Brianna thought of the way the power had looked in her hands, that faint aura that only the shadows could see. Wesley could only feel it, not see it, but blind to it as he was, he would know as easily as she where the power was headed. Possibly even easier than her. “It’s because your gift is getting stronger,” she said. “As you use it, it will strengthen, become less difficult to manipulate.”
Wesley’s stare went a little unfocused as he recalled watching Emily. “I could feel everything. Each time she brought the wind, the very second she released her focus to shoot some bit of debris across the room, I knew what would happen, could sense how strong the blow would be.”
Brianna stared at him. Her sister was apparently taking to the task of learning her powers with single-minded focus. An imagined lobby filled with flying marbles and gale-force winds was tugging at Brianna’s consciousness, but she brushed it off. Emily would figure it out. She was thorough, if nothing else.
“I’d like to give you some different connections to those powers,” she explained to Wesley. “So you can protect yourself when the others come.”
The boyish wonder at their discussion disappeared completely from his face. He was suddenly a soldier of Council, a son of… “Wesley,” Brianna asked, “what line is your blood?”
“Lion,” he said.
Lion. She smiled, taking his hands into hers. “You will be strong, in control.”
He held very still, but Brianna thought she detected the slightest straightening in his shoulders.
***
The conversations with Ellin and Wesley consumed Brianna’s thoughts on the walk back to her room. She was exhausted. She needed to turn more of them, to repair as many connections as possible, but she couldn’t seem to keep up without rest. It reminded her of Morgan, the way her mother had used her own power to find the links within him. As Logan closed the door to her suite, she turned to face him.
He came up short, surprised by her sudden stop.
“Take off your shirt.”
Logan’s expression didn’t falter, but one eyebrow crept up.
“I need to see something, and I already know how your connections work,” she explained. “It has to be a network I’m familiar with.”
He reached for the hem of his shirt, the barest trace of a smile crossing his lips. “Here?”
Brianna glanced at the sitting area, certain if she got off her feet she’d be out with the first blink. “Yeah,” she said. “It should only take a second.”
He tugged the shirt free, drawing it smoothly over his head to reveal a bare chest and broad, muscled shoulders. She hesitated, suddenly unsure, and then flexed her fingers open and closed. “I just …” she started, eyes falling to the spot she’d intended to touch.
“Whatever you need, Brianna,” Logan replied, only a hint of emotion beneath his tone.
She stepped closer, raising her palms to hover over the steady rise and fall of his chest, and then closed her eyes as she laid them against the warmth of his bare skin.
The network of connections within Logan was there, suddenly clearer than it had been before. She could see each of the ties that she’d made, each link she’d restored in him. There was no way to be sure whether it was easier now because she’d had practice, or because it was somehow closer to her here, but she couldn’t deny the difference. It was the way Emily had touched Morgan, as if she had known, and Brianna suspected her sister had connected with Aern the same way when they’d been bound.
She searched Logan closer, finding the web similar to the one that linked Aern through his union with Emily, but could see no real difference within.
“That looks like bad news,” Logan murmured, seeing the furrow in her brow, the disappointment she hadn’t meant to show.
She opened her eyes, so close to him, and said, “No, it’s fine.”
He pressed his lips together, hands sliding to her waist. It hadn’t looked fine, she realized.
“I… it’s just the bond,” she offered. “I was looking to see—” Her words cut off as the door to the suite opened, Aern and Emily’s voices giving her only enough warning to step free of Logan’s embrace. That left them standing there, Logan shirtless for no good reason. Emily’s eyes widened as she and Aern stopped short.
There was a moment of silence as the four exchanged glances, and then Emily raised a brow at Logan, her gaze rolling down and then up his bare torso with a smirk. He frowned, yanking the tee shirt back over his head with considerably less ease than it had come off, and Emily fought a full-on grin.
The silence lengthened, though, Brianna considering what her discovery could mean, what possible implications it held, instead of bothering to explain what they’d been doing. Logan cleared his throat.