Page 19 of Silver (Shunned Mages #2)

Wilston

Xarius held the letter like it could explode at any second.

As soon as we’d shopped and eaten, we’d found this motel and remembered the letter. It had Xarius’s name on it, and none of us knew if that was a good or a bad thing.

“I’ll read it aloud,” Xarius said, clearing his voice.

Our dear boy

I had a friend infiltrate the next group of mages being sent in order to place this letter somewhere before fleeing.

I do hope you’re all okay. Your mom was just alerted to another two mages who’ve come into their powers on Sutiner, which means the other leaders did, too.

They have a magic alert set to that world which means that whenever someone magical shows up, they’ll know.

I wrote down this last part a week ago, but knew now was the time to find a way to get this letter to you.

We have some, or rather, I have some people who know the truth about why you were shunned, who help me. Your mother cannot know for her own safety, and ours.

The last mage won’t be sent to the same world as you, the leaders are afraid you’ll find one another so the next will be sent to Sutiner, but the last won’t be.

He’ll be sent to Weznipar, another world like ours.

You need to wait until the next mage arrives on Sutiner and then find him.

When you have him with you, you need to make a portal to find the final mage.

They will be sent off one week apart. I hope that helps.

The next mage to be shunned to Sutiner, is named Altair Monis, and he’ll be shunned two days from now. Find him and then let the locket guide you to the next. The last mage’s name is Tino Hold.

Protect one another and then come home.

Love

Mother

“How does the locket look?” Silver asked Niam, letting Xarius work through his emotions in peace.

I knew from what Silver had told me, that Xarius’ mothers loved him, even Leah who I’d thought had eagerly shunned her own son.

I was actually relieved to hear that hadn’t been the case.

So far Niam’s parents had been the worst if we were to compare.

Silver had a loving grandmother, so he felt like he had it better compared to me and Niam.

When I heard about how Niam had been treated, I immediately felt like my own situation wasn’t as bad, knowing I could’ve had it worse, but then I remembered how much trauma I still carried and thought that maybe you couldn’t really compare childhood trauma.

Thankfully, we all had a family now. Each other. And as soon as Altair and Tino joined us, we would be complete. Forever helping one another and caring, truly caring about each other.

“It glows,” Niam whispered. “Which date did she put on the letter? She said two days, maybe that’s today or yesterday? Fuck, we need to move! Altair is fair game for the mages now! What if they sent someone to kill him right away?!”

I couldn’t sense or feel emotions like Xarius could, but I swore I felt Niam’s anxiety rising.

Xarius rushed over to him, and Niam’s face slackened with relief, likely from his bonded taking the edge off of his emotions.

“They won’t track him when he’s without magic, and if my mother’s letter is anything to go by, they won’t be worried since the last mage won’t be sent here.

No need to panic. We all need a good night’s rest, then tomorrow we’ll eat a good hearty breakfast. Then we’ll head out to look for Altair.

We’ll let the locket guide us and move as fast as we can. ”

I nodded, adding, “We should find a place that sells RVs. It’s better we all live together comfortably until we figure out how to make a portal.”

“The only thing that sucks about an RV is that we won’t be able to easily find shelter in the forest anymore,” Niam reminded me.

“Well, we have earth magic times two,” I shrugged.

“Maybe it won’t be a problem, and besides we might not need to move around so much now that we know how to keep our wards up,” I reminded them.

“We just need to get a good distance away from Altair’s last known location if they did track him, and then ward him with us as soon as we find him. ”

Silver nodded. “That actually sounds like a good idea. All of it.”

It seemed we were all in agreement.

“And we need to find time to talk about your powers, Wilston,” Niam said with a big smile. “It was so cool! But we need to know more so we can plan strategies around it. It won’t just be these mages that are coming for us. Soon we need to face the leaders and they’re mad powerful.”

I nodded. “Let’s work on strategies when we drive. We can open the window in the van that separates the back from the front. It’ll give us more time to talk and plan things while we’re stuck on the road.”

Xarius sighed. “I hate removing the window, but I think you’re right.

Besides, we’ll get an RV soon. I should probably prepare myself to say goodbye to van.

” Just then his phone rang. He pulled it out and winced audibly.

“It’s Julie,” he told Niam, and Niam waved at him to go on and answer it.

I think she was his former boss and friend, if I remembered correctly.

As soon as he’d clicked accept, a slew of curses came through the phone. It wasn’t even on speaker phone but we all heard her easily. Then he clicked the speaker phone on, likely thinking whatever they shared shouldn’t be private from us.

“Xar! Do you mind explaining to me why a group of ten men came into the coffeeshop and threatened me to tell them where the fuck you are?! You promised me you weren’t in danger!”

Xarius grimaced before replying, “Well, I wasn’t in danger then.”

There was a beat of silence. “Imma whoop your ass, Xar! Start talking!”

I liked her.

“So, I told you I found my friend Niam. We’re actually together now so, yay surprise!

Anyway, we started helping people out and some people didn’t like that and they’ve decided to stop us.

” Xarius seemed almost proud of himself once he was done telling her all that.

Then he quickly seemed to remember she’d been threatened.

“Wait, are you okay? What did they do?!”

She sighed, “Nothing much. I told them the truth that you quit and were looking for someone, but that I had no idea where you were. They seemed to trust that, though. But one of them decided to smash the new coffee machine before they headed out, stating they were watching me.”

