But all of that was so different from the Elliot Graves I’d met in this place. The smug, arrogant guy who’d been dogging my steps.
“Please, Jessie, let me explain,” he said. “Let me tell you my history. You can lock me in that cage if you want. For God’s sake, let your mate out. I approve, by the way. I thought he would be perfect for you even before you mated. He’s perfect for an heir. The only reason I brought him here like this was so I could get the chance to talk to you without ending up like Chambers. You can let him out and put me in. Whatever will give me some time.”
He sat up, his hands clasped in his lap. Eyes wary, he stood, moving just as slowly. “I’ll just go let him out, okay? Will that work?”
“Why don’t you just wake him up? You can sit in the chair, and he can sit beside you…”
“I’d rather not. I think I’d be safer in a cage.”
I let out my breath. It was the kind of thing Sebastian would have said.
“Open it, wake him up, and sit in the chair.” I pointed at one in the back corner.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
With a snap of his fingers, the cage sprang open. Another wave of his hands and Austin jolted to consciousness, his eyes blinking open, rage immediately surging through him. Elliot practically sprinted to the corner and quickly sat.
“Please don’t let him kill me,” he said. There was no disgust or condemnation in his tone—just the fear of someone who deeply respected what shifters could do.
Austin practically jumped out of the cage and stalked toward me, his fingers wrapping around my upper arm. Assured I was okay, he turned and stared Elliot down.
“I heard everything that was said just now,” Austin said. “He spoke to me on the way here, too. I couldn’t answer, but I heard.”
“Yes. It’s quite a simple spell, really,” Elliot replied. “You just need the power to pull it off. Listen, Jessie, I built in some assurances. I let Edgar have some of my blood—I assume vampires can identify people by blood? It never even occurred to me to ask.” He shook his head. “Now I feel dumb. Hopefully that’s an assurance. I made a certain type of magical flowers for the basajaun using the potion I made for Edgar. I have them growing just…” He pointed to a bookshelf at the far side of the room. It was probably one of those secret doors. “I also told Ivy House everything. You can ask her when you get back. She knew who I was the whole time. She tends to think like I do—we don’t always take the nicest approach, but we try to do what’s right. You can also ask your shifter there. I should smell the same. I knew he’d identify me right away if I was ever in his vicinity, so I made sure I wasn’t until now. Also…I knew you’d try to kill me, so it was best for me to appear to you as that really uncomfortable hologram.”
I turned and looked at Austin while sending a message to Ivy House. “Did you—”
“Yep,” she answered before I could finish. She could definitely hear my conversations outside of Ivy House somehow. When I wasn’t busy being blindsided, I’d get to the bottom of that.
“You knew who he was, and you didn’t say anything?” I asked, outraged.
“Different cologne, but…” Austin wrapped his arm around my hip, his touch grounding. “I think he’s telling the truth, Jess.”
“You need to be pushed,” Ivy House told me. “You need to be prodded. I swear, you are the most timid wild child I’ve ever met. It’s like you lock all your good qualities up inside, and it takes a battle or taunting to bring them roaring out. He helped me even before I knew who he was. He helped you. Listen to him. If, when he’s done, you don’t like what you’ve heard, kill him. It’s pretty simple. You really shouldn’t hold grudges in the magical world. Things change too fast for that.”
I walked slowly to the little chair opposite Elliot and pulled it back a little farther. Austin pulled up another and we sat.
“So.” Elliot ran his hand down his face. “How about I start at the beginning?”
“Probably wise.”
“I had a twin sister. Both of us had great magical talent, but hers was as a Seer. It was…a burden to her. She had visions all the time. She knew what was going to happen tomorrow, or five years from now, or after her death. Good and bad things. Horrible things, sometimes. She knew our parents would die in a car accident. She knew our uncle would be physically abusive. Of course, we tried to prevent those things from coming to pass, to change the stars, but the end result was always the same. She finally realized that when she saw a vision, it represented the path of least resistance to an end result that would happen no matter what. It was best just to go with it.
“When we were in our late teens, the visions started coming faster and becoming more vivid. They were so encompassing that she started to lose track of reality. She wouldn’t know the difference between a vision, a waking dream, or something happening in the present. Her mind started to slip, unable to deal with it. Finally, she had a series of visions about you. How you came to accept the Ivy House magic. How you blossomed into the mage you are today. She guided me through the role I was to play in your rise to power, including the things I would need to construct, like the tunnels your basajaun destroyed—don’t worry, my people moved in the second you left your quarters so as to move your things—and the meadow flowers on the tunnel walls. I knew what the Ivy House crystals looked like before I’d ever set foot in that room. She also told me spells I would need to track down and figure out. Books I could find about Ivy House. Things like that. She told me my path, and begged I follow it, even though it would require a grave sacrifice.”
“And what sacrifice was that?” I asked.
“When I was forty, I walked away from an empire and became a hermit inside of a mountain. Or I might have ushered in my own death. That’s up to you.”
I squinted at his face.
He nodded. “I have an amazing potion for youthfulness.” He gave me a small smile but didn’t ask if I wanted the recipe, which I was thankful for. “I sent a pretty useless mage and his right-hand man to apprehend you when you first got to O’Briens. Remember him?”
Yes, I remembered him. A man in a poncy cape had tried to grab me, but Austin, Niamh, Mr. Tom, and Edgar had shown up and saved the day.
“You needed a push,” he said, as though reading my mind. “I was that push. Not just with the caped fool, of course. I sent people into Ivy House after you. I had them loiter on the property. You fulfilled your destiny and took the magic. You were always going to. I just helped you along.” He shrugged. “Next I put out a bid for someone to kidnap you and put you in that cave. I offered just enough to bring in some decent people. Some were cleverer than others, I must admit.” He paused for a moment. “I never intended to retrieve you. You were going to be in that cave as long as you needed to be in order to escape. That was the push. You needed to figure out how to fly. Turned out, it didn’t take you any time at all. That’s when I knew Ivy House had chosen well.”
He smiled again, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“No,” I said, remembering the pain I’d gone through, the pain Austin had gone through, trying to get out of that blasted cave.