Unbinding Read Free Page B

true.
    Finding out she had a bit of elf blood in her veins had been almost as much of a shock as learning she wasn’t some kind of weird telepath the way she’d thought all her life. Kai didn’t read thoughts. She saw them. She could change them. For twenty-seven years she’d tried her damnedest not to dabble around in other people’s heads, and mostly she’d succeeded.
    Now, though, she was supposed to dabble. Carefully. Very carefully.
    Arjenie tapped the wheel again to disconnect. “I should’ve let Doug know our plans changed. I keep forgetting I have guards now. But what I was about to say is, how would Eharin know if those drops affect your Gift? Her mindhealing doesn’t work like yours and she’s never been to Earth, much less experienced tropicamide.”
    “Tropical who?”
    “Tropicamide. It’s the most commonly used mydriatic for eye exams.” Arjenie stopped at the parking lot’s exit. Traffic was heavy, and she’d need a big enough gap for her guards to follow in their white Toyota. At least Kai assumed that’s what the blurry white shape behind them was. She couldn’t see much of the car for the colors . . . fascinating colors.
    Dammit. Having her eyes dilated had never been this bad before. Kai made herself focus on what Arjenie was saying.
    “. . . though it’s possible they used phenylephrine today. You should probably find out, because if you get the surgery you’ll be using drops for several days, and you don’t want to use whatever they gave you today. Probably the surgeon will prescribe something that lasts longer than tropicamide, but still. You’ll want to be sure. Assuming you got a green light for the surgery?”
    Kai had to grin. Arjenie insisted she wasn’t a genius, but she came close enough for most purposes. “You knew all that right off the top of your head.”
    “I looked into Lasik surgery for myself at one point.” At last a large enough gap in the traffic flow appeared and Arjenie pulled out. “That was mostly wishful thinking. My peculiar healing would just put my eyes back the way they are now. It might take a couple years, but that’s likely what would happen.”
    “Because changing the setting for a part of the body takes body magic, not healing.”
    “Right, and I’ve got zero body magic. So did the surgeon consider you a good candidate for the surgery?”
    “It’s a go if I decide to do it.” The pretty blue of Arjenie’s thoughts had sharpened to an eye-popping turquoise that danced with the yellow and green in such an intricate way, it was hard not to watch. Hard not to . . . hell. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to fall into fugue. She hadn’t had that problem in a long time.
    “If?” Arjenie said. “I thought you’d made up your mind.”
    “I thought I had, too.” Kai sighed and closed her eyes and leaned her head against the headrest.
    These days she could dial her Gift up or down, depending on the needs of the moment. Mostly she left it dialed down enough that thought-remnants weren’t visible and current thoughts were the merest watercolor overlay. That sure wasn’t working now. Having her eyes dilated had always sharpened her Gift to a distracting intensity, but it had never been this bad before.
    Eharin was wrong, dammit. The problem wasn’t with Kai’s perception of how her Gift worked. The problem was with the drops themselves. They’d screwed with her Gift.
    There
was
another option . . .
    “What happened? You were pretty keen on getting your eyes fixed.”
    “It’s the timing. Dr. Piresh won’t be able to schedule me for another month.”
    “And you don’t know if you’ll be here that long.”
    Kai nodded. “I could go ahead and set it up, I suppose, and cancel if Nathan gets sent somewhere.” Or she could just stay here while he did his Queen’s bidding. The idea of waving goodbye as he went off to who-knows-where to do God-knew-what did not sit well, which was just silly. Nathan had managed to keep