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“What’s going on?” Nadine demanded.
“I was patrolling the border,” Grant explained. “There are two more bodies, just outside the wards.”
“It might be soon enough we can still get some answers.” Nadine reached for her coat, but I stopped her.
“You’re not coming,” I insisted.
Her jaw dropped. “The hell I am.”
“Nad, we don’t know if the killer’s still hanging around,” I pointed out. “You’re pregnant with our children. It could be dangerous.”
She yanked her coat off the hook anyway. “And what if you need me? I can’t sit around for nine months doing nothing. Wherever you go, I go—until I can’t anymore.”
She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Stay close,” I told her.
Talia threw on her jacket, and the four of us hurried outside. A thin layer of snow crunched beneath our feet as Grant led us to where he’d found the bodies.
Two Executors lay in the forest, their corpses empty and forgotten, just like the last ones. An eerie feeling traveled down my spine as I approached them. An emptiness I couldn’t quite explain permeated the whole mountainside, just as I felt before. Something about this was very wrong, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Cautiously, I approached the bodies and knelt beside the closest one.
“Be careful,” Grant warned.
“It’s okay,” I promised.
I placed two fingers to the side of the closest Executor’s neck. No pulse, though I didn’t know what I was expecting. I could already feel the hollowness of their bodies with my magic. There was no life force to be found, not a remnant whatsoever…
And yet his body was still warm.
It hit me then what was so strange about all of this.
“I’ve never seen magic like this before,” I remarked. “Usually when people die, I can feel death. These bodies are fresh, yet I feel nothing.”
“Like something’s blocking your magic?” Nadine asked.
I shook my head. “My magic is working just fine. When people die, I feel a void, like their body has become this empty shell and something’s missing. Eventually, the feeling fades the longer someone’s been dead, but this emptiness is different. It’s like there was never anything there to begin with.”
“So you’re saying… the priestesses are sending soulless Executors to find us?” Talia asked slowly.
“I’m not sure what I’m saying,” I admitted.
A breeze swept through the trees, and a chilling realization hit me. “These bodies are still warm. They must’ve died in the last hour. Guys, I haven’t heard a voice all day.”
The woods went silent as the others exchanged a terrified glance. If these Executors died just now, I would’ve heard their last thoughts. I didn’t know what it meant, but there was certainly sinister magic behind this. Anxiety built inside of me. I shot a glance around the forest, but I saw nothing.
“The only explanation is that these men aren’t part of the coven,” Nadine theorized.
“Then why would they be in Executor uniform and holding wands?” I asked as I pulled a wand from the Executor’s pocket.
A chaotic buzz riveted through me when I touched his wand, like there was magic inside of it that resonated with my own. I inspected the wand to find a small black crystal embedded into the end of it. The magic inside the crystal seemed to ring in my ears. It was so familiar, yet I didn’t understand how he’d gotten his hands on it.
“How can that be?” I whispered.
“What is it?” Grant asked, shooting another glance around the forest.
I barely heard him as I searched the Executor for his Cast mark. I yanked up his sleeves and found nothing, then pulled on the collar of his shirt. Just beneath the fabric on his neck was a tree with twisted branches—the mark of a Mentalist.
So why was this Executor carrying a wand embedded with a crystal that held reaper magic? The only explanation was that the crystal in the wand accidentally retained the power of a Mortana who’d cast a death spell. My cheeks grew cold as all the blood drained from my face.
