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“On it.”

He searched through the recent entries until he found the record for the main entrance. Someone had opened it thirteen minutes earlier, and his stomach dropped.

“Can you see who it was?”

He accessed the corresponding camera recording. The image appeared on the screen, showing the front corridor and the main doors. Korinnae entered the frame alone, pushed through the doors, and disappeared outside.

Ria grabbed his arm. “Where would she go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Friends? Someone she knows nearby?”

“Nay. Not without telling me.”

He replayed the footage, searching for anything he’d missed. Korinnae hadn’t hesitated when she’d reached the doors. She’d walked straight through them with the determined stride he’d come to recognize whenever she’d made up her mind about something.

“Bollach.” Asterion ran a hand over his face. “I should have followed her.”

“You thought she was with me.”

“I should have made sure.”

Ria didn’t argue with him. “Think—where would she go?”

He tried, but every possibility made less sense than the one before it. Korrinnae knew parts of Alindale, but she hadn’t spent enough time here to know the city well on her own. Worse, she’d left angry and upset, and he’d been the one who’d let her walk away.

“We need to find her.”

“We will.”

Asterion looked once more at the frozen image of the calf disappearing through the doors and thought of every danger she could encounter alone. They’d already lost thirteen minutes.

Korinnae was gone, and he had no idea where to start looking.

Chapter 14

Ria

Ria stood in the reception area staring at the frozen image on the security screen. Korinnae had gone to Ria’s workshop upset, and she had given the calf what comfort she could. But she’d been doing her own walking away at that point, and she hadn’t thought to check where the kid went afterward.

“I should have made sure she was okay.” Guilt crept into her chest. She’d only thought of herself, of her own hurt, that she didn’t notice that Korinnae had been hurting too. All she had wanted was to put as much distance between herself and Asterion. “I should have checked⁠—”

“Asterion!” Zara shouted as she burst through the front door, her hair wild and her breath coming in short gasps. “I…she…” She braced her hand against the doorframe. “Korinnae,” she gasped. “They took her.”

Ria’s entire body turned ice cold.

“What?” Asterion’s voice thundered and reverberated in the small room. “Who?”

“The-the-the people…I didn’t…maybe they⁠—”

“Take a deep breath and start from the beginning,” Ria urged. “Please.”

Zara inhaled deeply. “Hektor and I were pulling in and we saw them. There were six of them, maybe seven? They jumped out of this van and grabbed Korinnae off the sidewalk. Hektor went after them but there were too many and with Korinnae in the way, he couldn’t use his fire.” She swallowed. “But he got one of them. He’s holding him outside.”

Asterion dashed out before Zara even finished the sentence, Ria and Zara hot on his heels. Outside, Hektor had a creature raised high above his head, his massive hand wrapped around its scrawny neck. It clawed at Hektor’s hand, but he didn’t flinch, as the creature’s nails barely made a scratch on the hard, diamond-like scales covering his skin.

“Where is she?” Hektor roared. “Where did you take her?”