Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
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.”