Page 88 of The Dragon and the Dove

‘There’s an ache in me, Val. My magic has its own needs. It wants to be powerful. More powerful than all others. It hisses at me, tells me to take what I want, without regret.’

‘Is it winning?’ There was fear in her voice.

‘Not right now.’

She frowned. ‘That’s not reassuring.’

‘It’s the truth.’ He offered another. ‘I don’t want it to win.’

She buried her face in her hands and groaned. ‘I can feel it. Even now.’ When she looked at him again, there was such sorrow in her eyes. ‘How can you ever rest?’

‘I’m the one in control,’ he said, desperate to convince her. ‘I’d sooner lock myself in this cloakroom than take one step towards Andreas.’ He should have stopped there, but her magic was still at work. ‘But there are times when I question myself. Whether I’m strong enough to fight the will of fate.’

She stepped closer, shaking off her revulsion. ‘Let me look. I can see the truth in your soul. I can tell you what power moves there.’

He frowned, another truth trickling from him like water. ‘I’m afraid.’

‘So am I.’ Her smile slanted. ‘But when has that ever stopped us?’ For a moment there was no magic between them at all. Just friendship. History. ‘Better to know what we’re up against, right?’

He liked that word – we. It blunted the edge of his fear.

‘You can’t hate me, Val. Whatever you find, whatever I am, please don’t hate me for it.’

‘I didn’t hate you when you put a frog under my pillow when we were twelve.’

Theo smiled. ‘You were always harping on about how badly you wanted a pet.’

‘I didn’t hate you when you gave me that horrendous haircut three summers ago,’ she reminded him.

‘I warned you it was a bad idea. You insisted you could pull off that bob.’

She stuck out her tongue. ‘I didn’t hate you that time you kissed me and Bibi on the same night.’

‘It was my birthday!’

Her face turned serious. ‘I’ve never hated you, Theo. I never will. You’re my oldest friend. We’ve been to hell and back together. Whatever magic is inside you, we’ll figure out a way to tame it.’

Bolstered by her words, he undid the buttons on last night’s shirt, revealing the planes of his chest. Where once, long ago, a heat might have stirred between them, now there was only friendship, and the kind of deep-rooted trust he would stake his life on.

In the dying sunlight of the cloakroom, Sera’s handprint shone all the brighter. Val pressed her palm against it.

His magic lurched, and he groaned, bracing himself against the workbench. He felt that awful gnawing hunger again. Greed erupted like a bonfire in his soul. But there was something pure in Val’s power, something unconquerable that lorded over his own. It stayed his reach, shoved his magic back.

Even in the full flush of its appetite, his power could best truth itself.

It could not cannibalize it. Or take it for its own.

Val’s brows knitted as she pushed deeper. Truth magic flooded his blood, her command rippling through the pool of his soul.

Reveal yourself.

His power shifted, emerging from the deepest cavern of himself. It burst like a star under his skin, revealing itself to the Saint of Truth. Every speck splayed out like a canvas.

Val’s magic moved over it, like a roving eye.

It was a deeply unpleasant sensation – the feeling of being known – like being wrung and drawn and strung up like a sheet on fate’s clothes line.

She released him with a gasp, stumbling back. Her eyes, once warm, turned haunted. The gold flickered out.