“Watching you how?” I asked, knowing she could be in danger.

Another beat of silence. “Is that your new boyfriend? Or old boyfriend considering you fell in love online? Hi! I’m Julie, the amazing best friend I know he talks about all the time.”

I really liked her.

“Hi, Julie,” I said with a warm tone to my voice. “I’m not Xarius’s boyfriend, but a friend of theirs. There are four of us who work together, so Xarius isn’t alone in this. But please answer the question.”

“I think they were pretty clear on the watching part,” she answered after a moment of silence. “Like they camp outside the shop and watch me. Trail me home. I don’t know if they’ve bugged my phone but like I told them it’s not like you tell me where you are so how would I know.”

I was glad we’d put wards on us, too, making it impossible to track Xarius’s phone and location.

But it didn’t seem fair to Julie that she was alone right now.

I quickly said, “Mute the phone for a second, Xarius.” He did without question and waited for me to speak.

“I think we need to do a ward over this phone call and have her find us. We need to protect her and we can’t come to her location and risk her home and shop getting ruined, besides they might expect that.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t hang around at Julie’s. ”

Silver leaned into me, his lovely body warm against mine. “But how do we ward a phone call?”

I shrugged. “I think we treat it like a normal ward, ensuring that only we and Julie can overhear the conversation. We visualize us and Julie being protected, so, it’s not the line that’s secure, but only the people, aka us and Julie, who can understand and hear what is being said.”

“That could work,” Niam said, adding, “We could ask her to join us at a location in the direction we’re headed for Altair. She just needs to know we’re mages, though. A bit hard to keep it from her if she’s with us.”

“Are you done being secretive?” Julie sighed from the phone. “I do have work to get back to.”

Xarius unmuted the phone. “Yeah, just one second,” he responded, taking Niam’s hand in his.

Niam took Silver’s hand and then Silver took mine, connecting us as we worked to ward the call between us and Julie.

When we felt it had worked, we exhaled in relief.

I gave a “go on” nod to Xarius, who then started explaining.

“Okay, Julie. Listen closely. We’ve secured the phone line so only we and you can hear whatever we say, but since we can’t really ward where you are, you need to only respond in yes or no answers, can you do that?”

“Yes,” she replied immediately.

“Good. Now, we fear you’ll be in danger there, as we believe they want us to come to you and rescue you or something. So, can you meet us at a location and join us? I promise we’ll keep you as safe as possible. None of us likes the thought of you being watched.”

“Um, it’s really not easy replying to that, Xar!” I got her point. She would be leaving her shop for an unknown amount of time and she couldn’t even ask us questions. She sighed, “But yes.”

“I’ll tell you the location. Don’t write it down, but you can put it into your phone GPS. I’ve added security to it.”

“Oh, okay,” she whispered. I could tell she needed more information and Xarius seemed so focused on getting her to us that he wasn’t thinking about other stuff.

I stepped closer to the phone once Xarius had given a location for us to meet her at.

“Julie, we’ve secured your phone for tracking but if you send someone a text it won’t work since they can track theirs.

Is there anyone you can text to help you out with your stuff?

Someone they won’t think to look at? Don’t tell us their name, just yes or no. ”

“Yes,” she replied, but sounded unsure of herself. I guessed she was thinking of someone she hadn’t spoken to for a while.

“You need to head on the road in one hour. Act as normal as possible and figure out how to deal with the shop. If something were to happen to the shop, we’ll pay for it ourselves.

” We had the money from our gold making business.

And since Silver’s ring finger would look perfect with a diamond on it, I’d already started making diamonds to practice for the future.

“Okay,” she said, sounding scared now. I could understand that. She was likely just realizing now how afraid she should be of the mages who were watching her. Not that she knew they were mages yet.

Xarius seemed to notice her voice change, too, and quickly added, “You can trust all of us. It’ll all be fine as soon as you’re away from them, and if they follow you, we’ll be ready for them.

” The meet up location was ten hours away from us and if she started driving in one hour, she would likely reach the destination at the same time as us, even with us sleeping here for the night and finding an RV dealer.

They hung up and the worry for his best friend was visible on Xarius’s face as he sat down on their bed, rubbing his hand down his face with a tired expression.

“She’s going to ask Declan for help,” he whispered. “She has no one else that they wouldn’t know to check.”

“And is this Declan a serial killer or something?” Niam asked for all of us.

Xarius shook his head. “He’s her ex-fiancé. And I doubt he’ll even want to help her out.”

“Why not? Did things end badly between them?” Silver asked.

He nodded. “He dumped her because his family didn’t approve of her. He’s from a wealthy family and they threatened to take his money from him.”

“Oh,” Silver and Niam said simultaneously.

“She’s doomed,” Xarius muttered. “Unless she can pack a bag and deal with the shop in under one hour.”

“Why is it so important that she only spends one hour?” I asked, confused.

He sighed. “Because if they somehow overheard her talking on the phone and just her end of it, they might suspect something and call in others to watch her, too. The sooner she’s out of there, the better.

But they will follow her. Of course they will.

So, we just need to be there and get ready for the fight. ”

“I really hope they’ll leave her unscathed,” Niam whispered, almost as if he was afraid to jinx us by speaking the words out loud.

“She’ll be safer with us than alone. It’s only a matter of time before they take her and use her as living bait for us,” I reminded them. This was the better option, even if I’d preferred that she was kept out of this. And she would be, as soon as we left Sutiner.