He gave me a squeeze that didn’t make me feel any better.
“Did it at least work?” he asked.
I sighed. “No. That was the whole problem. I couldn’t bring myself to let go.”
“Hmm,” he murmured in my ear. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”
He said that a lot lately. There was a lot to figure out. But for someone who has the best answers, he kept coming up short. Our problems seemed to be too big for even him.
Tristan woke me up at the crack of dawn, wired and excited.
“We have to talk to Rina immediately,” he said, pacing along the side of the bed. “Hopefully she hasn’t said anything to the council members about a traitor yet, and we have to stop her before she does.”
I sat up and stretched, the sheet falling into my lap. “What’s going on?”
Tristan stopped his pacing, and his eyes lingered on my chest, still bare from last night. Then he frowned. I frowned, too, self-consciously pulling the sheet up to cover myself.
“What?” I asked.
“I . . . uh . . . forgot what I was saying.” He picked up his shirt from the floor, the one he’d worn yesterday, and tossed it at me. “You’re too sexy for my own good.”
I smiled to myself as I pulled his shirt on. “Better?”
He grinned beautifully, which made me lose my train of thought. “Yes. Thank you. So what was I saying?”
“Um . . . something about Rina, I think.”
“Right. She wants to start an investigation outside of the council, which means notifying the members of her message about the traitor. She can’t do it yet. I had an idea this morning. She needs to let you have a chance with the rest of them.”
“I doubt she’ll do it. She wants to move on. I’ve already wasted her time, remember?”
“We have to convince her, Alexis. You need to do this before you lose that protection. Right now, with your shield so tight, you couldn’t expose your power if you wanted to.” He dropped onto the bed in front of me and held my eyes with his. “There’s a lot of discord and not only on the council. Rina does need to expand the investigation, but it’d be in her best interest—all of ours—if you can feel out the council members first. Find out who’s fueling the fire.”
As soon as we finished breakfast, Tristan and I went straight to Rina’s office, but she wasn’t there. He asked me to mentally find her, but it only took me a moment to notice her mind signature was nowhere in the mansion.
“She’s not here, but Char’s about to—”
A faint pop was followed by Charlotte’s appearance at the other end of the hall. Her fists rested on her hips, and her eyebrows lifted high.
“Do you plan on training this morning, or were you going to ditch me?” she asked.
One hand shot up, and her wrist flicked, then something sailed through the air at us. Just as they trained me, I eyed the object, identified it, and timed my movement to pluck it safely out of the air. I held the knife by the hilt and stared at the gleaming blade that could have done some serious damage.
“We start weapons training today. Are you coming?”
I tilted my head at Tristan.
“You go,” he said. “I’ll find Rina. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Tristan disappeared with a pop, leaving me to explain his abrupt exit to Charlotte without telling her too much. Not one to waste time, Charlotte flashed to the gym, and I followed. With her announcement about weapons training, I expected to find the full gamut of practice weapons spread out in the main training room, but only glinting discs, some star shaped and others round with razor-sharp edges, waited for me. At the other end of the room stood various sized dummies. She taught me the different ways to throw the discs, and I practiced with the dummies, Char correcting my form whenever necessary. Which was embarrassingly often.
“Has Owen taught you everything about mages?” she asked after a while.
I glanced at her as I let go of the disc I was about to throw, and it went wild, bouncing off the stone wall. She lifted an eyebrow.
“It should have cut the stone, not bounce like a rubber ball. You’re still not putting the right amount of power into your twist.” She clasped my hand in hers and demonstrated—again—how to hold the disc and how to flick my