“You can’t hide anything from me like this.”
Which made her wonder if it worked both ways. What if he was hiding the knowledge she needed to find the cure for her visions? She could feel how important it was to him that she’d taken his luceria—that it helped him in some way. What if he didn’t want her to give it back?
Rory wasn’t sure how to find the information, but as soon as the desire to look for it bloomed into reality, she found that searching through his thoughts was as easy as searching through her own. Sure, the walls here were different—harder and darker—but the space was basically the same. Navigating it was intuitive, as if she’d been here before.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Hush. I’m busy.”
She spun through the data in his head, seeking out knowledge of magic and its uses. She found memory after memory of things he’d seen other women do, as well as a few men. Battle, healing, creation of magical devices—it all swam together in a blur of information. She sensed leads here, and maybe some ideas she could try, but as he said, there was no definitive knowledge of how to solve her problem.
As Rory was leaving, pulling herself out of his mind, she felt something brush against her, so bright with hope and yearning that it nearly burned. She wasn’t sure what it was, but curiosity had always been one of her flaws.
She went back to that place, seeking out the raging energy of it. She thought she might get burned if she touched it again, but instead, she was drawn in, compelled to slide inside the thought or memory or whatever it was.
There was a man there, possibly even more beautiful than Logan. He injected something into Cain that burned like acid, but Cain had felt only hope and a sense of joy as glittering and fragile as a crystal snowflake.
“What did he do to you? Were you sick?” As she asked the questions, she sped through his mind toward the answer.
A pretty woman stood there, her gray eyes brimming with happiness. Around her neck was a shimmering, golden band—a luceria like the one Rory now wore. This woman smiled up at Cain, her hand splayed over her stomach in a gesture of maternal joy.
Rory had thought Cain said that his daughter wasn’t his by birth, but the feeling she had now was unmistakable. The child that woman carried was his.
As Rory watched, the edges of the thought wobbled, crumbling away. The woman’s hand fell. Her smile faded. The hope and happiness this image created withered and died. And then, an instant later, the woman reappeared as she had been before, vibrant and glowing with eagerness. The whole cycle played out, over and over.
It was then that Rory realized what it was she’d stumbled upon. It wasn’t a memory, but some kind of dream. A wish. This image was something that Cain had wanted. Badly.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “She’s with another man. A good man.”
Rory felt him trying to push her away, and she didn’t like it. “You wanted her to have your baby. That’s why you got that injection.”
He pushed harder, making her head throb with the strain of staying where she was.
“As I said, it doesn’t matter.”
Only it did. It mattered a lot to him.
With one final shove from Cain, Rory landed firmly back within her own mind. Her physical body was shaking and exhausted, as if she’d just run a marathon. Cain was panting with effort, his face red and his body quivering with tension.
His hands slid down to her shoulders, holding her steady. “Why did you fight me?”
“Why did you try to shove me out? You were the one who wanted the mind-meld thing to happen. Not me.”
“It was a mistake to let you see that. I’m sorry.”
Fatigue bored down on her, but she refused to let him see her weakness. “That whole brain-bending thing is messed up. All this magic stuff. Memory surfing.”
His green gaze darkened as his pupils expanded. “Being in your thoughts is easy. Peaceful.”
Oh, crap. She hadn’t considered that it would be reciprocal. “What did you see?”
“Less than you, I imagine.”
“No deep, dark secrets?”
“My desire to have a child isn’t a secret. I simply thought that it might freak you out.”
“Why? It’s not like it was me you were picturing as your baby mama. So what if you’re pining after some woman? I don’t really care.”
Only she did. She had no reason to care, but she liked having Cain’s attention to herself. Sure, eventually he’d get in the way and drive her bonkers, but right now, it was nice having him around. Not that she’d ever tell him that.
He let go of her and took her coat off the back of the chair where she’d left it. Once again, he closed up shop, leaving her wondering what was going on inside his head.
As the urge hit her, she felt a fluttering presence brush her mind, as if she’d simply reached out and found it. For one fleeting second, she felt a faint hint of something dark and sad, but then it was gone as fast as it came, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it.
He draped her coat over her shoulders. “Come on. There’s not much time until sundown. We should go outside and see what you can do.”
* * *
Rory was far more intuitive than he’d given her credit for. She’d simply walked right into his thoughts as if she owned the place and dug up his deepest, most private fantasies.
Cain had wanted Jackie to be his. She’d offered him a union, but things had not gone as either one of them had anticipated. Jackie had ended up with Iain, and the child they were now expecting was Iain’s.
Jackie had given him a few precious hours of hope—of dreaming of what his life could have been like with a wife and child to cherish—and the loss of that hope had nearly killed him.