“This is delicious,” Jasra announced.

“Thank you.” He rose, rounded the table, and refilled her glass manually rather than use a levitation trick. As he did, I noticed that the fingers of his left hand lightly brushed her bare shoulder. He sloshed a little into my glass as an afterthought then and went back and sat down.

“Yes, excellent,” I observed as I continued my quick introspect through the dark glass suddenly cleared.

I had felt something, had suspected something from the beginning, I knew now. Our shadow walk was only the most spectacular of a series of small, off the cuff tests I had occasionally thrown her way, hoping to catch her off guard, hoping to expose her as — what? Well, a potential sorceress. So?

I set my utensils aside and rubbed my eyes. It was near, though I’d been hiding it from myself for a long while…

“Is something the matter, Merlin?” I heard Jasra asking.

“No. Just realized I was a little tired,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

A sorceress. Not just a potential sorceress. There had been the buried fear, I now understood, that she was behind the April 30 attempts on my life — and I had suppressed this and kept on caring for her. Why? Because I knew and did not care? Because she was my Nimue? Because I had cherished my possible destroyer and hidden evidence from myself? Because I’d not only loved unwisely but had had one big death wish following me around, grinning, and any time now I might cooperate with it to the utmost?

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s really nothing.”

Did it mean that I was, as they say, my own worst enemy? I hoped not. I didn’t really have time to go through therapy, not when my life depended on so many external things as well.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Jasra said sweetly.

Chapter 2