“I don’t trust—”
“You do. Now shut up and close your eyes.”
Viri’s gaze slitted. “Don’t tell me to shut up.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t trust me when you just had your tongue in my mouth.”
Face instantly searing, Viri hissed, “I thought we agreed not to speak of that again.”
“We agreed to no such thing,” Reeve said. “Now close your eyes and concentrate, unless you want the Magistratus to find us—which could happen any second, given how long we’ve been in here.”
Viri wanted to argue more, if only on principle, but Reeve was right about them running out of time. Shooting him an annoyed look, she slammed her eyes shut and said, with clear skepticism, “What now?”
His next words were entirely unexpected.
“Remember when we were kids, how you, me, and Brae would go out to the surface on clear, warm days and dip our feet in the shallows of Lake Mirtis?”
Viri’s stomach clenched. “Reeve, what—”
“Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” she said tightly, her eyes still closed. “What does that have to do with—”
“In the springtime, there were those flowers that grew along the shore—the purple ones with the yellow centers.” He spoke over her. “You were obsessed with them, picking bunches at a time and forcing Brae and me to wear crowns and necklaces and bracelets that left us covered in sticky sap that dried like snot on our clothes.”
A bittersweet smile tugged at Viri’s lips. “Mage blossoms. I still love them.”
“I want you to think of those, picturing them in your mind,” Reeve instructed, his voice quieting. “Think of how they close up at night, their petals drawing in to shield themselves from the elements. Now think about your sensitivity to magic, how you keep it reined in to protect yourself from what it makes you feel. Can you see the similarities?”
Viri swallowed and nodded. She didn’t actively stifle it—mostly because she didn’t know how—but she did shove it down and ignore it as much as she could when she was around magical objects or in ellixen-saturated areas, like warded rooms and elevators.
“Good,” Reeve said. “Now think of the mage blossoms again, but this time, picture them at sunrise when they unfurl petal by petal, opening up to greet the day. That’s what I want you to do—I want you to imagine yourself unfurling like a mage blossom under the first rays of sunlight, expanding your senses outward, letting go of any fear you have and justfeelingthe space around you. Don’t try to focus on anything in particular, just see if something calls to you.”
His voice was so lulling, so hypnotic, that Viri followed his instructions without thinking, releasing whatever instinctive leash she kept on her heightened sensitivity, allowing it to flood outward unrestrained, like a river breaking through an embankment. A startled breath left her at the freeing sensation, before anxiety took hold from how powerful, howuncontrollableit felt. But she didn’t wrestle it back in just yet, searching, searching, until she felt it: the prickle of an ellixen ward nearby, faint but unmistakable.
Her eyes shot open. “The chest,” she gasped, smothering her flooded awareness until it was safely behind the embankment once more. “It’s two rows over, on the left.”
A proud smile stretched across Reeve’s lips. “I knew you could do it.”
Feeling embarrassed for no logical reason, Viri didn’t reply, just rushed over to where she was certain the chest was waiting, finding it where she’d said, hidden halfway up the shelf. The bloodline magic warding the ancient wood prompted anothertingle of ellixen that intensified when she pulled it closer, but then it eased again, almost as if it recognized her. Sure enough, the moment her finger pressed against the lock, it opened effortlessly, revealing two items inside: a familiar-looking onyx ring and a blank piece of parchment that came to life at Viri’s touch, lines bleeding outward from the center to form a map showing the entirety of Elverdine Isle—with a dot labeled “Nevarnost Tower” right there in the upper left-hand corner.
“We found it,” Viri breathed, turning to Reeve, unable to keep the wide, disbelieving grin from her face.
“Told you it was real,” he said smugly, tapping a line that tracked out of Aravell—a line that moved before her very eyes but always began south of the city, where the necropolis bled into the Mistwood. Reeve tapped that spot, too. “There’s our starting point.”
Viri’s insides somersaulted at what they had to do next—venture through the deadly forest to reach the Guardian before her brother did—but she stomped down her trepidation and tucked the map into her cloak, watching as Reeve grabbed the ring and held it out to her.
“One blackmist talisman, as promised,” he said.
Seeing it in his open palm made her realize why it was familiar: because it was identical to the one he wore on his middle finger, right down to the silver runes etched into it.
Viri’s eyes narrowed as they bounced back and forth between the two black rings.
Before she could demand an explanation, Reeve said, “There was a set of talismans left by the ancient mages, remember? Emphasis onset.” He wiggled his middle finger, almost tauntingly. “Itold you Braedan had likely located one of the others—let’s just say my confidence wasn’t unfounded and leave it at that.”
Viri’s gaze slitted further at the knowledge that Reeve had been wearing his own blackmist talisman all along, which meant he’d probably been with Braedan when the two of them had procured their rings.
“How—Where—”
