“Everything is calm,” his voice rumbled through the cave as the breeze shifted through the door, tugging at the ribbon I held in my hand, but I wasn’t ready to let go. “That doesn’t mean it will be safe. I need to know if Edmund is close. I cannot assume he has stayed in Spain.” His eyes held mine as his thoughts overran the words he spoke—the anger at Sain’s lies, the fear over what it could mean, broken sights and mislaid trust.
Knowing the city was safe should have brought calm, but it didn’t. It couldn’t. Not with the new unknown we faced. If the attack hadn’t happened yet, when would it? What trap were we walking into if there was one at all?
“If he’s stayed in Spain, then I’m about as desirable as a popcorn fart,” Wyn scoffed with a laugh.
My eyebrows rose as I tried to decipher the words that had leaked from her. She didn’t seem to care. She only rolled her eyes at me before looking back to Ilyan, her jaw tightening as an old magic came over her.
“I’ll find him.”
I didn’t dare move as Wyn’s magic swelled and grew before it moved through the floor beneath me, the heat burning the soles of my feet again.
I stood still in the darkness of the cave, my shoulders tight and taut as I looked from Wyn to Ilyan, watching the way his muscles rippled with a fear that was infecting me as the babble outside only grew. I could tell in the way his magic pulsed through me, his emotions carried on its back like little, black boats of warning.
Warnings that came louder than I would have liked.
“I can’t find him, Ilyan,” Wyn said, her body tensing as if she was preparing for the doors to open and a battle to begin. “There is something different, but it’s a long way off.”
“Siln??”
I swallowed once as I met his gaze, my insecurities bubbling for only a moment before my jaw squared, and my magic surged in heat and excitement, as if the power itself had heard him and was ready to answer.
I felt a pulse of Ilyan’s magic surge, his lips twitching as he let his power move through our bond, the heat a heady reminder of support and love. I couldn’t stop the smile that spread over my face as the heat grew, as my fingers flexed, and as Ilyan’s voice filled my mind.
Find him, my love. If anyone can find him, it will be you.
I knew it was true as much as he did. My heart picked up as my magic bubbled to life, the excitement growing as if Ilyan’s words had been all that was needed to open the floodgates.
Ilyan’s magic melded with mine, the power seamlessly blending together as I closed my eyes and let the magic spread away from me.
I could still hear the excited babble of the people beyond the gates, feel the calm and the enjoyment of the crisp fall day of the mortals as they shopped in the markets. They went about their day to day life as if nothing was happening other than the threat of rain the weather forecaster had given them on the news that morning.
I moved through the city streets with eyes that took in every detail. The white washed stone walls, the ancient statues, the ruddy brown of the river—I saw it all.
My heart beat faster as I recognized many of the buildings from my sight, saw the red shingled roofs of the old town. Except, it was different.
There was no fire. There was no screaming. It was a city before the sight had come, a city as I had never seen it before.
It was beautiful.
Or it would have been if it wasn’t for the odd pull that was laced behind the laughter underneath the sunny cobbled streets. Something lived underneath the joyful exterior, something that only increased my fear.
It was different than the rancid magic of the Vil?s, different than the pained swells of the earth I had felt when flying through the trees in Spain. It was a thing so raw and vile that it twisted through me. It was the pockets of fear that hid in abandoned buildings and the rippling agony that slithered through the sewers.
I gasped as the tension moved into me, my muscles twisting in anxiety that should have been a warning to stop. However, I couldn’t. I needed to know where Edmund was, and more than that, I needed to know what was coming. How true my sight had been.
If it had been.
I pushed my magic farther, away from the center of town, away from the towering doors we were all clustered behind. The more I pushed, the worse the plague of fear grew. The more my magic buckled underneath it.
It crept into my soul with the same agitated fury I had felt in Spain, the pressure and fear seeming to grow within me until I reached the forest that surrounded the sprawling city along with the surges of magic that grew and swelled amongst the trees and farms that were clustered there.
I knew I was close. I could feel the faint throb of Edmund’s power now. I could feel his hatred. I could feel the black tar of his magic where it had leeched into the soil and poisoned it.
I continued to push, letting my magic trail after the ripples of power that I felt, but the farther I stretched, the weaker the fingers of my power became, until it was only wispy shadows that retreated back into me like a tape measure. I panted as I fell to my knees.