Chapter 21 #2
I gave her a curt nod and stepped back, the faint glow fading from my fingertips with something that felt almost like embarrassment at having been unnecessary. My pulse beat in my throat with a steadiness that was, under the circumstances, somewhat unreasonable to maintain.
She had just resealed a Veil tear.
With a pry bar. With alignment and calm, instinctive precision. She’d corrected a structural problem she’d sensed in the air before she had seen it in the stone.
The word “witch” echoed in my mind. Cormac had labeled her the first time we’d caught sight of her at the pub. I knew a certain level of power lay dormant inside her, but what she’d just displayed was beyond what any witches I knew were capable of.
The odd thing was that I still wasn’t certain she was aware of what she was either. She hadn’t used magic. Nor ritual. Only instinct.
Selene glanced around the hall with quiet satisfaction, as though she hadn’t just sealed a rupture in the Veil, and she increased the distance between us. “It feels warmer too.”
She pulled her notepad from her belt and began writing, her lips moving faintly. “I’ll re-bed it with lime mortar so that it stays in place before it gets lost. Be careful not to step—” She huffed softly. “Never mind.”
My gaze moved to the inlay, to the knotwork in dark stone and pale, the pattern old enough that most people who looked at it only saw it as decorative, as an attractive focal point for a heritage building. It had always been a boundary. Never a decoration.
It had been placed in the castle for reasons that had nothing to do with aesthetics. It was simply an entry point back when the gods were free to come and go from this realm. Selene had touched it with a pry bar and her own instinctive sense of wrongness, and the Veil had obeyed her.
It had obeyed her.
Selene lifted her gaze to me, her expression shifting slightly as she registered my stillness. “Did I do something wrong?”
I moved, breathed, and returned my expression to neutral. “You moved the stone.”
She blinked and then glanced down at the inlay. “Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at me as though the answer was puzzlingly simple. “I told you. It was misaligned.”
When I didn’t respond immediately, she took one small step closer, her professional confidence wobbling faintly at the edges.
“The Celtic knotwork is one of the castle’s focal points.
The piece had moved over time, from the floor settling, most likely.
I assumed you’d want it restored to its proper alignment. ”
She glanced around the hall, stifling a yawn, and then back at me. “Can’t you feel the difference?”
I made a noncommittal sound that she appeared to find reassuring.
Selene softened slightly, then let out a small, self-deprecating snort, and lowered her voice as though embarrassed. “I know it may sound odd to hear, but I believe structures settle when a disturbance in the energy is corrected.”
Her gaze grew wary, as if she waited for me to laugh at her. As if she’d experienced such a thing before. I gave her neither agreement nor dismissal. “I understand.”
She held my gaze for a moment, judging the truthfulness of my words, and then gave a small nod as though my response satisfied her. She turned back to her notebook and resumed writing.
For her, the moment was over.
For me, a lifetime of beliefs had shifted.
For centuries, I had been certain I was the only one in my territory who could control the Veil. Moonlight fueled that ability. It also allowed me the belief that I could have pulled her fully under my control using my charm if I had not chosen to hold back.
That certainty had been the cornerstone of the distance I’d kept since the grove. The quiet reassurance I returned to whenever her presence unsettled my composure.
Now the thought did not sit the same way. The Veil had not resisted her.
It had obeyed her. And if that were true…
I could no longer be certain I had any ability to affect her.
The thought undid me.
I stepped closer. Closer than the work required, closer than I had permitted myself since the council chamber, and she looked up with a quick flash of surprise at my proximity. The air between us shifted, a typical side effect of my power.
I met her gaze and held it, trapping her with my spell. “Hold still.”
Uncertainty glinted in her eyes, but she held still in a way that proved she trusted me, and I was about to use that trust in a way I was not proud of.
I lifted my hand and lightly touched her cheek, as if removing a speck of dust. I cast aside the careful, leashed restraint I’d maintained since meeting her in my grove, and unfurled the full, unguarded current of my power, the thing that had softened every woman who had stepped into the grove since before she had been born.
Seduction shot through me, hot and greedy, and I leaned into the heady experience that I’d denied myself for decades.
Selene’s breath caught. Heat rose beneath her skin. Her pulse jumped against my fingertips, and attraction moved through her eyes, bright and unmistakable.
But her gaze did not soften.
It sharpened with awareness. Not surrender.
This had never failed me before.
She studied me with a clear and curious focus, as though she’d noticed something was happening and wanted to understand what it was. Her recognition caught me unaware.
I dropped my hand as though the contact had burned me, and stepped back, rebuilding the distance between us. My thoughts raged through my mind, trying to make sense of her reaction. “You had ash on your face.”
It was, even by my standards, a very poor lie.
Selene raised her hand and brushed her cheek absently. “Ash?”
I gestured toward the fireplace. “Perhaps from working over there.”
She nodded in agreement, but the look in her eyes as she returned to her work told me the truth of her thoughts.
I turned away from her and strode to the ancient oak table where I’d created a workspace. It allowed me to focus on other business while monitoring the woman. The witch. Selene.
The hall stood silent around us as I sat, my heart thundering, and pretended nothing was amiss.
I focused on the old boundaries, the morning light falling in rectangles across the floor, and the sealed inlay at the center.
The great hall looked no different from the previous day, while I was filled with a certainty that had quietly and completely rearranged itself inside me without warning.
For the first time in centuries, I was no longer certain the Veil was mine to guard alone.