Chapter 3
Nothing happened.
No light flare, no caress of magic, nothing. The stones were silent. Inert.
I raised a hand and tentatively brushed the stone's surface. Life pulsed under my fingertips. It was almost as if the rock had life and heart. The magic was there and ready to react. It just hadn't. Yet it had before . . .
I closed my eyes as the realization of what that meant sunk in. I'd been Aedh when they'd reacted, which meant these stones had been attuned to that form rather than human.
And there was only one being—one man—who had one, if not both, of those forms and who was also involved in the search for the keys.
Lucian.
Fuck! He really had taken me for a ride, and in more ways than one. The bastard had told me—constantly—that he couldn't take Aedh form, that the ability had been stripped from him by the Raziq when they'd tortured him for information. It seemed that might be yet another lie in a growing list of them.
He was not lying about being tortured, Azriel said. Your father all but confirmed that.
I raised my eyebrows. You're actually defending him?
In this, yes. And it grieves me greatly.
Amusement spun through me. What about the whole "stripped of his powers" spiel? How much truth was there in that?
I think it was skillfully mixed with untruths. I do not, however, believe he can attain full Aedh form.
So these stones might not be for his use? And did that mean we had another Aedh—someone we didn't know about—lurking in the background?
Azriel hesitated. I am no expert in magic, but I suspect that if Lucian does use these stones, then they would be attuned to a full Aedh, in whatever form they might be in.