Still smiling, Al looked at my fingers knotted around one another, but he didn’t reach out to touch me. “Do you trust Quen?”

Miserable, I thought of Quen, his morals, his loyalty, his strength of character. Ceri had loved him, and Ray was his entire world. I knew exactly what I would get with Quen, and I nodded. I trusted him.

“Do you trust . . . Trent?” Al said. My head snapped up, and Al bobbed his head at my deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Ahh, there it is,” Al said, infuriatingly smug.

“Trent won’t ever have access to it,” I said quickly.

“Chances are he will. If you trusted him, you could invoke them. Show me what you do to invoke elven . . . silver.”

Flustered, I dug the rings out. “I trust him. I do,” I asserted, but my stomach clenched, telling me I was lying.

Al shrugged his shoulders, and his blanket fell away. “Then show me.”

Fine. Mood sour, I carefully snuggled the smaller ring into the cradle of the larger. Shifting on the hard flagstones, I perched the rings on the tips of the fingers of my left hand, holding it right at eye level between us. One last look at Al, who had fumblingly put on a pair of glasses I could only assume would let him see my aura easier, and I closed my eyes.

God, please help me do this, I thought. I need to do this.

Exhaling, I pushed the aura off my hand, feeling it hang about my bent elbow like a shirtsleeve, warm and soft. Al grunted in surprise when I made an odd twist in my head, and my entire aura flashed red. “You layer your aura?” he breathed. “One vibration at a time?”

Nervous, I wondered if showing Al this was such a good idea. The demon was a packrat. No telling what defunct charms he had lying around. But I nodded, not opening my eyes as I sent a tendril of red aura to snake up my arm. I shivered as it skated over my pulse points and crawled up my fingers, twining over the joined rings and thickening. My pulse hammered. This was where it usually all fell apart, and I carefully, slowly, shifted my aura twining about me and the rings to the slightest shade of orange.

“Careful . . .” Al breathed, and my head started to hurt as tiny cracks in the rings showed.

“I can do this,” I said through my clenched teeth. I had to do this. I had no choice.

But it was Trent, and I felt tears of frustration prick my eyes and my hand start to shake. He had caged me, hunted me, and made my life hell, even as I had fought to shove down his throat that he was immoral and deserved punishment.

But my breath came out in a sob as I realized I didn’t believe that anymore.