Chapter 8 #3
The probe was delicate. It brushed against the outer wards with the lightness of a fingertip tracing the edge of a glass, testing for resonance without applying enough pressure to trigger the alarm layer.
Most witches wouldn’t have detected it at all, because most witches didn’t have a resonance gift attuned to the specific frequencies of their own warding.
Also, the probe had been designed to be undetectable, precise and controlled and yet achingly familiar in its technique.
Van Horn magic. He recognized it the way a musician recognized a particular school of playing, not from any single element, but from the combination of approach, pressure, and restraint.
The Van Horns trained their warlocks who possessed such gifts to probe wards the way surgeons were trained to probe tissue, with the minimum force necessary to gather information and the maximum control necessary to avoid triggering a response.
Malachi’s eyes opened.
Roslyn’s hands were still on his chest. She was looking at him, her attention now focused and almost sharp, and he knew she’d sensed the shift in his body before he’d consciously processed it — the sudden tension in his muscles, the spike in his pulse, the way his magic had contracted involuntarily.
“What is it?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he extended his resonance outward, past the walls of the study and through the house and into the ward structure beyond, tracing the outer perimeter until he found the place where the probe had touched.
It was on the northern side, near one of the anchors he’d repaired that morning.
The probe was already gone, withdrawn as delicately as it had arrived, leaving behind nothing but the faintest impression, the magical equivalent of a fingerprint on polished glass.
That impression was enough, though. He read it the way he read artifacts — through proximity and resonance and the deep, inborn gift Victoria Van Horn had banished him for possessing — and what he found confirmed what his instincts had already told him.
The magical signature in the probe wasn’t Victoria’s personally.
It was too precise for her, too surgical.
Victoria’s magic had always been broad and forceful, a blunt instrument used by someone who ruled with authority rather than finesse.
This probe had been crafted by someone whose gift involved subtlety and control, someone trained in the Van Horn tradition but possessing a lighter touch.
Karl. Victoria’s uncle, whose gift was sleep, the ability to send the conscious mind into darkness with a whisper of magic that slid past one’s defenses.
Karl Van Horn, who had once used that gift to abduct a warlock from Wilcox territory, and who served as Victoria’s primary instrument whenever a situation required more precision than force.
If Karl was probing the wards, then Victoria had sent him. And if Victoria had sent Karl, that meant she was no longer searching.
She’d found what she was looking for.
“Malachi.” Roslyn’s voice was steady, but her hands lay quiet on his chest. “Tell me what’s happening.”
He looked at her, and for one unguarded moment, he allowed himself to see her as she was…
not as the healer who was keeping him alive, not as the McAllister witch who should have been his enemy, not even as the woman he’d kissed in this room and then spent a week pretending he hadn’t.
Just Roslyn, sitting in the lamplight with her hands on his heart, waiting for him to tell her the truth.
“Victoria has found us,” he said.
The study was very quiet. Through the walls, he could hear the distant rhythm of the ocean, and beneath that, the hum of one hundred and two artifacts settling into their evening equilibrium.
And beyond that, he felt the steady pulse of his wards…
rebuilt, strengthened, and utterly inadequate to stop what was coming.
Roslyn’s hands remained where they were.
“How long do we have?” she asked.
He considered the question. A probe meant reconnaissance, not assault.
Victoria would want to confirm the location, assess his defenses, and assemble her resources before she moved.
Karl would report back, and Victoria would plan.
Victoria always planned; it was easy to have that kind of thoroughness when she had unlimited resources and absolute conviction in her own authority as prima of one of the country’s oldest witch clans.
“Days,” he said. “Perhaps a week. Possibly even two if she decides to be cautious.” He paused there before adding, “But I doubt she’ll be cautious.”
Roslyn’s jaw tightened. A small enough motion, barely visible, but he’d spent the last two weeks learning the language of her face, and he saw it clearly enough.
It wasn’t fear, though. What he saw now was calculation, the same look she wore when she’d assessed his condition and begun creating a treatment plan.
Now, though, the patient wasn’t him but their entire situation, and the prognosis was probably worse.
“Then we need to talk about what happens next,” she said.
He nodded, but he didn’t say what he was thinking. What happened next would depend entirely on whether he could find a way to protect both the collection and the woman sitting in front of him…and he was increasingly certain it would be impossible to do both.