send Isolde up with some refreshments as well, if you like.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “Tea should be fine for now. Unless Graves wants something.”

“I do not,” Graves said, striding into the room behind her.

“Excellent, sir.” Edgar bowed and departed.

Kierse set her tea on the coffee table, carefully avoiding looking at the table they’d had indecent relations on. “This is for me?”

“I thought it’d be more comfortable than the couch.”

“We could have used a bed.”

His eyes flashed when he looked at her. “I’m more powerful in the library.”

Mmm. As if that was all it was.

She took a seat. He dragged a chair over before her, and her body trembled.

She was nervous. She had every reason to be nervous.

Graves, no matter how much she was attempting to put her trust in him, could destroy her mind.

She was certain of that. It was what he was good at.

If she let him in, he could hurt her…like he had before.

But she couldn’t afford Nying Market every time she needed information. Graves was right here.

“Your absorption is a problem,” he said flatly. All business.

Good. Business made sense.

“It serves me well.”

“Generally, people have to learn to keep others out of their heads. There’s an entire discipline devoted to strengthening the mind to deflect anyone seeking to get their claws in.”

“To stop you, you mean.”

Graves shrugged. “They’re not usually good enough for that, but sure.”

“Modest.”

“It doesn’t suit me.” He passed her a book. “If you want to work on mental fortification, then this would be of use to you. In the event that your absorption fails you, you want to make sure you still have teeth.”

She cradled the book in her hands uncertainly. He was giving her information to deflect against him ? That was…strange.

He must have read that in her eyes. “We’re building trust,” he reminded her. “I’d be remiss not to teach you self-defense.”

“Right,” she agreed.

“So training today will focus on lowering your absorption. And if I can get you to do that, then we can look for your memories.” He tapped the book.

“If not, I’ll start you reading the theoretical side of that mental work, and we can work on mental fortitude.

There are some easy exercises that you should start doing on your own either way. ”

Kierse leafed through the book. “More homework.”

“You thought you’d escape it?”

She laughed. “With knowledge incarnate before me? Not really.”

“Seems you did plenty of research back in Dublin. You should be used to it.” He reached for another book and tipped it open. “As far as tackling your absorption, I needed a different plan.”

“Have wisps ever done this kind of work before?”

Graves glanced up at her thoughtfully. “Most wisps wouldn’t let me close enough to find out.”

Kierse laughed. “Yeah, I bet not. That has something to do with me being able to kill you?”

“Something like that.”

“And how do I do that exactly?”

Graves grinned, all teeth. “Another lesson, perhaps.”

“Oh, how I look forward to it.” She set the book aside. “You did call me the source of your destruction.”

“And I meant it literally, in every sense of the word,” he said, his voice pitched low. Suddenly, they were talking about something else entirely. She flushed, and his smile only grew. “Lay back.”

Kierse did as instructed. The chaise was a soft, midnight-blue velvet with enough cushion to cocoon Kierse’s body. She swallowed and waited for more instruction.

“Absorption, as you’re currently using it, is passive.

Just in the way we believed that immunity was.

But absorption can be active. I’ve seen wisps siphon magic, store it, and redirect it.

You aren’t a warlock, but you still follow the rules of magic.

You can recharge as I can, but you can also be charged through your absorption.

Just as you burn it off when going into your slow motion. ”

So far all of that made sense. “I need to make it active. Like when I pulled the wish powder magic out of Ethan?”

“In theory, what we’re trying to do is the opposite of that. Drawing magic out is one half of the equation and not absorbing at all is the other side.”

“Is it the opposite?” she asked, scrunching her nose. “Is absorbing the opposite of turning the powers off?”

“Think of active absorption like turning your powers on . Right now, they’re on standby. When you drew the magic from Ethan, they were on. We need to recreate that. Once you can pull energy, then we’ll think of shutting it off instead of letting it slide back into standby.”

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. She’d been in deep, desperate shit when she’d done that for Ethan. She hoped that she could do it again here.

“One step at a time,” he encouraged. “I am going to use my magic to try to read your thoughts and just feel the absorption that stops me from doing it.”

Graves touched a bare hand to her wrist. She concentrated on his hand against her skin. When they had first attempted anything like this, she hadn’t even been able to see or sense the magic, but now it came to her easily.

The soft gold of his magic swam into her vision.

Just the lightest touch against her skin and she could smell the leather and books and feel his internal heat, the inferno that was always raging from his constant magic use.

When she focused even harder, she could see the golden glow flow away from her, out into the library, out the door, out into the world.

It was everywhere. His magic was everywhere.

“Focus,” he said gently. “Just here, Wren.”

She swallowed and reined it all back in. She could do this.

The magic was part of her. She could control it if she wanted. That was what she had been doing with her slow motion her entire life. She could walk in and out of that like breathing. This was the same, just a different ability.

Her own magic rose to the surface as she felt around for her absorption and the space where it was drawing in Graves’s magic.

“Good,” he said. “Whatever you’re working on, I can see it.”

She narrowed her eyes. There was a key turn here. When she went into slow motion, she pushed forward into it like flipping a switch. She needed to find the switch here.

She grappled with it like reaching for slippery soap until she felt her absorption magic settle over her. She gasped. It covered her entire body, like a blanket across her senses. It hugged her tightly, skin to skin, until there was no place where she started and it ended.

With reaching tendrils of magic, she tried to extend that blanket outward. Her hands shook as she fought with herself to stretch her power as easily as she slipped into slow motion, but she couldn’t do it. This felt like it was glued to her skin.

“Wren,” he murmured, his eyes warm on hers. “Steady. Just drag in a little bit. Don’t reach out with your entire body. Just where I’m touching you.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice trembling.

She focused on his hand. His magic. A tiny trickle in a giant river. All she needed to do was drag the river toward her. Just an inch.

She tugged and there it was. Graves’s magic open and waiting for her.

Not a trickle—a torrent . A giant, unwavering, magnificent tidal wave of power.

She could see past the stream he was offering her to the intense flood within him.

So much magic it was blinding. He went from her dark winter god to a diaphanous sheen of golden light. Magic beyond measure.

Except…something was missing.

She didn’t know how she knew, only that there was a piece of that overwhelming abundance that felt…injured. As if someone had cut a piece out of it and it had never grown back. Which felt impossible. All magic could be rechargeable.

“Enough,” Graves grunted.

The connection abruptly severed. Kierse’s absorption switched back into neutral. The light suffusing his body disappeared. She felt suddenly bereft.

“I…”

“That was more than sufficient,” Graves said, rubbing his hands together.

“Did I take too much?”

“No. You didn’t take anything,” he said. “You…” For a moment, he said nothing. But he was looking at her with something like concern in his features. “You touched my magic.”

“Was that bad?”

“It was…invasive.”

“A taste of your own medicine?” she quipped.