“We know,” Aila said.
Realizing I was still pressed against Leland, my hair untidy from my nap, I scooted an inch to the right and smoothed my hair with a hand, trying to ignore my chest clenching like I’d lostthe one thing I’d stay in a burning building to grab. Just one inch to the right, and my blood had to protest. I tried to keep my face from showing it, but Aila saw. I got the impression she saw most things.
“Did you bring the gold?” Aila asked Leland. A snake poked its head out of her satchel and hissed.
I gave it a weak smile of acknowledgment, wondering why everyone Leland associated with was a Seven. Ash, Trist, Aila. Skye, potentially. And me, for lack of a better term.
“A thousand, we said?”
My mouth popped open.
Athousandgold?
This whole meeting was taking place in Privacy, with Aila on edge and an Enchantress who helped them enter invisibly. Not to mention the nature of our meeting location, a place where every server’s memory was wiped at the end of the day. My thoughts flashed to all the long-sleeved shirts Skye had picked out for me, at what I now guessed was Leland’s instruction. To keep my wrists covered and the magic suppressants concealed. I didn’t think magic suppressants were rare. In that moment, I realized they were illegal.
Aila placed a white shopping bag on the table and stood in synchrony with Ari. “I have no others if she burns through them.”
Leland tossed Aila the heavy sack of gold, and she caught it in her satchel without a thought, her lips pursed as she settled the satchel’s strap on her shoulder. “It’s been a pleasure, Leland. Tell Vyra” — she looked directly at me, though she was definitely speaking to him — “that we say hi. And I hope her voice has recovered from all the moaning last night I’m certain wasn’t real.”
Moaning?
Vyra was with Leland andmoaning?
Everything went to hell.
My blood was scorching, mere seconds away from what I knew came next, glitching followed by an unwanted tug to the ether.
Leland cast Pitch Black, drowning out all light. His arm swung out, looping around my waist as he searched for my wrists and fixed the cuffs on me. The cold rings of iron were smooth on my skin, and Leland’s hands were firm, holding me steady against the hard wall of his side.
“Put the lights back on, Leland,” Aila said through her teeth.
His mouth dropped to my ear, and I gasped. “You don’t have these,” he whispered.
I shrugged away from the intimacy of his breath.
“Keep them hidden.”
“Lights!” Aila’s voice was sharp, threatening to rip him apart.
“I got it,” I said defensively, tugging my sleeves down. I knew I was whole. I had to be for his arm to be wrapped so tight. “You can let me go now.”
He released me.
There was a flash of light so brief I might’ve imagined it, then the room darkened.
Though this darkness wasn’t Pitch Black. It was a different kind.
Wind kicked up, and by the time I registered that it shouldn’t have, a gust tore through the room, forcefully dividing us. Shadows itched my nose and made me cough.
Shadowcurrents.
Somewhere far away from me, Leland yelled over the roar. “That’s not me! I can’t dispel it.”
Waitstaff stampeded up the cellar’s stairs. I ran toward the shadowy whirlwind, my heart thundering at the sound of casual footsteps slowly crunching within it.
Jaxan?
He was a Dark Witch, warded away from this club —
