She had also left behind the whisper of her magic.
Magic she shouldn’t have possessed.
My jaw clenched, the room darkening as my power responded to the shift in my mood, shadows stretching, tightening along the walls. My collection of books and artifacts vibrated in place as the shelves shook as if trembling in fear of my wrath.
“How?” I murmured, more to the wards than to myself.
They did not answer, of course, because they had not failed. Which meant only one thing. I straightened slowly, my expression settling into something far calmer than the storm churning beneath it. She had not escaped by chance. She had been helped. Shielded. Guided. There was no other explanation for it.
The thought made my demon snarl, jealous and furious at the idea of another entity touching what we had already claimed. My demon and I. But beneath that fury was certainty.
I knew her name.
I knew where she worked.
And now, I knew that whatever had followed her into my domain was still with her. Still clinging on and refusing to retract its claws that had latched onto her very essence.
Well, not for fucking long!
I turned toward the door.
“Torin!” I called, my voice carrying enough that he was there instantly.
“She’s gone?” he said, with surprise, for he knew better than most how impossible that should have been for her to do.
“Yes,”I gritted out, my eyes still fixed on the space she had occupied.
“But that shouldn’t have been possible,” he commented, making me snarl,
“No, it should not.”
The book lay heavy in my hand as I slammed it shut.
“Bring me everything,” I continued, my voice low and lethal, as I released the ancient tome on portals and pathways between realms, letting the book shoot back to its place upon the shelf.
“Every feed. Every ward reading. Every trace of interference. I want to know who helped her, and how,” I demanded as my fingers curled into a fist at my side.
Torin nodded once.
“And the girl?”
A slow smile curved my mouth, dark and assured.
“I will find her.” Because running did not mean escape. It only meant the hunt had begun. Something she would soon discover for herself.
As for my orders, Torin returned within minutes, though time had lost any real meaning. My attention was already fractured as I paced the length of the office, replaying every moment I had spent with her. Every word. Every hesitation.Every breath she had taken, as though committing them to memory might somehow pull her back into the room.
“She didn’t break the wards,” Torin informed me carefully, holding the tablet out to me.
“Not directly anyway.”
I stopped dead. Slowly, I turned toward him, my gaze lifting in a way that made him straighten instinctively.
“Explain,” I snapped.
He swallowed, then continued.
“There was no surge. No backlash. Nothing forced. Whatever helped her slip through, it did it quietly, threading the gaps rather than tearing them open.” That confirmed what I had already begun to suspect.
