“Wesley?”
“So many sources.” He squeezed his throat and hissed, “You’ll never lay hands on him! What you intended to do… it’s beyond sick and I won’t allow even the threat of that to exist.”
Ansel let out a choked laugh. “You kill me, you’ll lose everything.”
Sylas released him roughly. “You think I’m here in this cell to end you right this instant? Oh no, you shortsighted, simpleton. I’m here to ensure I’ll always have a direct link to you, that I’ll know exactly where you are, through any spell that attempts to conceal your whereabouts. The Guardian Movement thinks a lot of you loyalists here can be rehabilitated. I know better where you’re concerned. And there are several here much like you. Not everyone can be saved. Let me rephrase: not everyone wants to be saved.”
“You tag me the way you’re talking about, it won’t be like the necromantic link those traitors forged so you could death-tether us all in one shot. You’d have to keep a part of me in you. Rotting you, feeling it in you.”
“A small price to pay to protect my son from your depravity.”
“Sy, wait, I—”
“I will come for you,” Sylas rumbled. “You won’t know where or when. But it will happen and it will happen brutally.”
“They’ll trace it back to you. They already think you’re gonna do something to us, take us out.”
“There’s a big difference between accusation and proof. I run a covert organization, I’m deeply connected to another. Do you really think I can’t cover my tracks exceptionally well? You’re back on my turf now. I’m the Almighty Necromancer. There is nowhere you can go where you’ll be safe from me.”
I grimaced. I couldn’t allow Sylas to connect himself to this disgusting being in the manner that had been revealed. Nor any others here who he clearly also had on his list—he’d mentioned“several”out of the fourteen here. The other six had already proven their loyalty and weren’t being held here, instead they’d been settled in apartments that doubled as Guardian Movement safehouses.
I stepped out from my concealment and dropped my camouflage.
“Sylas,” I spoke.
He jolted and spun around, while automatically holding up a flaming crimson palm to Ansel to prevent any attempted rush he might make at him while Sylas had his attention elsewhere.
“Vaxan,” he breathed. “What are you doing here? I’m not currently trackable.”
“Neither am I.”
He registered my meaning. “Interesting.”
“I’ll see to this. I came here to tag them all with a vibrational tether. For me, the way I do it, I won’t feel them in the way you clearly will. It won’t touch me the same.”
Sylas rolled his eyes. “You think this fool can make me feel him and his“rot”in the way he thinks? No.”
“You’re certain?”
He stepped up to me and grasped my hand and I felt the illusion he was erecting encompass me, then he employed anauditory reductionspell that wouldn’t be felt beyond the illusion, and also would ensure Ansel didn’t overhear. Apparently his small bursts of power like slamming Ansel against the wall were just below the detection radar of the Guardian Movement. “Considering I was carrying a Death Seal forged with Morien’s death, and it didn’t touch me for two decades, yes.”
“I see. It would be a similar undertaking.” I knew more about Necromancy than a lot of non-necromantic beings, but this was duly intricate, even for me. “And you mentioned the Death Seal in the past tense. You’ve dissolved it? Because you discovered it could incidentally be used to unmake Winter?”
“Take away his Necromancy, yes.” He eyed me intensely. “No one can know I’ve broken this. No one.”
“I know. You were supposed to keep it as a fail-safe.”
“With everything that’s happened, things have altered.”
“I understand. Believe me. But what about you employing it in the first place to prevent you ever being used to track Winter?”
“He’s beyond that now. He’s come into his power. He doesn’t need that level of protection from me anymore. What he did… how he not only survived Sanctus, but was key to engineering its destruction… he’s a force on his own now.”
This was… incredible. “I’m sure he’d like to hear that from you.”
“You mean, he needs to hear it.”
I started. “What precisely happened in the Veil? He was rooted there for far too long, given his nature.”
