Page 13 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

He scowled, testing the invisible boundary in various areas, looking for a weakness in the wards surrounding a simple bricked structure. Even using his own power of flame, the barrier never gave way. There were no signs, not even warning sigils that normally flared when protective wards were activated. But this ward did nothing except block him from entering.

All the while, the streets flowed normally with pedestrians and vehicles.

Zarek entered the neighboring cafe, the hairdressers, the tailors, and all the other stores surrounding the bookshop, but he failed to get past the threshold of the one place he wanted to enter.

From the outside it appeared a simple bookshop, but he sensed nothing at all. No echo. Not even the mortal’s presence. Yet he could see the woman he’d met last night inside that very store.

The wards on this place were exceptional.

But what annoyed him more was that he didn’t even know her name. Which was ironic, when he could read people’s minds, know their histories, secrets, and fears in the blink of an eye. But her?

Now, her workspace was off-limits to his kind with wards that felt like they’d been working long before he knew of her existence.

Hmph.

He returned to the other side of the road, where the world behaved as it was meant to. He wouldn’t wait long, there were patrol rotations to confirm, reports to file, breaches to seal.

Then the shop door opened, and she stepped out into the daylight.

Her hair was pulled back into a careless ponytail. He hadn’t seen her hair color in the shadows of the night. But seeing it in daylight, the way it caught the sun and fractured into a blend of gold and tarnished copper, was unexpected.

The color was like her eyes, the strange pairing of blue and green, light and depth that somehow made sense for her to have hair colors blend in a way Zarek would never have articulated. That’s because he’d never bothered to compare a woman’s eyes or hair colors before.

But it also made him realize he was looking.

Him.

Not scanning. Or assessing a threat, noting perimeter security measures and weapons. But looking at the length of her skirt that caressed her thighs, up to the smooth curve of her hips, the flat waist, to the roundness of her plump breasts, the straight shoulders, through to the tilt of her dainty chin.

To be looking at someone like this was a failure of his own rules.

Yet he couldn’t stop looking as she adjusted her sunglasses, shielding those mismatched eyes.

But there was something else. Some unknown foreign traits… Wait?

Zarek could feel her?

No? Not possible.

Yet, he did. The thrum behind her eyes and a dull pressure at her temples. There was a raw scrape in her throat where those bone-cold fingers of the Black Cloak had held her.

Underneath there was more… A residual nausea, irritability, and the brittle edge of a body trying to pretend it was fine.

She has a hangover.

The realization surprised him enough that the corner of his mouth lifted before he could stop it.

That, at least, was normal. Most mortals who survived an encounter with his kind woke the next day aching, disoriented, embarrassed by some half-remembered terror they dismissed as alcohol, stress, and imagination. The body remembered even when the mind did not.

It was how the Accords endured.

He should have left it there. Normally he’d reach for her mind, but that path was closed. So he let his power run along the thin, illicit thread that had no right to exist between them. Not to command or erase, but to soothe her pain.

He applied the calming magick like an invisible touch to ease the pounding pulse behind her eyes, the rawness in her throat, and that icy sensation from the Black Cloak’s touch he replaced with warmth.

He’d never bothered doing this before. He was a soldier, where pain was just part of the job and where fear was nothing more than a tool.

Yet the calming spell had already left him.