Page 62 of Avalon Tower
“What’s happening?” I croak.
He props his head on his fist to look down at me, but he’s not pulling his arm away from my waist. Except now, his muscles grow more relaxed against me. “You had hypothermia. I had to warm you.”
I frown up at him. “This never happened before when I used magic. At least, it wasn’t this extreme.”
“You’ll need to learn to modulate it, and then it won’t be as bad. You disabled the entire veil this time, for at least a few seconds. Hundreds of miles of a magical barrier. That was a tremendous surge of magic you unleashed. You nearly died, Nia. When we get back, you’ll need a lot more training before I’m willing to let you risk your life again.”
My gaze trails down his broad shoulder and his chiseled bicep, tattooed with dark lines that sweep over his collarbone. I have the strongest impulse to run my fingers over those inked vines, but I remember what happened the last time we kissed. “Is there any reason you still need to be in bed with me?” I ask. “I’m warm now.”
His expression shutters. “I suppose not.”
He rises from the bed, and I steal a glimpse at him. He’s wearing only a small black pair of underwear, and my gaze trails over his powerful body. He pulls on his trousers, and I watch the sculpted muscles shift in his broad shoulders and back.
His gaze returns to me, and I jerk my head away to pretend I wasn’t staring.
“Do you need some water?” he asks softly.
I lick my lips. “Yeah, I think so.”
Still shirtless, he crosses to a table and pours me a cup of water. For the first time, I look around the room. Velvet-upholstered chairs stand against mahogany walls, their surfaces carved with nautical symbols. Light streams through round windows over a writing desk littered with papers and an inkwell. I lie in a lush bed with soft blankets.
Raphael hands me the cup of water. I take a few tentative sips and sink back into the pillows. “Thanks,” I whisper.
“You saved our lives, you know. If you hadn’t shown up in Allevur, we would have stepped into that ambush. Varris betrayed us. Either he double-crossed us, or they caught him, tortured him, and got the information out of him—how to summon us into their territory. Either way, he’s compromised.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Traitor Varris.”
He pulls on a white shirt and starts to button it. “You heard a voice in your mind, and it spoke true.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“And this has happened before?”
I frown. “I always thought I was hallucinating. But now that I know I’m demi-Fey, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some magic at play.”
He pulls out a chair and sits in it. “Another power. You have two powers.”
I swallow hard. “Wrythe says that when one person has several powers, they interfere with each other. Diametric powers. They’re cursed and drive a person mad.”
He cocks his head. “And you think the voices tell you about the future? Like Tana’s ability to predict?”
My mind flicks back over some of the times I heard voices screaming in my head. Sometimes, they came true. Other times, it was lies or panicked thoughts, or just a litany of insecurities. Occasionally, pornographic thoughts boomed in my skull—about me, usually. Occasionally, they talked as if I was merely a passerby listening to a conversation of someone else.
With Tarquin, it was hostile. You need to be put in your place. You should have been nice when you had the chance, and now look what you’ve done. Whore.
When the sea serpent attacked us, it was a voice screaming that we were going to die.
All of them were raw emotions. All of them were triggered when others were near me.
“I think I might be telepathic,” I said. “The voices reflect the thoughts of people around me. What they feel or think.”
Raphael folds his arms, leaning back in the chair. “Well, you’re right about powers interfering with each other. If you have two powers, it might explain your difficulty with controlling your magic.”
I nod, thinking of what I’ve learned. Two powers intertwined weaken and destabilize each other. In some cases, over time, they cancel each other completely. And in other cases, the person possessing them is torn apart, either mentally or physically.
In less than a month, I’ve gone from being a bookseller with no powers to being a supernatural spy, to having one power too many.
A line forms between Raphael’s eyebrows. “We will need to suppress your telepathy. If we’re lucky, we can eliminate it altogether.”