To her parents.
“You have an incredibly poor opinion of the person who once saved your life,” Jonas muttered, yanking Viri from her memories and prompting a disbelieving laugh from her.
“Reeve never saved my life. If he said otherwise, he lied. That’s what he does.”
Jonas just shrugged, but Viri had wasted enough time with this conversation, and she wasn’t going to sit around and listen to one of Reeve’s reaper buddies singing his praises. She could admit that Jonas was the most amiable monster she’d ever encountered—almost unnaturally so, given what he was—but that wasn’t saying much considering all the others had tried to kill her. The verdict was still out on whether Reeve and Sage planned to do the same.
“Last chance to tell me where he is,” Viri said.
“You’re making a mistake by going after him,” Jonas returned, looking at her pleadingly. “Trust me.”
Viri released him from her fillium and strode for the door, confident he was too drained to get up and follow. “I don’t trust reapers,” she said without looking back. “And if I did, I wouldn’t start with a friend of Reeve’s.”
With that, she took off down the hallway and out the front door. She didn’t feel the ellixen ward this time—it must only affect people entering the apartment, not leaving it—but even if she had, she wouldn’t have stopped, her focus single-minded on finding Reeve. He could be anywhere, but as she sprinted along the inner-mountain tunnel, she was counting on the late hour to mean the other inhabitants of this level would be sleeping—and therefore Sage, Reeve, and Ardin would have been the last people to use the wayportal. Viri would be delivered straight to wherever they had traveled, and from there, her hunter’s mark should be able to guide the way. If not…
She didn’t let herself finish the thought as she reached the wayportal and leapt through, praying to the Elders that it would take her exactly where she needed to go.
She should have prayed harder—or at least added some specifics, likenotarriving outside in the middle of the raging thunderstorm.
Rain and wind instantly pummeled Viri, causing her to gasp as cold water soaked through her scarlet cloak and into her leathers. That was the least of her concerns, though, given where she’d landed. A quick scan showed the wayportal had delivered her close to the Northern Obelisk, right by the bank of River Mort, the winding tributary that flowed from Lake Mirtis to Mount Mort before disappearing into the blackmist-covered mountain.
Viri rarely ventured this close to the northern edge of the uppercity, and never at night, the mist far too near for comfort. With the added wind from the storm, the danger was perilously high. But before she could convince herself to leap back through the wayportal, she felt it—the warmth in her hand, telling her there was a reaper nearby. Or reapers.
Reeve, Sage, and Ardin.
Ignoring the threat of the mist and the violence of the storm, Viri focused on her mark, following it west, away from the mountain and along the riverside path toward Elders’ Grove. She shuddered at the thought of entering the small woodland, where the creepy, ancient trees cast shadows that moved as if alive. But to her relief, her mark led her away from the river just before it reached the grove, sending her along well-lit streets filled with lavish houses owned by those who preferred to live on the surface rather than beneath it, all carefully sealed during the unsafe night hours. She barely spared the homes a glance, concentrating onlyon her heated mark as she left the affluent part of the uppercity behind and headed into the dark, narrow alleyways of the slums.
The wind was fiercer here, the rain coming down hard enough to make visibility difficult, coupled with the flashing lightning that distorted Viri’s vision and the repeated thunder booms that left her ears ringing. But still, she pressed on, hurrying past crumbling, abandoned buildings, her palm becoming so hot that she knew she had to be close.
Turning a corner into an even narrower lane, Viri saw shadowy movement up ahead and swiftly ducked down behind a pile of rickety wooden crates. She swiped water from her face and pulled her hood up to shield her eyes, but the wind kept tearing it back, leaving her to squint through the rain as she peered out to see what Reeve and his friends were doing so far from anywhere.
Only, it wasn’t Reeve she saw.
Her mark hadn’t led her astray—therewerereapers in the alley, over half a dozen of them, which was more than Viri had ever seen in one place. Reapers rarely worked together—they didn’t need to, their strength and speed making it easy for them to abduct and kill their targets without assistance. Plus no two reapers would ever share the ellixen they stole, not when they could take it all for themselves. Before tonight, Viri had never encountered more than one in any single location, with the combination of Reeve, Jonas, and Sage—and then Ardin—having been an anomaly. But seeingseventogether in this alley…Viri’s stomach tightened with dread at what they might be doing.
And then she saw it—something that stole her breath and made her heart slam against her rib cage. Because the reapers weren’t the only ones in the alley.
There were also children.
Viri slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp as she did a quick head count, finding twelve in total, bound together by ropes and standing in three lines of four, their clothes and hair soaked from the rain, their little bodies shaking with fear.
The group was small enough that Viri doubted they were the kids who had been abducted in the last six months—or not all of them—but she’d still never seen anything like this in all her years of hunting. The reapers weren’t siphoning from their captives, nor did they seem poised to do so. If anything, it looked like they weremovingthe children, with three of the dark-cloaked killers holding the ropes and ruthlessly tugging them forward.
Viri suddenly recalled what Ardin had said upon arriving at Jonas’s apartment—“We’ve got a transfer”—and her blood turned cold as she realized he’d been referring to whatever she was witnessing right now.Thiswas what Reeve and Sage had come to help with—they were out there in the alley, moving these children to Elders-knew-where.
Bile rose in Viri’s throat as she watched a young boy slip on the wet ground and fall to his knees, accidentally pulling the three others in his line down as well. A reaper was at their sides in seconds, hauling them up and snarling into their faces, a monster from their nightmares come to life. Their terror was so tangible that Viri swore she could feel it from her hiding spot halfway down the alley. She wanted to leap to their rescue, but no hunter could take on seven reapers at once, especially with the fillium-immune—and magic-wielding—Reeve among them.
No, Viri’s only option was to stay hidden and follow where they went. Once she had their location, she would return to the Hunters’ Guild, admit to the colossal mistake she’d made infreeing Reeve, and beg Meera and Darik to send out a team of hunters and Nox to bring the reapers down. Until then—
Viri’s mental planning screeched to a halt when two new figures appeared from the shadows, their blades glinting beneath the lightning. Immediately, the four reapers not holding ropes shouted at their three companions—words Viri couldn’t hear over the rain and thunder but instinctively knew were orders to flee with the kids—and then they rushed forward to meet the two attackers.
Taking in the dark clothes of the newcomers, Viri wondered if they were city guards, but she couldn’t make out Nox uniforms through the pouring rain, just hooded black cloaks. As with the children and the reapers, the stormy gloom made it impossible to see any identifying features, but whoever they were, they were fools if they thought they could defeat seven monsters alone. But then another figure joined them, bringing their number to three against seven, the odds more favorable, though still sorely lacking.
The danger was high, but Viri couldn’t ignore the opportunity before her. She shoved down her trepidation and sprinted out from her hiding place, fillium in one hand, dagger in the other, her boots splashing through puddles as she raced toward the skirmish.
An earsplitting crack of thunder sounded as she neared the fighting group, the cries of the resisting children audible now, blending with the clash of steel as the newcomers fought their ellixen-heightened opponents. Impossibly, they weren’t struggling to hold their own against the strength and speed of the reapers, but were instead meeting them strike for strike, their movements so fast they were like blurs.
The next flash of lightning gave Viri a better look at the newcomers, revealingwhythey weren’t struggling—and causing her to stumble to a shocked halt in the middle of the alley.
