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)
She swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell me how this happened?” Graves asked.
“It wasn’t in the study. The study led to a secret passage into a basement. They were crating wish powder. I broke into their bank vault and retrieved the envelope. It’s in my clutch.”
“Good,” Graves said but frowned. “They had a bank vault?”
She nodded. “It was warded, but that wasn’t a problem. Once I broke in, a cloud of white smoke erupted out of the opening. It coated my skin, and I inhaled it.”
“White powder,” he said, his face going pale. “I didn’t think she made that anymore.”
“I thought I was immune to magic.”
“I thought so as well.” He shook his head, a shadow crossing his face. “Imani is the living embodiment of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ She’s a powerful warlock, but the powder enhances her reach. Before Imani perfected her powder down enough to be sold, she experimented with some dangerous varieties. The red powder that she uses at her parties—what was in the crates you saw in the study—that is her desire wish powder. It’s her most useful and the best business she’s invented. But to get to a safe powder, she’d overwhelmed enough of her participants with dangerous wishes. White powder usually kills people. Sometimes instantly. I thought she had given up making it.”
“But how does this work on me? I didn’t think it was possible.”
“When you wanted to be warmer, it set you on fire. I knew she was capable of such things, but I was certain your own abilities would counteract that. They seemed to be working fine before the vault.”
Kierse was slipping again already. Felt like she was being pulled under. “So, am I or am I not immune to magic?”
“You must be,” he said with a frown. “Or you’d be dead.”
“Then how did it affect me like this?”
“My working theory is either you ingested an amount so great that it penetrated your immunity or you aren’t immune to ingested magic.”
“Okay,” she said, dragging the word out. “So you have no idea.”
“This is why it was a test.”
Kierse shook her head, the weight of the last twenty-four hours heavy on her. “Do you have powers like that?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Well, small mercies,” she muttered. She dropped back onto the cushion and closed her eyes. It was all too much to take in right now. Not like this, when she couldn’t concentrate or move or breathe without aching.
“You should get some more sleep,” Graves said.
He stroked her hair gently out of her face. Her eyes fluttered closed at his suggestion, her body responding to his soothing touch.
“We’ll be back in the city soon. You can recover at home.”
“That’s not my home,” she murmured as she slipped toward oblivion.
His next words were faint, so she wasn’t even sure she heard him say, “It could be.”
Interlude
Imani left her supplicants to their debauchery.
The wish powder had stealthily wound its way through their system. It drained her to imbue the powder with her abilities, but once the wishes were granted, she was full to the brim with power. Beyond reason. Beyond care.
No wonder Graves had fled her mansion with his intoxicated plaything. Imani could have challenged him in that moment. Flush with her own power with hundreds of people fueling her. He wouldn’t have stood a chance. Her mood dampened a little as she thought of him. Perhaps . . . he still would have stood a chance. He was Graves, after all.
Better to have him gone. Gone for good.
She would stop sending him invitations. Insist that Montrell not send them, either. It had always been a formality. They sent them to Kingston as well, and he didn’t pop into their little soirées and ruin all her fun.
But that was Graves. A fun ruiner.
She brushed imaginary lint off of her virginal-white dress and headed through the crowd. Fingers brushed her brown skin, aching for her pleasure. She liked it that way. The easiness of the parties and the fornication. The wishes were simple here. Just sex and drink and ecstasy. All things she had always been adept at providing.
“Please, goddess,” a woman gasped, falling to her knees. “Bless me!”
Imani watched the half-naked woman. Her white skin gleamed with oils. Her pupils were dilated to infinity. Her cheeks were rosy, and her chest heaved and trembled in her sight. She could tell this woman to slit her own throat, and she would. It was pure, unbridled power.
She resisted the urge and set her palm upon the woman’s head. “There. Now go and be ripe with my blessing.”
The woman shivered. Tears came to her dark eyes. She babbled her thanks and fell back into an awaiting woman’s arms. They kissed, and Imani moved on.
When she first met Graves, she’d thought she could trap him with her wishes. She had been young and foolish. She saw him as her ticket out of dirty Victorian England and into adventure. The adventure she had always longed for. She had been right and wrong. Graves had seen her potential as a warlock. He had wanted to cultivate it like a garden.