“He couldn’t get complete control of you.” His jaw flexed. “And he knew that.”
“How?” I asked, and I didn’t need to force myself to do it. “How do you know that?”
A shadow of something flickered across his striking features too quickly for me to catch. “He managed to…push forward a few times. Summon the eather through you and talk through you.”
What he said then fell like daggers against my skin. I jerked back, causing his palm to slip from my cheek. That wasn’t a forced reaction. “Continue.”
Casteel’s hand tightened around mine. “He didn’t try to get you to feed when he could have. That’s how I knew he couldn’t get complete control of you. He needed to keep you weakened.”
So weak.
The sudden image of Duke Teerman, of all people, flashed in my mind.
My breath snagged as I pushed to my feet, pulling on Casteel’s hand as the robe fell to the floor. He hesitated before letting go. I backed up, knowing he was concerned. I felt it heavy against my skin. I wanted to ease his worry, but…
But someone else had taken control of my body and thoughts, and—
I turned away from Casteel as I closed my eyes. The essence hummed through my veins, causing my fingers to tingle. Iforcedthose thoughts to cease because I couldn’t let myself go there right now. If I did, I didn’t know what I would do.
Needing something to do with my hands, I gathered my hair and re-braided it as I faced him. “What did he make me do? When I summoned the eather.”
“Whenhesummoned the eather,” he corrected, bending to pick up the robe. “Nothing.”
I stepped back. “Nothing?”
His stare was unwavering. “You stopped him from using it to truly hurt anyone.”
My gaze sharpened on him as I tugged the tie from my wrist and secured the end of the braid. “But I did, didn’t I?”
“Hedid,” Casteel corrected again and then cursed. “Honestly, I don’t know if those times were him, and you prevented him from doing real damage. Or if it was you, using it to keep us safe. But…” He ran his teeth over his lower lip. “You used the eather to push me away from you more than once.”
Okay. That wasn’t bad.
“And while you did use it to throw Reaver against a wall, it was because he and I were fighting,” he quickly added, laying the robe beside him. “Reaver sensed Kolis and tried”—his golden eyes hardened—“and failed to give aid.”
“I threw him against…?” I turned to look at the wall beside the bathing chamber. “That?” I pointed at the fractures. “Was him?”
His gaze flicked to the wall. “Possibly.”
Forcing myself to breathe again, I lowered my hand to my side. “What else?”
“You also tried to escape and managed to get out of the chamber,” he said, running his fingers over the golden chain around his neck. “You were trying to keep us safe, and you might have hit Reaver.”
“I hit Reaver?” I waited for him to elaborate, but all he did was nod, which told me it hadn’t been with my fists. My stomach twisted. “With eather?”
“He was fine.”
My fingers pressed into the soft material of the gown.
“He’s a draken.” Casteel dropped his hand to his leg. “It takes more than a random bolt of eather to hurt a draken.”
Did it? I wouldn’t know because I hadn’t seen a draken take a hit of eather. I’d seen them be struck by lightning—
But that hadn’t been normal lightning, had it? An odd sense of knowing told me that Vessa had managed to harness eather.
“Reaver is fine,” Casteel repeated, snapping me from my thoughts.
That might be true, but it didn’t undo the fact that I hurt him. “What happened after I tried to escape?”
