“Gabriela.”
Azh growled at the worthless suggestion. “She’s dead. She sacrificed herself to seal the opening.”
“Her magic.”The voice in his mind seemed to fade, as if the Watcher was growing weary. Or perhaps he was dying. A terrifying thought.“Return it to the rift.”
Azh clenched his hands, resisting the futile urge to try to destroy the bubbling slime with his magic. There was every likelihood he would only make things worse.
“You mean the statue?”
“Hurry.”
“How?” Azh growled. “I don’t know where to find the statue.” He grimaced. “Or the rift.”
“Then we die.”
The voice abruptly ended, the sense of the Watcher smothered beneath a pulse of evil that threatened to spill over Azh. He shuddered, turning to send the mage a warning glare.
“Stay with him.”
She stiffened. Her face was pale, as if she’d felt the same pulse of evil, but her courage never faltered.
“I don’t take orders from you,” she snarled.
“If the corruption gets loose we all die. Right now he’s the only thing holding back the magic.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to protect him, I just said I don’t take orders from you.”
Azh rolled his eyes. “Mages.” He turned away, only to stop himself, glancing over his shoulder to deliver another warning. “If you did sense something in the mist, it wasn’t me. Be careful.”
Chapter 10
Azh returned to the hotel, pleasantly surprised to discover Wynn waiting for him. He had expected her to disappear while he was preoccupied. She made a habit of forcing him to track her down.
Pacing the cramped space, Azh shared his conversation with the Watcher word for word. Wynn leaned against the wall, her face pale as she absorbed the depths of the danger they were facing.
This was no longer a fun game of pursuit, while Wynn tried to get rid of a mysterious strand of magic. This was do or die. Perhaps literally.
She studied him with a worried expression. “What could weaken the rift?”
It was a question that gnawed at Azh. “It must be related to Gabriela. It was her magic that created the opening and sealed it after we came to this world. Something must have compromised her powers.”
Wynn pushed away from the wall. “You think I’m responsible?”
Azh halted, confused by her sudden surge of anger. “Of course not. I don’t know what’s happened, but I think it’s possible that the statue was stolen from the cavern where it was hidden and you crossed paths with it at some point.”
Her anger slowly faded, as if realizing he hadn’t been accusing her of deliberately attempting to open the rift.
“I agree,” she said in low tones.
He arched a brow. “Thank you.”
“I wasn’t done,” she chastised. “Even having a potential explanation doesn’t help us.”
“Why not?”
She spread her hands, her expression frustrated. “I’ve spent over a year searching for the object responsible for the mysterious magic. I returned to every vault and safe that I’d...” She took a second to find a word that didn’t make her sound like a thief. It had to be habit. She couldn’t be worried that he was concerned with her habit of taking stuff that didn’t belong to her. He was a dragon. Stealing treasure was a long-honored tradition. “That I’d visited just before I absorbed the magic. When I couldn’t find anything, I started searching through pawnshops and auction houses and private collectors in case it’d been stolen or sold since I touched it.” She waved a hand around the cheap hotel room. “The past few weeks I’ve been stuck in this place, chasing down a dozen rumors of powerful objects. There’s been nothing that resonates with the magic inside me.”
“You can usually sense where the object is located?”
