“Yes. I went through the ledgers one by one, they’re coming out the–”
A bang vibrated through my windows.
I’d already jumped to my feet, ready for a fight, when I noticed Sylvester pecking at the glass.
He screeched outside my window, wings flapping up a storm.
I rushed to the balcony, but he shot up as I approached, squawking at me and pointing his beak at the roof.
A message.
My lungs tightened as I ran out of the room, Dax yelling after me.
I didn’t stop until the cold air once again threatened to topple me from the roof. Sylvester dashed like an arrow toward the eastern side of the crater, beckoning me forward.
I crept along the ridge, holding onto the tower for dear life. As I reached the edge, he kept flipping in the sky, frantic.
My eyes tracked his pattern, looking at the exact point of the rim he circled. It was dark. Too dark for my human eyes. The dregs of the sun selfishly pulling the light in the opposite direction didn’t help.
“What is it?” I called out. “What do you see?”
Sylvester squawked louder. Panicked. Frightened.
I narrowed my eyes into slivers.
I couldn’t see anything other than the menacing jagged edges of the crater, blurred by the evening mist.
But something was wrong. I could smell it in the air.
Jaw tight, I braved the crater’s wrath once more.
“Focus!” I shouted.
My power blazed through my skin, racing toward my skull. It poured out of my eyes, its glow spreading over the roof and the tops of the trees.
I must’ve looked like a wild, otherworldly thing. Sylvester flew away from me.
My power sizzled the air and turned the invisible drops of water into nothing but vapour. Unimpeded, my vision stretched farther.
My eyes burned under the strain, as if someone had shoved needles in them and I couldn’t blink them away.
All I could do was watch.
See.
Flickers behind the shards guarding the crater.
An arrow barely stretched toward the sky, but was snatched from the air.
Worst of all, thick ropes dangling from the wall of the crater.
Someone had breached Solkar’s Reach.
Chapter 39
Ryker
The Capital had long turned into a glint in the distance by the time the air turned wrong.
