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I found myself in the middle of two rows as their leader emerged once more, approaching me. The blue flame he carried was the brightest I’d seen yet. His eyes had already been more intelligent than most of the others; in the light of the fire, they were…different. Uncanny. His entire face was, really—slightly off and unsettling, as if he’d been revived but had yet to remember how to mold his features into proper human placements.

He watched intently as one of my wayward shadows fell into the nearest flame. And just as before, the fire grew as it devoured the dark ribbon, turning the fuel of my magic into a bolder, brighter light to live by.

As it burned, the wraith leader shouted another command.

His voice was like rocks scraping against glass, making me cringe. The words were foreign, but the meaning in his disturbingly-expressive face was clear…so terribly clear that I could almost feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest, making my heart stutter in fear—

Bleed her dry.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Aleksander

It had been nearlyan hour since the moment in the loft, and Nova still had not returned from her allegedtourwith Kaelen.

Not that I was counting the minutes.

But something didn’t feel right.

“Why don’t we just go look for her?” Zayn suggested. Again. And again, Rowen and Farren agreed with him.

Still, I didn’t move.

“She’s capable of taking care of herself,” I said, my voice low so as to avoid waking Red, who had curled up against my side minutes ago and promptly fallen asleep. I had no idea why this child insisted on clinging to me, but it was the least of my concerns. At least she was being calm and quiet.

“We don’t have any idea what the princess isreallycapable of, though, do we?” Rowen pointed out.

“I believe she’s capable enough to deal with the likes of Kaelen, should he attempt anything,” I replied.

And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking of the moment last night, when I’d spotted her sinking below the dark water of Lake Nyras. The panic that had gripped me, and the…fear.

I’d actually been afraid.

Not an emotion I often experienced. Especially not for the sake of someone else.

But of course I was afraid to lose her; she was my shield against the deadly energies of this realm,andour potential ticket out of this hell. When I considered her usefulness to me, I had to admit that Zayn and the others had a point: She’d been gone too long. We were playing with fire, letting her out of our sight. What if she was off with Kaelen concocting some elaborate plan to leave us behind to fend for ourselves?

I was still weighing the pros and cons of tracking her down when Thalia stepped into the courtyard where we sat. Her expression was distracted. Her hands fiddled restlessly with the gems adorning her staff, and she startled as she drew near to us, as though she’d just noticed us sitting there.

“…Where is Nova?” she asked.

“The question of the hour, it seems,” Zayn replied with a yawn. “But from what I’ve gathered, this dumbass made her mad—” he jerked his head toward me “—and she retaliated by running away with Kaelen so they could start a new life together that didn’t involve arrogant kings and other annoying things.”

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said dryly.

Thalia gripped her staff more tightly. “She’s with Kaelen?”

“We assume,” said Rowen.

The necromancer woman rarely showed any sort of strong emotion; I liked that about her, generally speaking. But it was frustrating to not be able to get a read on her now. What did she know about this Kaelen character that she wasn’t telling us?

I decided to be blunt. “I overheard you arguing with him earlier. What was that about?”

She fixed her still-unreadable gaze on me, and simply said, “Nova.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “What about her?”

A pause, and then she averted her eyes as she finally said, “She’s more than she seems. I had my suspicions about her, but nothing definite in my mind until I saw what the two of you did at Lake Nyras. And even now, there are still a lot of questions…”