He gave her a cynical smile. “Having said that, the next several years of my life were a nightmare. The man I went to see was a court favorite and had powerful influence over the royal family. He was a very old witch—and there’s something you should know about very old witches. If you choose, as some of us do, to extend your life, eventually our Power runs down and our human bodies rebel as the longevity spell fades. Then what you would have fallen prey to during your normal lifespan will still occur, and often it hits harder. Cancers, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, renal failure. The longevity spell only delays the inevitable. In my opinion, it’s well worth it to live potentially hundreds of years, but eventually every witch faces a choice. Either they exit their lives with integrity, or they steal what is forbidden—someone else’s Power.”

“Oh no,” she murmured. The ache in her fingers made her realize she was gripping her mug too hard. She made a deliberate choice to relax.

“Oh, yes. I had a lot of Power, and I didn’t know what to do with it. As worldly as I had become about everything else, I was helpless as a baby about this one thing. And that old witch had made his choice long before me to feed off the Power in others. At his behest, the royal family threw me in prison on trumped-up charges, where I was held indefinitely. He had access to see me whenever he wanted. Every time my Power started to return, he sucked me dry until I’d forgotten what it was like to live without a raw, empty wound at my core. That went on for years.”

She swallowed. “I can’t imagine. It’s been bad enough to lose mine for a few hours. How did you keep from going crazy?”

He raised one eyebrow. “You’re assuming I haven’t.”

“You’re hard and single-minded, and you can be thoughtless, but you’re not crazy,” she said with certainty. “How did you get free?”

“He disappeared for a while. I found out later someone had tried to assassinate him. Everyone thought he was dead. I believe he took the opportunity to reinvent himself. It’s an old tactic many of us have used. Historically, long-lived witches have not been welcome in many communities. Sometimes they’ve been hunted and burned—and the royal court hadn’t realized he was a witch.”

“Nobody noticed anything odd about him?”