Page 54 of Luck Be a Genie

We followed him up a set of stairs to the second floor. “These are the guest quarters where you will be staying. Miss Carra, your room is to the left.” He set my luggage down in front of my door. “Mister Steele, yours is right next to hers, as His Majesty imagined you would want to be close to her.” Nick nodded, and the butler’s attention turned to our pilot. “If you’ll follow me, sir, you’re down the hall.” He turned back to me. “I will come fetch you in fifteen minutes, if that would be acceptable?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes, thank you, Arthur.”

His eyebrow twitched when I said his first name. Apparently, we weren’t supposed to address him so familiarly. He didn’t hesitate to nod, though, and then went off with our pilot.

I glanced at Nick, who was looking pretty grim again, opened my door, and brought everything inside—including my boyfriend.

When I shut the door, I hugged him. He looked like he needed it.

He settled against me, and let out a breath against the top of my head. The longer I held him, the more his body relaxed. I hesitated to ask if he was okay, because I knew he wasn’t. Instead, I said, “I’m here.”

Arthur knocked a few minutes later, and Nick and I followed him to a large room on the fourth floor. It looked like it was meant to be some kind of receiving room. One wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that let in streams of pale late afternoon light.

The view outside was nothing but ocean for miles and miles in every direction.

There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining another wall, and along the left was a sitting area with a table, a large rug, some comfortable-looking chairs, and a crackling fire blazing in the fireplace. It was to the chairs that Arthur directed us, giving me my first glimpse of the elemental sitting there.

I couldn’t tell how tall he was because he was sitting down, but he was a study of intense contrasts. His hair was deep, midnight black, and he had pale skin and stormcloud eyes that shifted between purple, blue, and grey. The occasional rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, accompanied by a streak of lightning in the King’s eyes, and I wondered if he was controlling it, or if the storm was just responding to him in some way.

“Please, sit.”

I sat on the opposite side of the low, round table, and Nick pulled a chair closer to me and sat as well.

It was quiet for a moment as the king studied me with his disconcerting eyes. Eventually, he said, “I have heard many things about you, Miss Carra, from both Draven and your grandfather, Liam. They have explained the nature of the chaos magic within you. Admittedly, at first I thought there had been some exaggeration, though I’ve never known Draven to exaggerate. But now that you’re here, I can see that there was none. Do you know how this happened?”

I shook my head, clutching Nick’s warm hand like a lifeline. This guy made me nervous. I could feel that he was powerful even with my human senses, but what really made me nervous was Nick’s stiffness. He was sitting as straight as a board, and his eyes never left the king. I had a feeling his posture wasn’t because he felt like we were in danger, but, rather, because the sheer power that radiated from the king was something Nick could sense far more strongly than I could.

“No. It was just something I was born with.”

He nodded as he sat back in his chair, clasped his hands together in his lap, and studied me again. He must have been looking at something I couldn’t see, because his gaze wasn’t really on me. It was more like he was looking at the space surrounding me. After a few moments, he nodded again, as if he had a theory he’d just proved correct.

Arthur came in bearing a tray that he set on the low table between me and the king, then he poured us all a cup of tea from the pewter teapot. There were other things on the tray to snack on, but my stomach was one large snarl, so I only accepted the tea. The scent was unmistakably chamomile.

I’d thought I was doing pretty well at at least appearing outwardly calm, but apparently I was as easy to read as a book in extra-large print. The butler must have noticed too. Hence the chamomile.

Embarrassing.

I was used to dealing with criminals along with the occasional powerful supernatural. I wasn’t used to dealing with powerful kings. Unless you counted King Draven, but he had basically become a Moonhaven legend and seemed far less foreboding once you got to know him a little bit.

Once we finished the tea, the King spoke to me again. “Lucky, I’d like to speak to you alone.” He didn’t qualify the request or try to make it any softer, he just threw it out there.

I turned to Nick, whose expression had gone blank. After a moment, he nodded at me, and I absently wondered when it was that we’d developed the ability to communicate without words. His nod meant that he was now comfortable leaving me alone with the King.

“I’ll be right outside the door if you need me,” he said, rising and kissing me on the forehead. When the door shut behind him, I looked at the King again.

He got right to it. “Miss Carra, what you are asking of me has not been done for centuries by any elemental monarch. Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because it’s dangerous.” His tone was sober and weighted. “If we’re speaking in percentages here, you likely will only have a thirty percent chance of making it through the procedure alive. And if you do manage to live, there is no guarantee what you will be left with. Will your chaos magic morph into something more terrible? Will it combine with the element that settles into your body in complex ways that are even more dangerous? I simply don’t know.

“I am not denying that the life you’re living right now is full of challenges, even some dangerous situations, but at least you would be alive to meet them.”

I clenched my tea cup before shakily setting it down on the tray. “And my future spouse? My future children? I can’t live with something that might hurt them. That might kill them. If I were left with that choice, I would choose to remain alone so I wouldn’t be a danger to them. I understood coming into this that there would be risk. I’m grateful for your bluntness, but I still want to try if you’re willing.”

He paused, studying me again for a long moment, before he nodded. He looked... sad. “Very well. I will make the transfer tomorrow morning around nine. You should be in comfortable clothes, resting on your bed when I transfer the essence magic to you. Mister Steele can be in the room, but he can’t interfere. I have no idea how his magic and mine would react to each other.”

I nodded and stood. I was still nervous, but... this was the man offering me hope, and I really wanted to hug him.