Rye ordered them to stop standing around and search my satchel. Mysatchel— I ground my teeth — with the Everblade in it.
Rye crouched in front of me, his fingers deftly moving to unspool the length of rope with efficiency, reminding me of Leland and stoking the pain of missing him. My anger burned hotter as Rye tied down my wrists.
“Imeant,” I said, enraged to have to break it down for them, “what do you mean youlosthimat four? Leland was here? He was in the catacombs?”
My one flicker of hope was this: if Leland left the catacombs at four, he could’ve been back in Creatus when the shadows were seen thirty minutes later, which meant he could be with the missing Sevens, as Loree had said, as I originally thoughtbeforeJaxan planted the catacombs in my head. Not dead, but alive in Helen’s Shadowrealm.
“He was,” said Rye, “physically.” More low chuckles sounded in response.
This close, I spied red splatters like sprays of flying blood all over his dark clothing. And snapped. There was something unsettling about me in withdrawal. Something on the precipice of calamity when my blood churned, a deep, buried darkness rising to the surface to burn, and the Ember who usually ran to get out of the way wanted to stay and play and be destructive.
I aimed a kick at Rye’s groin, but he dodged it with a laugh, then ordered his coven to tie my feet, just as the rustling through my satchel ceased.
“Er . . . Rye?” I heard it in their voice, the weight of the Everblade in their hand.
“The Everblade,” Rye said, his eyes flashing sinisterly as he reached to take it. He looked at me with revulsion. “You hadthison you, and you didn’t try to use it?”
“Yeeep,” I said. “Itold you. I didn’t come here to start anything. I came to find Leland.” Though the longer this went on, the more that was changing.
“You should’ve used it,” he tutted. “I’d tell you to remember for next time, but — ” The knife point hovered a breath away from the small divot in the middle of my collarbone. “There won’t be one.”
I was stock-still as Rye lifted the blade to admire his reflection in its gleam. “What do you know about it?” he asked, angling the knife to catch his side profile. “It cuts through everything automatically? Or does it depend how its wielded?”
“Only one way to find out,” one of his coven laughed.
“I was talking to the half witch.”
“I don’t know,” I said bitterly. “I’ve never seen it used on a person. I’ve only seen it destroy an artifact and a flask.”
Rye took the blade to the neck of my shirt and applied the finest amount of pressure, drawing the point in a slow semicircle that arced a deep U down my chest and back up again. I glowered at him as the cut piece of fabric fluttered to the ground, cold air leeching warmth from my freshly exposed skin.
He pressed the knife tip back to my skin, drawing a trickle of blood that rolled down my sternum. I knew he wanted me to scream for Leland, but this wasn’t worse than how it felt to lose him. And I knew Leland wasn’t coming. If he could, he’d already be here.
Rye carved a long slice down my arm, opening my skin in a narrow papercut starting at the knob of my shoulder. A few times, he pretended to lose control, the knife slipping. He found this more amusing than I did.
“You know he said you were a job?” Rye murmured. “It’s how I figured you were special to him. Perhaps not as special as his other lovers. But special enough. For now.” Slowly, he dragged the knife back up the opening he’d made, deepening it. “Until he finds another who’s more interesting.”
The turmoil that had been brewing within me since I walked across the marble bridge intensified into the same hot feeling of possessive jealousy I got when I needed to claim Leland as my own. The burning sensation just like the one that came before I evaporated. I was furious, boiling. Ready to rip free. I wanted to snatch the knife and gut Rye Cackrin.
But more than that, I wanted Leland.
Otherwise, I would’ve paused to savor Rye’s mystified expression as the ropes around my wrists and feet slipped free, all of me disappearing in a singular moment. Without the magic suppressants, I’d skipped flickering and went straight to invisible. I was ether now.
Rye didn’t know what to do.
His coven grabbed at air, searching out my mass to no avail. By sheer will, I flew the hundred feet to the thin trace of light at the end of the tunnel, not knowing how long I had and wasting no time propelling myself through air. The steps to the street level came into view, and with shadows racing toward me, I thrust myself in an upward direction and landed on the rain-covered ground. I did not turn back. I reached the portstop and left the ether.
Something about the egress’s quantum magic restored my bodily form. Corporeal again, I traveled through the storm of twisting light, wishing I could tell Leland.
I figured it out. A way to get me back which isn’t intimacy or touching.
But Leland was missing, so I could tell him nothing.
* * *
Back in Creatus, I burst through the hatch to the academy as water bursts through a dam, turbulent and indifferent to anyone in my path. Case had sent a few messages urging me to read the letter in Leland’s desk in case it explained where he went. I didn’t want to read what Leland never intended me to see while he lived, and my stomach revolted at the idea of invading his privacy, but the longer Leland was gone, the more I agreed I had to do it.
Vyra was in my way as I sped down the hatch passage. “Don’t you look horrendous,” she remarked.
