Page 113 of Magic Claimed

Oh. “He knows, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” she admitted. “I told him to allow me to be taken. The more leverage the enemy believes they have, the greater their overconfidence.”

I could only hope she was right.

“But now we can go ahead and get you out of here. Back to…”

Pain punched me right in the heart.

White-hot, searing my nerve endings, turning my thoughts to ash as it burned its way through every cell of my body.

I’d been hit. I was dying. I was…

Furious. But not just furious—a rush of purefeelingflooded my senses and sent me staggering to my knees. Anxiety, urgency…

I could hear distant voices—Shane, Tairen, Jeremiah—but I couldn’t make out words. Not while I was drowning in this tidal wave of sensations that made no sense unless…

Callum.

It was coming through our bond. I could feel it all so strongly, so clearly, and for this to cross the distance between us and overwhelm the effects of the poison, it had to be something catastrophic.

I needed to get home. Needed to fix this. But how could I leave when…

Theagony vanished as quickly as it had begun.

All the emotions, all the echoes of feelings that had flooded through our bond cut off abruptly, leaving me gasping but whole. And yet…

Why had they stopped?

Why did I suddenly feel nothing?

As if the bond were not simply silenced, but gone forever.

I staggered to my feet under the weight of worried stares from every side.

I would find Callum. I would fix this. But first…

“We have to destroy the warehouse.” My voice sounded rough and empty, even to me, but I didn’t have time to explain. “We can’t let anyone else find this place.”

But how?

“I will find a way,” Tairen returned briskly. “But the children must be taken to safety.”

Shane spoke up. “I can take them back through the gateway and then return for you.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll stay with Tairen, you stay with them. You’ll be taking them into a war zone, so they’ll need your protection. And no one knows how long the gateway will hold.”

“And no one knows how long my son can hold up either,” Tairen snapped. “Go to him. I swear to you, I will find a way.”

“And I won’t leave you here alone,” I shot back. “You need someone to watch your back. We have no idea how many other people Blake left here, or what it will take to destroy this place, and I won’t take the risk of…”

“I’ll do it.”

For a moment, that quiet, almost timid-sounding voicebarely even registered, because it didn’t belong here. It belonged back in Oklahoma City. Somewhere safe. Not in the depths of Blake’s warehouse, surrounded by terror and violence and a thousand reminders of our pain.

There was no way it could be here.

But then he moved out from between the stacks of crates, looking young and scared but also so deeply determined that it hurt my heart.