Chapter Forty-Four

Three trips into the dark market, and Kierse had found nothing. No way out that wasn't controlled by one of Walter's checkpoints. No concealed exit. Not even gossip about how to get in. She'd followed people through three other checkpoints, but that hadn't been any more help than the one Graves knew about. The extra card she'd filched that first time had proven useless as well.

And they were running out of time. The winter solstice was in four days.

At least while she was within the walls of Third Floor, she could confirm that Torra was still alive. Even if it was torture that she couldn't get her out. And if she couldn't find an exit in time, then all the plans were fucked. Graves couldn't come with her, and Torra couldn't get out of that hellhole.

Which was why she was back in Graves's library, trying to find a way to make this work. The door creaked open behind her, and she smelled the cinnamon before she looked up.

"What is that?" she gasped.

"Sustenance," he said with a small smile that she recognized as something specifically for her. She didn't know when she'd started to judge them for herself, but she knew them.

"It smells like heaven."

He set the parcel on the table, next to the map she had been scouring. It had every entrance and route that Graves had discovered into and out of the underground. She glanced inside and saw the cinnamon babka. Her stomach rumbled at the same time her heart flipped.

"Babka?" she asked.

"Your favorite."

It was. But she hadn't suspected that he was going to get her any. Even if he'd been mad about Lorcan sending her some. Even if she'd had a complete breakdown on him and felt the warmth of him as a balm. She could hardly believe it.

"Thank you," she whispered as she broke off a piece and popped it into her mouth. She groaned at the taste of it. She'd thrown away the loaf from Lorcan before she could try it. And it was better than she even remembered. "So good."

Graves ate a small bite of his own and nodded with approval. "I see why you like it."

"Best in town." She ate a few more bites as she looked over the map. "That poor man."

"What do you mean?"

She glanced back up at him. "Hopefully you didn't scare the shit out of him like Lorcan."

Graves looked offended. "I do not frighten little old men."

"You're pretty frightening."

"I appreciate that," he said lazily as he snatched up another bite.

"We need him to keep making this bread. So I hope you turned it down a notch."

"I paid him handsomely." His eyes met hers. "For you."

She swallowed and nodded, quickly returning to the map again. She could feel Graves's eyes on her, but she said nothing. Just waited for him.

"I've been thinking," Graves said. He came to stand next to her.

"Dangerous," she told him.

Ever since their moment in the tunnels, it was like she could feel his awareness all the time. Like there was a string that guided them back together. And when they were this close in proximity, her heart began to beat frantically. She couldn't seem to cut her gaze away from his face or the lines of his body in his suit.

"We need to find that exit."

"What do you think I've been doing?" she asked.

"I am not denigrating your reconnaissance work," he assured her.

"Fine. If you have a new suggestion on how to get you in and Torra out of there, I'm all ears."

"Well, when I believed that you had immunity, I wasn't sure if you could use your passive gift at all. If you could, then we could have tried to see if you were capable of projecting your immunity on to me."

"Thanks for running that one by me."

"Projection like that is advanced magical work." His eyes cast over her face. "There wasn't enough time for you to learn that level of magic."

"I still can't even ward a stupid box," she grumbled.

Despite working on her magic training in the hours she wasn't in the underworld, she had come no further than before. She was starting to think that her absorption must be just as passive as the rest of her magic. Or that because she wasn't a warlock maybe she couldn't even do it.

"Maybe we've been focusing on the wrong thing," he admitted.

"Did you just say that you're wrong?"

His smile was quick as he leaned toward her. "Surely not. What I mean is, maybe we need to get you to focus on actively absorbing. I want to test to see if your absorption can not just bypass the magic but also break wards."

"How would that work?"

"Right now, your absorption is passive. You walk through my wards. They brush against you. You absorb whatever touches you and continue on. But what if you could absorb more than what touched you? What if you could absorb the entire ward?"

She furrowed her brows. "You think I could do that?"

"If you've spent days on making your own wards and aren't getting any further, then it's worth trying something else."

"All right. I'm willing to try anything at this point." She turned to face him and caught his gaze sweeping to her mouth, but then quickly back up as if he hadn't done it at all. "And if I can do it, you don't think it'll be like the wish powder all over again? That I'll absorb more than I can process?"

"Limits," he said. "We find out how much you can absorb. When you start to fatigue, we back off."

"That sounds like a super fun time, but if I brought in too much magic with the wards, wouldn't the wards then start to deflect me? As in I could be trapped inside Third Floor without a way to get out."

"It's possible," he admitted slowly. "Too much magic does override your system, but I don't believe Walter's wards are strong enough to hit your limits."

"Why? They're strong enough to keep you out."

