Not with what I still needed to do.
I needed to find out where they had stuttered to. We needed to catch up before it was too late, before we lost them.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, my magic stretching away from me, spreading through the city as I moved on to my next task without hesitation—desperately searching for any trace of the magic I had been tracking, eager to catch them. We were so close. I couldn’t let them get away.
I tried to control my breathing as the deep vein of the earth’s magic filled me, the force of it so much stronger than I had ever felt. My body swayed abruptly as it filled me, as my power reacted to it in a frightening wave of power.
At any other time, I would have embraced it, would have pulled it into me, but the power was too much. Besides, it wasn’t the heavy power of the earth I was interested in. It was the residue of the magic left behind, the vile and distorted power that we had been tracking.
“Can you feel them, mi lasko?” Ilyan whispered from beside me, his hand winding around my waist as he leaned against me, his chest pressing into my back, his magic filling me.
The addition of his power bolstered me with the supportive warmth I craved. The joining of our magic was a surge of energy that seemed unstoppable at times.
Closing my eyes, I let my magic move, speeding through the city, through streets I had never seen, through houses that lay in ruins, my mind, my magic searching for any trace of the cloaked man, of where he had gone.
Every other time he had stuttered, it was a quick search, but this time, he was gone.
“Nothing,” I said, my shoulders sagging. Ilyan’s arm continued to hold me against him as my eyes snapped open to the street before us. “There is nothing left.”
It was as Ilyan had told me long ago—stutters left nothing behind. I could find nothing. Although Edmund could somehow track that magic past the blackness of a stutter, that ability obviously did not lie with me.
“Nothing?” he asked, his voice shaking in my ear before he moved away from me, his hand still resting on my hip.
“No, I can’t follow the stutter,” I said slowly, the harsh reality of what had really happened slowly sinking in. “It’s like they … left.”
“Through the barrier,” Ilyan said slowly, his mind following right along with mine. “Someone can stutter through the barrier.”
Ilyan’s awe and dread moved through me, the emotion strong and frightening, and for good reason. It was more than a stutter; it was someone who could stutter through Edmund’s fish bowl.
It was something we had tried multiple times, all without success, but … someone could. No, not just someone. And not just the cloaked man, either.
“No, Ilyan, one of Edmund’s men can move through the wall,” I corrected, and Ilyan froze. My forehead wrinkled as deeply as his did. “It wasn’t Edmund, but the magic required…”
My open question faded into the darkness as Ilyan turned away, the muscles in his shoulders tensing as his temper pulsed through me. His thoughts moved so fast I couldn’t hope to keep up with them.
“He’s done something to them. Whatever he did to those Vil?s, he’s mutated their magic, strengthened it. Strengthened them.” He turned back to me, the quick movement making me jump.
“Do you think it was one of his Chosen?” I asked, not wanting to think about those poor people Edmund had destroyed.
The Chosen we had found in the first few days after the ambush had seemed … normal. I had been able to remove the tainted magic and save them. But the more time went on, the less human those bitten by Edmund’s Vil?s became.
We had found a few survivors over the last few days, and what those Vil?s had done to them still twisted my stomach. No matter how hard I tried, I hadn’t been able to help them. The truth of what Edmund had done sickened me.
“It could be, or it could be someone who is working for him.” Ilyan’s thoughts stabilized as he spoke, images flooding into me as his mind moved someplace we had visited many times before.
But with no proof, with no real evidence against him besides him being a disagreeable, old man, we couldn’t do anything.
Not unless we found proof.
“We need to get back,” he announced, his voice heavy with the same authoritative tone I had gotten used to when he went into war mode. “We need to do a count, find out if someone’s missing.”
“You mean we need to check to see if Sain is there.” My voice was hard, the anger that always erupted at his name taking over.
“Yes,” he agreed, his bright blue eyes meeting mine with a whip of energy. “It might be what we need.”
My heart pulsed heavily as I looked at him, my hands in tight fists around the soft fabric of my jeans.