“Yes. I told you. I told you I wouldn’t let him get away. Couldn’t kill him, this was second best.” He started pacing. “I mean, when Ariana felt a spark from him and I didn’t, I thought it hadn’t worked. But this, feeling this now, obviously it did.”
I shoved a hand through my hair. “Then… you’re saying…?”
“I’m saying, I just felt that piece of shit’s power flare. All that struggle was it ripping through my system as a warning—and the punishing effect of me doing it at all.” His eyes flashed. “Andme getting a lock on him.”
Son of a bitch.“You’ve seriously found him?”
He grinned. “Yeah. So, you wanna end this, or what?”
We rematerialized in Meforian Forest.
To… nothing.
Well, aside from the special gnarled silvery trees, and the soft mist clinging to the forest floor, alongside the gorgeous Celestial Eclipse Peonies all around, their velvety burgundy petals shimmering.
“Win?” Zayn called as we all started scanning the area. “Are you sure this is the right place? I mean, maybe it’s in another area of the forest? I’m sure you got the actual place correct.”
Vaxan and I moved strategically with our backs to the boys. If Ruxnoth was here in hiding, we’d be the first to register it. With him injured, we stood a high chance of being able to counter his speed before he was able to deliver any harm.
“Nothing yet,” Vaxan spoke, holding his hand out behind him to still Zayn who had been spinning around erratically. “Stay close, little Ifrit,” he rumbled, his serpentine eyes coming to the surface, his scales doing the same.
I could feel my eyes blazing with my glacial power in response too, that itch to shift into dragon form right there.
Winter was oblivious to our blocking and even ducked under my arm and stepped beyond it, holding his hands out and calling his amber power to either palm.
“Winter!” I called.
He was too focused, and instead I heard him murmuring to himself. “This isn’t right.”
“Not the right place?” I asked.
“It’s okay, Win,” Zayn said. “You still have the lock on him. We’ll get it. Let’s just try again. I’m totally cool with it not being this place anyway. This misty stuff kind of creeps me out.”
“Unsettled by mist, yet barely one little bit when you were in the Basilisk Dominion with me,” Vaxan commented, actually making me grin, despite the tense situation.
How did they do this to me?
How did we do this to each other?
“No. This isn’t real,” Winter spoke again.
“You’re referring to an illusion?” Vaxan questioned.
“Yes.”
In the next moment, Winter swept his glowing hands over the space between the trees in front of him, about thirty feet across, his magic traveling the distance.
And then we all watched in a whole lot of surprise as a film we hadn’t been able to see or even sense at all before peeled away—a crimson film.
And then we took in the sight of four powerhouses standing there.
Sylas, Kai, and Ketheron were gathered around Ambrose.
They were talking, but it was imperceptible.
Until Winter impacted the illusion again, and their voices gravitated toward us.
“I can’t believe it, yet I also can,” Ketheron was saying as he wrapped an arm around Ambrose, all four of them gazing at something between them that we couldn’t make out from our vantage point with them gathered so close.
