Page 118 of Shardless
Nowhere. Nothing. Gone.
“No,” he mumbled, his hands tearing at his hair. Although her scent still lingered in the air, there was no trace of her to be seen. She had even put out the fire. “No, no, please… Shards, no…”
Stumbling over to the desk where she had been standing not even an hour ago, Skye’s eyes landed on the single snowdrop that had been laid to rest on a folded slip of paper. With shaking hands, he unfolded the note, that rift in his chest cleaving open even further when he saw her neat, loopy handwriting.
I’m sorry, Em, but I have to make this right. Don’t come looking for me.
-Tink
Skye’s shoulders started to shake, and it took him a moment to realize that there were tears welling in his eyes as he sunk to the floor. The note slipped from his fingers, and her words from that morning replayed in his head.
There’s one more thing, Em. One more thing that might change the calculus.
It has to do with why I left last year.
That’s when it started.
Shards, she had tried to tell him. When they were in the library, she had tried to tell him. But he hadn’t been listening. He hadn’t taken her seriously when she said that her reasons for leaving were important, a small part of him still thinking that her departure was the result of some childish tantrum. But what if it wasn’t? Would Taly still be here if he’d given her the priority that morning—pushed the meeting back so he could hear what she had to say? Would he have been able to head this off if he had read the signs better?
Skye felt numb, his body moving of its own accord as he raced down the stairs and back through the massive archway of the main building. He could just detect her scent clinging to the carpets, and he followed it, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he might still be able to catch her. She had taken the servants’ stairs, but, just as he feared, the trail ended in the courtyard, the rain having already washed it away. Hequestioned the guards at the main gate, but neither could recall having seen her leaving the keep. As it was, she could have easily slipped past with one of the teams that had been sent out to salvage scrap.
Skye skipped the aether lift, choosing instead to take the stairs back to the commander’s tower office—to Kato, who was still waiting.
“Well?” Kato asked before Skye had even managed to close the door and rearm the wards.
Skye stood there for a long moment, taking in his brother’s slightly flushed appearance, the tense set of his shoulders. Kato knew he was right. Although Skye beat him in terms of sheer amount of power, Kato was by no means weak. If there was magic clinging to Taly, he was more than capable of sniffing it out.
The words were out of Skye’s mouth before he’d even managed to process the response. “It’s nothing. You were wrong.”
“What?” A sharp retort. Kato’s eyes widened, shock distorting his features.
“You were wrong,” Skye repeated, louder this time. More confident. “About Taly. She’s not a part of this.”
“But I felt magic,” Kato burst out. “Shadow and water and—”
“I’m aware.” Skye strode across the room, pretending to study something on the desktop. Breathing deeply, he made a conscious attempt to slow his heart, to school his features into dismissive boredom. “But I already knew about the spells.”
Kato followed him, refusing to back down. “Why would she have had spells cast on her?”
Clasping his hands behind his back, Skyeturned to meet Kato’s questioning stare, hoping that his brother couldn’t see the desperation in his eyes as he searched for a plausible excuse. “Taly had a run-in with a harpy several weeks ago. She lost a lot of blood, which exacerbated what the healer said was an allergic reaction to the harpy venom. In the three weeks leading up to today, she’s had countless healing spells cast on her. That’s most likely what you felt.”
“I felt shadow magic, Skylen. And water. Not earth,” Kato snapped, a dangerous edge to his voice.
Skye nodded. “The beasts on the island get a little out-of-hand this close to the Aion Gate connection. It can make traveling with active enchantments a little tricky, but Taly was getting so stir-crazy, I told her I’d figure something out.”
“Really?” Kato asked dubiously. “And this solution of yours involved both a high-level water glamourandaether suppression spells? All to mask the scent of a few healing spells?”
Skye shrugged. “As you well know, earth magic is much more pungent than any other school of magic, so we had to get creative. I cast a few aether suppression spells, but that didn’t fully mask the scent. Not naturally. So, I enlisted the help of Ivain’s niece. She’s a water mage and very talented when it comes to glamours, so that’s probably why you had such a difficult time getting beneath the overlaying enchantment to see the spell matrix underneath.”
“And the memory alteration spells?” Kato made no effort to mask the suspicion behind his words.
“Nightmares,” Skye replied automatically, the story coming to him much more easily than heexpected. “Taly was having nightmares about the harpy attack, and she would wake up thrashing. Her wounds kept reopening, so Ivain cast a memory alteration enchantment to help her sleep at night.”
A neat, airtight explanation—everything in its place.
Kato looked at him pointedly, his lips curling into a sneer. “And you didn’t mention this before because…”
“Because we can’t be too careful.” Skye turned to look out the window. As he channeled just a little more aether, the shapes of the people milling about below came into focus. Even though he knew she wouldn’t be down there, he still searched for Taly among the nameless faces in the crowd. “Someone in this compound is working against us. If it was Taly, then we needed to know, my personal feelings aside. But it’s not. I sat down with her, examined the spells—there’s nothing out of place.”
