The wrongness of it makes my magic recoil. There’s iron in Vel. Someone has attacked her.
I try to breathe through it the way I’ve learned to breathe through the blood bond’s intrusions, and work to separate herpain from my awareness so I can think, but before I can get control another wave hits.
This one comes from Alleria.
Terror slams into me. Raw, animal panic that floods my senses so completely I lose track of where I am. Her heartbeat pounds in my ears, too fast, stuttering with fear, and underneath the fear there’s something worse.
Betrayal.
She trusted someone. She trusted?—
I’m pulled down the bond and into her head.
The images come in fragments, overlapping with Vel’s pain until I can’t separate them. Hands grabbing her arms. A voice she knows. Afaceshe knows. Nella crying. Soldiers in the trees. The whistle of an arrow. Vel appearing from nowhere, fast and furious, then jerking backward as an arrow takes her in the shoulder. Vel going down.
Alleria trying to scream. A hand clamping over her mouth. The world tilting as someone lifts her off her feet. A man’s face—one she recognizes—followed by a blow to the side of her head. And then?—
Nothing.
One moment she’s there, screaming through the connection without making a sound, and the next there’s nothing. The bond still exists, I’d know if she were dead, but she’s not conscious. Someone hit her hard enough to knock her out.
Someone took her.
I’m thrown back into my body with a violence that leaves me gasping. I’m on my knees, on the floor. I don’t remember falling. Sweat drips down my face, and my hands are shaking where they’re braced against the wood.
“Cairn.” Therin’s hand is on my shoulder. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
I try to answer, but the words won’t come. The Nightwild bond is still pulsing with Vel’s pain, while the blood bond echoes with an emptiness where Alleria should be.
“Vel.” I force the word out. “She’s hurt. Iron.”
Therin’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Can you tell where?”
I reach for the thread, push past the pain, and follow it. “Not far. Edge of the village, maybe.” I swallow hard. “But that’s not all. Someone has taken Alleria.”
Kaelith is already standing, and Sorel is halfway to the door.
“Let’s go.” Therin hauls me to my feet.
My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The bonds are still screaming—Vel’s pain, Alleria’s absence—and I have to shove it all down to make my body work.
We go through the inn and out into the street, and I track Vel through the Nightwild magic, letting the thread of pain guide me like a rope.
Twenty feet from the clearing where Therin trains Alleria, we find her. She’s on her knees, one hand pressed to her shoulder. Blood seeps between her fingers, where they’re clutching the arrow protruding out of her.
I can smell the iron from where I’m standing. That flat, metallic, wrongness that makes my magic want to crawl out of my skin.
When she sees us, she tries to stand.
“Don’t.” I drop to my knees beside her. “Stay still.”
“It’s barbed.” She spits the words through clenched teeth. “I tried to pull it out. Made it worse.”
Therin crouches on her other side, examining the wound without touching it. Kaelith and Sorel have separated, moving through the trees. Vessara stands over us, her eyes moving constantly. Serath and Caelum position themselves at our back.
Old instincts. Old formations.
“What happened?”
