Page 222 of Burn of the Everflame

My stomach dropped. “Because they’re dead?”

“Because they’re not here.” Invisible fingers tapped against my mind. But I can show them to you, his voice boomed inside my head.

I braced for his Umbros magic to seize me in its grip, but he waited with a silent, expectant look. Would he really stay out of my mind if I withheld my consent? He’d never extended that courtesy to anyone else.

“Show me,” I agreed. This was not the time to test his limits—not when I was already at the furthest reaches of mine.

I caught a flash of his satisfied smirk before my vision clouded, and a new image appeared inside my mind: Kéani and her niece, bound and seated on a horse. They stared at me in terror as I rode beside them, and I realized I was seeing through the eyes of the man Ophiucae had sent to take them away. Though the sun was high, we were bathed in speckled shadows from the blackened, knotty trees.

The Forgotten Lands. Of course he’d kept the stolen children hidden in his own realm. I’d sent the gryverns to look for them here before, but the dark canopy of branches made it almost impossible to search. The real mystery was why Ophiucae and his men weren’t here, too.

They approached a high wall hidden among the trees. The ground rumbled, and an opening formed in the slab of rock, revealing a village within. The buildings inside were rudimentary, made of the same Montios stone as the outer wall, while fields of crops (flourishing, despite the lack of sun) and a landlocked brook looked to be gifts of Arboros and Meros magic.

Perhaps the strangest part was that there was hardly an adult in sight. Young children ran unchecked through the settlement, while teens tended the crops or strolled with infants in their arms. Among the hundreds of inhabitants, only a handful were of age.

At our arrival, the younger children tucked nervously behind the legs of the older, while the adults—all women, and unlike the children, all mortal—marched for the opening.

“More children?” one woman asked. I recognized her from my days in the Lumnos Guardians. She’d been one of Vance’s most dedicated supporters. She was also one of the only people present armed with godstone weapons.

“Just these two,” the man answered. “More are coming from Meros soon.”

My heart stopped. Was Ophiucae planning to do the same to Meros that he’d done to Sophos?

The woman squinted at Kéani. “She’s too old.”

“He says she stays with the girl.”

“We only agreed to the children. She should be dead with the others.”

He grunted in agreement.

The woman jerked her head toward a pile of empty wooden barrels. “We’ve hardly got any fresh water left. The children bathe in the stream—it’s not safe to drink. Food is running low, too, and we can’t get outside the wall to get more. I’ll take the girl, but that woman can go freeze in h—” Her voice choked off as her eyes glazed over. A moment later, she gave a hurried nod. “We’ll take them both.”

I could feel the man’s confusion, but I knew what Ophiucae had done—just like I knew why the barrels were suddenly brimming with water and the crops had begun growing at impossible speed.

It terrified me to see the things his magic could do from so far away. He could probably kill every Descended in Emarion with a snap of his fingers.

So why hadn’t he?

My suffering lasted for centuries, Ophiucae said. Why should theirs be quick?

I startled at his voice in my mind, even more at the realization that he’d probably just heard my every thought. He moved us into Kéani’s head, allowing me to see through her eyes as the Guardian woman pointed out where she and her niece would sleep, the chores they would share, and the flameroot they were required to take every day.

My attention lingered on the flameroot. The Forgotten Lands existed in a strange limbo of control. It was originally Omnos, the long-lost tenth realm, but after the Kindred changed the Forging spell, it became part of Montios, too. Though I’d lifted the Forging’s ban on foreign magic in all the realms to give the Descended a fighting chance to survive his attacks, as the Crown of Omnos, Ophiucae should have been able to overrule me and reinstate it here. If he was relying on the flameroot to suppress their magic instead, perhaps he feared the Forging magic was stronger than his.

Or perhaps he feared mine was.

If he was still listening to my thoughts, he offered no response. He did, however, keep us in Kéani’s mind long enough for me to see that the other children were unhurt. I also caught sight of the two missing Lumnosian women caring for the infants. They eyed both Kéani and the Guardian woman with equal unease, as well as the weapon-bearing women positioned along the village wall.

Are all the female Guardians here? I asked inside my head.

This time, Ophiucae did answer: Most. A few stay with the men to handle their cooking and mending.

Back in my physical body, I felt myself scowl. There was no dishonor in cooking or mending, and certainly none in caring for the children. Still, I had to wonder . . .

Did the women choose their roles, I asked, or did Vance choose it for them?

I told him if anything happened to the children, I’d do the same to him, Ophiucae answered. Apparently, he didn’t trust his men.