10. Sympathetic Connections
Sympathetic Connections
Ginnie stood by the stove, leaning against the counter as she watched the group of exhausted idiots gathered around her kitchen island. She loved them fiercely, but in that moment, they looked like an ad for a sleep deprivation experiment.
Garrett looked the worst. His jaw was tightly clenched, a heavy shadow of exhaustion bruising the skin beneath his light, lavender eyes. It was no wonder. Nobody in the cottage trusted the concept of sleep anymore.
Right beside him, Sydney was practically mainlining her third mug of coffee. Her hands were wrapped so tightly around the ceramic that Ginnie was sure it was the only thing keeping her upright.
Across from them, Grey had already managed to eat half the platters of bacon and eggs meant for the entire room. Apparently, he was an emotional eater.
“Wish I had that metabolism,” Ginnie thought with a chuckle. “If I even look at a third piece of bacon, my hips get wider. Dragons definitely burn through calories.”
At the end of the counter, Dr. Darcy Thorntree stared at her tablet, her sharp Timberwolf features pinched into a mask of pure irritation.
Her beautiful, high-end monitoring equipment, which she had spent an hour meticulously rigging to Garrett’s headboard the night before, had recorded eight hours of absolutely nothing useful.
"Congratulations," the doctor announced, glaring at the digital readout before snapping her tablet shut. "You slept."
Garrett let out a cold, humorless scoff, his voice gravelly. "I feel like there should be a certificate."
"I'll make you one," Grey mumbled through a mouthful of toast.
While the rest of them spent the morning obsessing over the physical void, the mysterious door inside Han’s memory, the 3:42 AM timestamp, and the flatlined neurological readings, Ginnie had been thinking about something entirely different. She had been pondering the idea of the objects.
That was her world. As a Necromancer, she understood the heavy, invisible weight that ordinary matter could carry.
She knew that physical things weren't always just things. Something about Emma’s casual comment to Carrick on the video call the day before kept bouncing against the walls of Ginnie’s mind: Each is unique to the Dragon it came from.
No two pieces are ever exactly alike. That's what makes them personal.
Emma had said it as part of the beautiful Lore of Dragonkin and a tribute to her craft. But Ginnie knew something the Jeweler didn't need to consider. Personal objects mattered in certain forms of Magic. They weren't just tokens…
They were anchors.
Ginnie didn't immediately announce a grand theory of sympathetic Magic, or anything drastic at all. Instead, she slid a fresh plate of pastries onto the island and started asking annoying questions.
"Sydney," she said, her tone deceptively casual as she wiped down the counter. "The blue ribbon Garrett took from the vanity– how long had you owned it?"
Blinking, Sydney looked up from her coffee mug, obviously caught off guard by the shift in topic. "I don't know. Years, I guess. Since before I left to study with Shavon."
"Did anyone else ever use it? Wear it? Borrow it?"
"No," Sydney said, her brow furrowing. "Just me. It’s just an old silk ribbon that has sentimental value."
Ginnie nodded slowly, then turned her sharp gaze to her Mate, the Head Elder sitting at the end of the table. "Carrick. The golden tie tack. How often did you actually wear it?"
The renowned Guardsman paused, his fork hovering halfway to his plate. Leveling a suspicious, narrow-eyed glare her way, he grunted, "Why?"
Ginnie offered him a sweet, entirely unbothered smile. "Humor me."
With an exasperated sigh, he set down his fork and thought for a second. Then he said, "At least once a month for the Council meetings. Any official ceremonial functions for the Golden Fire Clan, the Council, or any of our Allies. I’ve had it for years."
"And Emma made it specifically for you?" Ginnie pushed.
"Yes."
"From Alastair's naturally shed scale?"
"Yes," Carrick growled, his patience clearly thinning. "Ginnie, what the hell are you getting at?"
Ginnie went entirely still, the dish towel resting loosely in her hands. The invisible puzzle pieces in her head suddenly dropped into alignment, creating a picture she didn't particularly want to see.
Sitting straight up, his gaze locking on hers, the military intensity on Garrett’s face said he’d picked up on her sudden stillness. "What?" he breathed.
"I don't know yet," Ginnie said honestly, her voice dropping its casual edge.
"You know something," Garrett pressed, leaning forward over the granite island.
