[Place Holder 1-5
"This," I said, "is a gift from my master. A small token, in case I ever needed to prove myself to people too stubborn to take me at my word."
Erazel's eyes narrowed, tracking the orb with the kind of attention that told me she was already trying to calculate what it was. Aeden, on the other hand, just scoffed.
"A trinket. That's your proof?"
"Patience. I was getting there."
I closed my eyes, letting my expression settle into something appropriately solemn, and began to move my free hand in slow, deliberate arcs above the orb. There was no actual spell to it. No incantation, no technique passed down through some ancient healing lineage. Just theater, the kind I'd perfected over years of pretending to be exactly the amount of dangerous I wanted people to think I was.
But the orb didn't need my help to be convincing.
