“These are wards,” Duncan said. “Internal wards to protect you from unwelcome advances. They mean your heart is spoken for.”

Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I THINK I would know if I were in love,” I objected, seating myself on the chair opposite the couch and pulling the flannel shirt over my knees. “The whole problem with Liam was that I wasn’t in love with him. If I had been, then he would have become fully human.”

“I didn’t say you loved him,” Duncan said, leaning back on the couch and arranging the afghan over his chest like the folds of a Roman toga. “I said your heart belonged to him. He must have bound you to him. He doesn’t want you to love anyone else.”

“No, he wouldn’t have …” I began, but then I recalled what he’d said in my dream about the threads of Aelvesgold linking true lovers together. Had that been his way of telling me that we were bound together?”

“The bastard,” I swore. “He might as well have put a chastity belt on me.”

Duncan looked at me curiously. “So you don’t want to be bound to him?”

“I most certainly do not! I want to make up my own mind about loving him …” Too late I realized what that sounded like. Duncan looked away from me, something flickering darkly in his eyes – disappointment, I guessed, although it looked almost like anger.

“So you’re really not sure how you feel about him.” He started to get up, remembered he was naked under the afghan, and cast a spell that conjured clothes – tightly fitting jeans, a soft white shirt, and a black leather jacket – the perfect outfit to make me sorry that he was going.

“How can I know how I feel about him when I have these wards on me?” I asked, following him to the door. “Is there some way I can remove them?”

Duncan turned to me in the doorway. The porch light shining through the red pane in the fanlight cast a ruby streak across his face, making him look like a savage in war paint. “Do you really want them gone?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded.

“They can be removed the same way as the wards that are blocking your power can be removed. Through transformative magic.”

“But that hasn’t worked,” I objected.

“It is working,” he said. “You felt the power tonight when you were an owl, didn’t you?”

“I did, but then it faded.”

“But you were still strong enough to heal me. And the fact that Liam’s wards are visible is a sign that you are growing powerful enough to shed them. One more transformation and you’ll be strong enough to break through them all.”