It was as if the floodgates opened after that, with each new family Viri sought out revealing—with tears in their eyes—that their children were still missing.
Thirteen-year-old Avelin, missing for two months.
Nine-year-old Dale, missing for six weeks.
Twelve-year-old Makir, missing for fifteen days.
Ten-year-old Lilly, missing for three months.
The list continued, the ages ranging from seven to thirteen years old, all children young enough not to have undergone the Impartation ceremony yet, their ellixen strong—and ripe for siphoning.
Viri felt sick every time she knocked on a new door to find another teary-eyed parent looking at her with hope, only to see that bleed away when she had no news. As the numbers passed into the tens, then continued into the twenties and beyond, the gravityof the situation became clear. Someone was abducting children. The question was: Who? Andwhy?
Meera didn’t know the answer, nor did Darik, the two of them grim when Viri reported her findings on Thursday night after her final shift in the archives. She’d been updating Meera daily, but her mentor had wanted the Nox captain to join them in her office at the Hunters’ Guild so they could pick apart everything Viri had discovered during her week of investigating.
“At my count, thirty-two children are missing, but I only made it through half the case files,” Viri said upon finishing her debrief, the moon well and truly risen above the sea cliffs visible through Meera’s window wall. “Elders know how many more red threes might be in those piles.”
“I’ll assign some Nox to go through the rest as a matter of priority,” Darik said, his black eyes flinty as he stared down at Viri’s notes spread across the desk. “I’ll also have them confirm your numbers, since I struggle to believe the extent of what you’re saying.”
Viri bit her cheek to hold in her response. She had no reason to lie, and Darik knew that.
“If itistrue,” he went on, “then it’s alarming that this slipped by unnoticed until now. The archivists have never made such a grave mistake before.”
“I don’t think it was their fault,” Viri said. “Thornton told me they’ve been understaffed for months, and everything in the room where I worked was deemed nonurgent.”
“Andthatis something I’ll be looking into as well,” Darik said tightly. “Not just because it doesn’t make sense.”
Seeing Viri’s confusion, Meera explained,“Files don’t get sent for sorting unless they’ve been signed off by me, Darik, someone in the LegalGuild, or someone on the High Council. That’s how the cases get color- and number-coded—wemake those notes—after which they’re sent to the archives with an urgent or nonurgent classification.”
“So you’re saying somebody screwed up, multiple times,” Viri realized, before a more alarming thought hit her. “Or they did it deliberately.”
“Maybe more than one person,” Darik said, fiddling with the cuffs of his black gloves. Pointedly, he added, “Assuming, of course, this is all true.”
Viri had to bite her cheek again, and this time she tasted blood.
“For the sake of this conversation, we’re assuming itistrue,”Meera said, just as pointedly,“and that means our priority should be the children, not the negligent paperwork. We’ll ask the Magistratus to launch a cross-Guild inquiry to determine who signed off on the cases, but our focus needs to be on finding the kids and bringing them home.”
“If they’re still alive,” Darik muttered. “Reapers aren’t known for their mercy.”
“We don’t know for sure that reapers are responsible,”Meera said, then continued over Darik’s objections.“With children being the targets, the likelihood is high, but this kind of large-scale kidnapping doesn’t match any known reaper behavior. Most of them don’t have the self-control to keep their victims alive for minutes, let alone months. And yet, we don’t have any corpses.”
“Mostof them,” Darik repeated, his dark eyes locked on Meera’s, sending a silent message that caused Viri’s mentor to still.
Viri froze as well. She didn’t need to read their thoughts to know what they were thinking—or rather,whothey were thinking about.
Because there was one reaper who had shown time and againthat he had self-control in spades. He wouldn’t have been able to stay hidden for so long without it.
“You think the Priest has something to do with this?” Viri rasped out.
Meera turned quickly to Viri.“We don’t know anything. It’s guesswork at best.”
“But we have to entertain the possibility,” Darik asserted. “It’s the most likely scenario, after all.”
Viri’s fingers dug into the velvety armrests of her chair, her skin turning clammy at the merethoughtof the Priest being involved with the abductions. If that was true, those children were as good as dead.
“We can’t do anything else tonight, not until we’ve notified the council,”Meera said soothingly, likely noting the way Viri was clenching her seat.“I’ll head up to the Summit now and call an emergency meeting to share what we know.”
Viri’s grip tightened as she thought about how Sarielle would take the news, her soft heart a curse when it came to matters such as these, even if her professional mask never slipped when she was acting as the Magistratus.