He shot her a smile that was all teeth. "But he's afraid of me. He doesn't know about you. Plus, you have the advantage in this situation because you know how to release your magic."

"I do?" she asked, furrowing her brow.

"You can go slow motion, as you say, to dispel some of the magic you absorb. I suspect that's why you were passing out from it."

She straightened at that. She hadn't exactly considered that option. "You think that would work?"

"We have a lot of tests ahead of us. So, let's get started."

Graves beckoned her over to the center of the library, where he'd placed the illusive warded box she'd opened at their first meeting. She wished she could figure out how to ward her own box, which was currently upstairs.

"Oh, do we get to play open the box again?" she asked with a short laugh.

"Not quite."

"Intent, right?" she guessed. "I need to focus my intent on the box to absorb it."

"No. That's basic warding. This goes beyond that." He rested his hand on top of the box. "Kingston told you some of this to start, though I'm not sure if you were paying attention. Magic has a feel to it. A sense, of a sort. It opens something inside you."

"I was paying attention. What does magic feel like?"

"All magic has a different sense to it, depending on what the person is capable of. But magic itself, raw magic, has always been pure energy. Like when the sun shines on your skin, warming you, or the crackling of a fire. You can feel the energy from the fire, from the sun."

She nodded. "I can feel the energy off of you all the time."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Can you?"

"Your heat, fire. You're constantly burning up."

His look heated her up right then. She had never told him that she could feel how warm he was around her. He seemed impressed.

"Then you have the first sense of it. I am constantly using low levels of magic to maintain my wards. I always run warm, but it's the magic you feel. There's more than the physical heat. There's the magical energy. There's a life to it. Sometimes a smell to it. I've been told that my magic smells like leather and parchment."

She frowned and wondered if she'd ever smelled that on him. But she didn't think so.

"That's where we're going to start today. I want you to find my magic. Sense it. After that, we'll work on having you actively absorb my magic into your body."

Doubt crept through her. She had never been magical except by coincidence. Her slow motion was a natural extension of herself. She'd never known it was magic. She hadn't even known she was absorbing magic, and she couldn't seem to get any of the warding to work. She didn't know if she could do this.

"Breathe, Wren," he reminded her, settling his hands on her shoulders to get her to focus on him. Her eyes met his, and even though the contact should have made her uneasy, it relaxed her.

She released a breath and nodded as he added, "It's just practice."

"Okay, I'm ready."

Once she had finally calmed, Graves withdrew and then slowly removed his gloves. Knowing how much work it took him to be comfortable around her without them, she loved when he took them off. Loved every glimpse she got of that hidden tattoo.

"I'm going to touch you, releasing my energy into you as my magic tries to read you. You'll naturally absorb it, but I want you to focus on it. Feel the energy."

"I'll try." She hesitated. "Will you be able to read me?"

"No. Not unless you're overwhelmed by magic."

"Okay," she said softly.

"May I?"

She nodded. This time, he was asking permission. How different that must be for a man who always took what information he wanted. Even knowing he couldn't take from her, he was still being careful. She appreciated it.

His fingers curled invitingly around her wrist, the pressure of his palm gentle against her bare skin. She was distracted as she got lost in his swirling gray eyes. He so rarely touched her that it was hard to focus. She had to bring her concentration back on the magical training.

Kierse tried to sense something other than his touch and the heat of him sliding up her wrist. She narrowed her eyes. There must be something. She wanted so badly to smell that tang of the leather and the fresh parchment from him. To know what he really smelled like. Not just the man he appeared on the outside, but the real person underneath it all. No matter how hard she tried, all she felt was him touching her.

"Any luck?" She shook her head, and he released her. "I have some other ideas as well. It won't come automatically. Especially since you have never had to be intentional about your own abilities. It's new. We'll keep working on it."

"All right," she said, disappointed.

It wasn't like she had learned to steal in one sitting. She couldn't expect herself to get it immediately, but she still wanted to.

"Do you think all of this isn't working because I'm not a warlock?"

He shook his head. "No. I think it's just new. And there's only one way to get better."

"Practice," she said, and they went back to work.

After hours of training, Kierse was no better off than when she had begun. She couldn't feel the magic that she was absorbing. There was no buzz or rumble or sense to it. There was just Graves, touching her.

Or her hand on the ward against one of his boxes that felt like cold wood. Or an ounce of red wish powder that he produced in a vial. Just looking at it had made her want to throw up. But he'd assured her it was nothing like what she'd inhaled at Imani's house and then unhelpfully told her that she might be more susceptible to it after what happened. Be able to feel its power.

She couldn't.

Instead, she broke out into cold sweats and had to try another day.

That was how she found herself back inside Third Floor.