Hazel slowly nodded. “Okay. I can understand wanting to stay at the Cloisters for updates. I’m sure they’ll let you stay,but if you need a break, call me. Here, what’s your number?” She fumbled with the pockets of her white parka, and eventually yanked out her cellphone.
We swapped numbers—I already had Killian’s, which is how I’d reached out to him as soon as we’d returned to an empty street.
“We need to check in with your captain and sergeant,” Killian said. “But we’ll touch base before we leave.”
“Understood. Thank you.” I bowed again.
“Jade…” Killian paused, his eyebrows furrowing as he gazed out over the teaming street. “Don’t blame yourself for this. The dragon used a prophecy against you. You didn’t stand a chance.”
My shoulders almost fell, but my training was starting to kick in and replace the freefalling hopelessness from earlier.He’s right. But that doesn’t change that I’m failing him now, in my inability to find him.
“I’m sure it’s not a consolation,” Hazel said, “but Considine would have wanted to be taken over you getting hurt. And selfishly, I’m glad he was.”
Sunshine stirred next to me. “If you don’t mind my asking, Adept Medeis, why is that?”
Hazel looked from me to the Curia Cloisters employees sweeping around us. “Because if something had happened to Jade…I’m not sure Magiford would have survived it.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Considine
Iwoke up to darkness, and a horrible case of dry mouth from whatever that wretched potion was that a selkie had broken in my face and subsequently knocked me unconscious.
I was caught—by a dragon shifter! This is humiliating beyond measure.
The darkness didn’t bother me. I was a vampire. Darkness was my element.
But it was so dark, even my superior night vision couldn’t make out anything.
I could tell I was lying flat on my back, facing up. When I tried to move, my limbs felt heavy and my grasp on consciousness wavered.
I cautiously felt around my surroundings, slamming my hands into something metal. I followed seams in the shape with my fingertips, tracing out the enclosed space I was in.
Long and rectangular in shape, with enough space to slightly sit up, it took me a moment to figure out what I was in.
A coffin, I realized, fury boiling within me.
That winged lizard put me in a metal coffin!
Clearly, she’d been planning for this. She’d practically announced she’d gotten a prophecy to plan it all out, and was still stupidly obsessed with breaking into her sister’s domain.
Dragons. Always blinded by greed.
Although perhaps I shouldn’t look down so much on her. She’d managed to catch me, after all.
In my defense, the potion had caught me off-guard. I’d never imagined there was a potion out there thatcouldknock me out—my healing abilities should have cleared it, fast.
Its concentration must have been ridiculously high.
It was still embarrassing. I’d been about to send out a command to the vampires in the area with Jade safely out of the way. Apparently I’d waited too long, or perhaps thought a little too highly of my own abilities.
My ears picked up on a hissing noise, and I found a tube that hissed with air.
At least she’s not trying to suffocate me.
That would have been the easiest way to kill me, though it would have taken a while. When the oxygen levels dropped my body would have fallen into the stasis-like state vampires enter when sleeping for years, and I could survive a long time on little oxygen like that.
