It was certainly one of the few decisions I didn't regret. Unlike all the time I'd wasted with Lucian…
I shoved the thought aside and continued looking around the room. But aside from the fact there were now doors piding this room from the bedroom area, little else had changed.
And yet, something felt different.
An odd sense of wrongness crawled across my skin, and that was usually a precursor to me walking into a shitload of trouble.
"I don't suppose you have any weapons, do you?" I studied the doorway leading into the bedroom. If any clues were going to be here, they would be found in the place where he'd made so many conquests. Like most Aedh, he'd been able to charm the pants off any woman he desired with just a kiss, simply because an Aedh's kiss was designed to sweep aside objections and fuel lust.
And Lucian had certainly been more than willing to employ the power of it. Maybe it had been his way of passing time – when he wasn't plotting his revenge, that was.
Jak glanced at me, expression sharp with concern. "Why would I? And why would you be asking something like that?"
"Because I have a very bad feeling we could be walking into trouble."
And along with it came a very bad desire to reach for Azriel. Not so much for his protection, but simply because I felt stronger – more capable of coping with the weird shit that kept getting thrown at me – with him by my side.
I don't want to do this alone. And that, right there, was a truth I might not have any wish to face, but one I inevitably would. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how determined to prove that I could do this alone, the truth of the matter was, I really didn't want to.
I'd banished him in anger and confusion and grief, and it wasn't just that he'd made me Mijai and ended any possibility of me being reborn and seeing my mother again. It was that he'd destroyed our one sure way to end this key madness and keep everyone I cared about safe.
The simple fact was, no one but me could find the keys. No me, no key, no threat.
I had every right to be angry. And I was. Very much so. But Ilianna was right. I owed him the chance to explain his reasons. He had tried – in his own stoic, say-as-little-as-possible way – but I'd been too locked in misery to listen. I'd wallowed in that particular pool long enough, though, and I was ready to listen now. Besides, I'd faced up to Jak's betrayal, and had given him a second chance, even if it extended only as far as friendship. Did Azriel deserve anything less?
"What sort of trouble?" Jak asked.
"The kind that comes from a seriously annoyed dark sorceress."