"I know enough to know I don't know enough," Ginnie countered, refusing to scare everyone in the room with half a theory. Turning back to Carrick, her expression was entirely serious. "I need to see the tie tack. Bring it here."
Carrick evaluated her for a long second.
She saw the moment he recognized the absolute authority of her necromancy and stood up.
Leaving the kitchen without a word, he returned two minutes later.
He’d retrieved the tie tack from the safe in his private office and set the small golden mount with its deep red dragon scale carefully on the table in front of Ginnie.
She didn't perform a flamboyant spell. She didn't call on the room's ambient Magic. She simply reached out, lifted the small piece of jewelry, and held it firmly between her fingers before closing her eyes.
The moment her skin made contact with the polished red scale, the Magical resonance hit her palm.
She could feel the heavy, tectonic print of Carrick’s energy, and beneath it, the deep, Ancient, roaring echo of King Alastair’s soul.
The scale still carried the unmistakable energetic imprint of the Dragon from whom it had come.
Opening her eyes, Ginnie looked across the table at her Mate. "Emma was right."
"About what?" Carrick asked.
"It's personal," Ginnie whispered. Setting the tie tack back down on the granite counter, she looked around the circle of tense faces.
"Certain Magical traditions operate entirely through the Law of Correspondence.
An object can become so strongly associated with a specific individual that, energetically, the object and the person become practically indistinguishable. "
Sydney leaned in, her voice tight. "How?"
"Created specifically for them," Ginnie listed, her mind cataloging the Lore.
"Prolonged physical possession. Biological material, like a naturally shed Dragon scale.
Magical residue. Strong emotional attachment.
A Dragon scale is a thousand times stronger than ordinary jewelry because it literally came from the living body of the Winged Warrior himself.
It carries his unique spiritual frequency. "
Garrett stared at the glittering red scale, his jaw tight. "What can someone do with objects like that?"
Ginnie knew she had to be very, very careful. There were dozens of possibilities stretching across the Magical spectrum, and she didn't want to send the room into a panic. They didn't need to think that a personal object automatically equaled a voodoo doll designed to inflict physical agony.
"An object isn't an automatic weapon simply because it's connected to someone, Garrett," Ginnie explained, her voice steady and grounding.
"In many traditions, it’s used for simple Tracking.
Identification. Communication. Locating a specific person across vast distances.
Strengthening a defensive protection spell aimed at a particular person.
The connection itself isn't inherently evil. "
Pausing, her eyes dropped back to the golden mount, the cold weight of her Necromantic knowledge settling heavily into her chest. "But in the right hands," Ginnie murmured, "a connection can become a road."
Garrett suddenly gripped the edge of the granite counter so hard his knuckles popped. His whole body went rigid.
Sydney was instantly beside him. “Garrett?”
“Three lights,” he gasped.
Ginnie stepped closer. “What?”
“Han says there are three lights now. Blue. Red-gold. Black-and-silver.”
Ginnie held perfectly still. “What else?”
Garrett swallowed. “He says the circle feels like what you're talking about. Not a ritual ground. Not a summoning circle. A road. A junction. Something meant to connect... somewhere.”
Ginnie's expression turned incredibly grave.
She understood the mechanics of transitions and thresholds better than anyone.
It was all part of being a Necromancer, especially one with the Heatherton Magic.
A junction in the Spiritual Plane was a dangerous, highly sophisticated piece of architecture.
"Then it's a residual pathway," Ginnie theorized, her mind rapidly organizing the data into a working hypothesis.
Looking at the tense faces of her friends and family, she shifted her tone to that of a seasoned academic mapping a Curse.
"Someone, likely a highly skilled practitioner of Sorcery, must have heavily tampered with Garrett's psyche during his years in captivity.
They embedded a complex, dormant Magical pathway directly into his subconscious mapping. "
Sydney’s hand tightened on Garrett's shoulder. "A pathway for what?"
"They were experimenting on him, Syd," Ginnie reasoned, the theory flowing with flawless, terrifying logic.
"Think about it. Garrett's Man-Dragon King bond is healing at an accelerated rate right now.
What if his expanding energy is accidentally activating an old, dormant piece of enemy spell work?
Like physical scar tissue pulling tight as the muscle grows back.
The damaged Magic inside his head is running an automatic script, seeking out highly personal, familiar anchors to stabilize itself.
Garrett isn't consciously stealing. His subconscious is trying to build a structural filing cabinet to organize the residual energy. "