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didn’t know. He didn’t see what a stranger had noticed easily.
    ”How do your hands feel?” Konrad asked.
    She stared down at him. The blush had faded with knowledge that Konrad felt nothing when he touched her. When he’d carried her downstairs, the feel of his body against hers had thrilled her. To him it was just another task. Another sick person to be tended.
    ”They don’t hurt,” she said.
    He nodded and stood, taking the cloth to clean it and set it to dry. He never glanced back.
    ”Do you want the tea, Elaine?” Mala asked.
    Elaine shook her head.
    Mala took the offending mug away. She didn’t even flirt with the mage. ”Tell me of your visions,”
    Gersalius said. His voice was gentle, as if he knew what she had just realized. Since he was reading her thoughts, he probably did know.
    Her first reaction was anger. How dare he spy on her feelings? She opened her mouth to tell him to get out, to leave her alone, but the look in his blue eyes was too kind, his face too understanding.’
    ”I would not hear your thoughts quite so clearly if I could help it. You give off your thoughts like the sparks from a fire. You shine, Elaine. You shine with so much talent. When I learned how old you were and that you had never been trained, I thought your abilities would be small. How else could the magic have stayed so controlled for so long?”
    His face was suddenly serious. He leaned toward her, and Elaine found herself moving closer to the mage. ”The strength of your will is fierce, Elaine. You did not want to be a mage, so you squashed the magic down inside of you. You locked it away with pure, shining determination. If you could turn that strength toward learning magic, you would be formidable. And you would learn quickly.” From inches away, she stared into his eyes. He was whispering to her before the fire, a conspirator. His power glided over her skin like wind. The hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms rose. Her skin crept with it. She felt something inside herself flare upward, something neither fire nor cold nor anything she had a name for. Whatever it was, Elaine felt it pouring up through her body, responding to the mage’s magic.
    Like calling to like. Elaine took a soft, shallow breath. She’d been holding her breath without realizing it.
    Her fingertips tingled as if magic would pour from her hands. She had the urge to touch the mage, to see if the pull of magic was stronger with a touch. She suspected it would be. She wanted to touch his hand.
    Her skin ached with the need to see what would happen. With the need came the fear. She crossed her arms over her stomach, hiding her hands against her body. They balled into fists, digging into her sides, as if they would burrow out of sight. It took all the determination Gersalius had spoken of not to reach out to the mage.
    She sat back in her chair as far from him as she could get without standing up. Gersalius leaned back from her, giving her room. ”It can be stronger when mage touches mage. It depends on what sort of magic a person possesses. Yours, even more than mine, is a laying on of the hands, I think.” ”How can you tell that?”
    He shrugged, smiled. ”It is one of my gifts to judge talent in others. Most mages can spot power and judge potential strength, but few can decipher the actual method the magic will choose to come out.”
    ”The magic chooses the way it will come out?” She made it a question, so he answered it.
    ”Often. If you had been trained earlier, perhaps you could have chosen the path of your own power, perhaps not. But now the magic has made some of the choices on its own. Your visions, for one.”
    Elaine shook her head. ”You make magic sound like a second being inside of me, with a will of its own.”
    ”I do not mean to. It is not separate from you. It has no thoughts or feelings of its own.” The wizard frowned, thinking. He smiled as if something pleasant or clever had just occurred to him. ”Say