She glanced back at the cottage, a strange dread rising through her. Something felt wrong. Deeply wrong. But she shook it off. The disquiet churning in her belly was completely understandable. No one wanted to see their ex.
Stupid James, making her feel this way! Riley picked a small stone off the drive and threw it roughly into the meadow. And then she threw another, and another in a flurry of anger and hurt. It didn’t help settle that growing unease. Not even a little.
She let her head hang for a long moment before lifting it and rolling back her shoulders. A broken heart wasn’t going to stop her. She wasn’t so easy to defeat.
She fell back into her training, taking slow, steady breaths as she picked out the Shadow signatures of the herbs and flowers nearby. Identifying which could be used for Healing, and which would harm the animals that lived there. Which were safe for humans, and which were not. Forcing her Shadows to settle.
She had worked in hospitals for years, so if there was one thing she knew, it was how to mask her emotions. It was time to face him… ah,them. Kay and Ethan, Elizabeth, David, Bryn, and James, who were all already in the cottage. And Emma and Zach, too, when they arrived.
She lifted her chin and strode forward. The front door led to a cramped hallway that opened onto a small front room with whitewashed walls and dark beams crossing the ceiling. A row of narrow windows let in shafts of summer sunlight, illuminating the huge bookcases covering two walls. The shelves were filled with medical books—ancient and new—and her fingers itched to pull out one of the illustrated herbals and settle into a faded armchair with a cup of tea. In a perfect world, a world without Gordon’s machinations and James’s betrayal, she could almost imagine sitting in that cozy room, chatting and laughing with the rest of the Circle.
But something was off. Something bigger than the knowledge that those books, these friends, the life she might have dreamed of… was not for her.
Elizabeth glanced up from where she was pouring tea for everyone, took one look at Riley, and frowned. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something feels….” Riley shrugged. She couldn’t explain the unease skittering along the back of her neck and tangling in her belly. She wasn’t a Seer. She was a woman whose heart had been shredded.
Elizabeth nodded, gripping the teacup almost too tightly. “I agree. Something has been scratching at my nerves since we got here.”
“Me too,” Kay agreed. “But we’re all safe. And Zach and Emma will be back soon. I thought maybe I was still coming down from rescuing Emma…. Or perhaps it’s the knowledge that Gordon is still out there, consolidating his power?”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Riley replied. It didn’t make any sense, but somehow, she knew Kay was mistaken. “It’s something else.”
David and Bryn turned from their quiet conversation to focus on Riley, and suddenly everyone was looking at her. Their gazes prickled, and she fought the urge to smooth her hair. But the feeling that something was fundamentally amiss kept growing, overriding even that discomfort.
There was a subtle resonance vibrating through the cottage. A feeling of… desperation, perhaps? And there was also a curious, worrying emptiness.
Since she was very young, she’d reached out to the creatures around her. Knowing that they were alive and well had given her the sense that she was not entirely alone. Now, reaching out for an awareness of other life came as naturally as breathing.
She expanded her Shadows out through the cottage, searching for heartbeats, vitality, any kind of energy, any other Shadows.
The front room was full of life. But the upstairs wasnot.
“Where’s James?” Riley asked, ignoring the way her Shadows tumbled through her belly and how her voice rose in pitch. “Did he go out?”
“I don’t think so.” Kay stood, worry etched over her face. “I haven’t been upstairs since we got back. I didn’t want to disturb him.”
“He wouldn’t want to know his cousin was safe?” Riley snapped. She wasn’t certain who she was more irritated with—Kay for not checking on James, or James, who clearly didn’t care about his family enough to ask after them—but she couldn’t keep the annoyance from her voice, either way.
Kay folded her arms across her chest. “Of course he would want to know,” she argued, her tone sharp. “And if you don’t appreciate just how good a man James is, then perhaps you should never have been in a relationship with him in the first place.”
Riley shoved her hands in her pockets and tried to breathe. They were all overtired and overwrought. Kay was protecting James, just as she’d done when Riley first arrived in Wales. And, in fairness, what she’d said about James had been provocative. She knew as well as anyone what hours of running on adrenaline did to a body, but the fear thrumming through her was making it difficult to be patient.
“You weren’t here, Riley,” Ethan offered gently. “You don’t know what James went through. You weren’t here listening to him—”
Kay cleared her throat, stopping him from sharing any more, and Ethan paused to consider his words before finishing with a quiet, “James needs to rest. It’s a good thing if he can get some sleep.”
Clearly, it wasn’t what he’d been about to say. They were all defending James in some way, but Riley let it go. There were more important concerns to focus on. Her irritation crystalized directly on the main problem—no one had checked on James. “I’m certain James is gone,” she insisted.
“Let’s go and see.” Kay strode toward the narrow stairway at the back of the cottage, with Riley close behind, but before they took more than three steps, a low groan broke the tense silence.
Riley spun, looking for the source of the distress, already calling her Shadows. Her gaze immediately landed on Elizabeth. The older woman shuddered,her knuckles white on the arms of the faded sofa. She had closed her eyes, lashes fluttering as her pupils darted back and forth, gripped by images only she could see.
Riley stepped closer, ready to offer supportasElizabeth’s Shadows swirled, ruby and charcoal. Strange and distorted images flickered in their depths in the way of only the most powerful and accomplished Seers. But after that initial moan, Elizabeth didn’t make a single sound. Instead, she seemed to grow still, to fully settle into the vision.
Riley had been a Healer for nearly a decade, working with all kinds of Dru-vid, and she had never seen such a high level of control before.
Everyone in the room was frozen, waiting in silence until Elizabeth’s eyes flew open, and she stared into the distance. Her face was blank. Her Shadows still danced and flickered, but her voice was toneless as she recounted what she Saw. “Darkness. Shadows creeping over my throat ever tighter. Pain. Rage. I don’t—” Wood creaked beneath Elizabeth’s fingers as she followed her vision.
