Dovelyn could have managed to make me invisible—she was the strongest air user, even stronger than Arcane—but she didn’t trust Scottie. I couldn’t argue with her lack of training, even if I thought she was capable. It was a ruleImade for the Luxian soldiers—they had to have five years of intensive training before they even saw a battle, and that was after thirteen years of training during school. But when Scottie used her enhancement to attach to Kal’s portal, I was going to disagree with Dovelyn and let both of us stay.
But then Dove had a vision, and I felt it. I couldn’t argue it,couldn’t risk it, riskher. Me staying behind was more about making sure Rumor didn’t try to follow us or do something stupid while she waited.
“You did it,” Scottie breathed, her voice was soft, barely a whisper. Sie’s eyes flicked open at the sound, his focus narrowing in on her. He murmured something inaudible as Peter shifted to support his weight. Then his dark eyes rolled in the back of his head right before he lost consciousness again. I reached out to him with my senses. He was burning up. Pain radiated from him in crippling waves. I focused on it as I inspected his body. A flash of bone was jutting out of his arm just like Peter had said, and without seeing a healer, he was a ticking bomb.
I let my senses roam over the rest of my friends. My power instantly went to Dovelyn. Her pain was coming to me the strongest. I scanned my sister—she was still cradling herself on the ground, but she was mostly unharmed, exhausted and drained, but otherwise okay. It took me another second to register her pain as emotional and not physical.
I scanned Kallon next. Her body was weak from treading water too long and every inch of her was frozen over. I was about to ask Rumor to use her water ability, but I didn’t have to. Without missing a beat, Scottie pulled the water off them, and in one loud splash, sent it falling down the drain in the shower. I sent small fire balls throughout the room to help warm them, adding extra around Kallon.
I scanned Peter next. He had minor cuts over his body, but his main injury was to his left side. It was completely bruised over with small bits of coral lodged into his skin.
My sister and him were both completely tapped out. They used everything they had to rescue Sie, but they were all alive. Peter and Dovelyn just needed time to restore their reserves, and Kallon had to warm up and rest.
Peter gently set Sie down on the mattress and started tending to him, careful to avoid his broken arm.
“Is he going to be okay?” Scottie asked as she slowly, hesitantly, walked over to them.
“He needs a healer soon to fix his arm and break his fever, but he’ll live,” I said. Scotlind was in worse shape from the time she spent in the dungeons and some twisted part of me was glad to see him suffering. He deserved to know what he put her through when he sentenced her to Lux, when he abandoned her to the hands of the Lux King. I was glad he could no longer call her his wife. He didn’t deserve her concern or worry.
A deeper part of me thought I didn’t deserve her either.
“We need to move out,now,” Kallon said, her eyes flaring. I rarely saw her worried. She mastered the art of a blank expression long ago. We all had to, from years of being under Athler’s watch.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We tripped the alarms on our way out. We realized too late that they placed trackers on all the prisoners, and when we tried to exit through the opening, the whole prison shut down.” I looked Sie over again as Peter was talking and noticed a chunk of his skin and muscle was missing from his upper arm. They must have found the tracker and cut it out of him, but it was still too late. Even if Peter managed to destroy the grate, they’d know Sie was alive now. This place was going to be crawling with Luxians soon.
“We were being chased out of the prison and had to move fast,” he continued, still focusing on his friend. “When we broke the surface, we didn’t account for Kallon being visible and right over the trench opening.”
“They saw you.” I turned to Kallon, but my sister cut me off.
“It was stupid, so stupid. I swore I left a shield over you, Kal. I really thought I did, but my mind… I was…”
Dove didn’t need to finish. I knew her well enough, and itwas written all over her face before she left. She tried to act like nothing bothered her, but she had been worried about Brock. She was almost in tears before they portaled to the trench.
“It’s okay, Dove. It’s not your fault. You did,” Kallon said gently. “You had a shield over me, but about halfway through, the shield went out. I was so worried. I thought something happened to you…” Kallon had tears pooling, but she didn’t let them fall. I looked up at her, her yellow eyes briefly drifted to mine.
It made sense now why Kallon wasn’t doing well. She stayed behind, swimming in the ocean, without protection for hours, waiting to find out if something happened to them.
“When it got close to the twenty-four hour mark and you guys weren’t back, I let my fear get the best of me, so I started to swim toward the trench. I’m so sorry, I—”
“I need to go back to Lux now,” Dove broke, interrupting Kallon. “I have to get him.”
“You can’t. If they saw Kal at the prison, the King will be the first person to know,” I said and hated that it was the truth. “If you go back to Lux now to get Rainer and Brock, you’ll be captured, Dove.”
“I don’t care. I’m going. Kallon, portal me now.” She pulled herself off the floor.
“Dove, we need to think strategically about this,” Kallon said slowly. I could sense guilt and unease radiating off her. “Tezya is right. We shouldn’t go back. We need to head north. The King probably already knows, but Rainer is smart. Once he hears what happened, he’ll get Brock out and meet us at the camp.”
“No, he won’t,” Dovelyn screamed. “Rainer can’t even find him! The only person who saw Brock was Tezya and that was the daysheblinded him. No one has seen him since. No one knows where he is. He’s going to hurt him if we leave him there, Tez.” The tears she’d been holding back broke free and poured down her pale cheeks as she turned to me. “You knowwhat he does. You know what he will put him through simply because he knows…” her voice broke off in a loud sob. “Because he knows I care for him, and now my father will realize we’re all gone. He’ll connect the dots that we were the ones who broke Sie out of the prison… He’s going to take all of his anger out on him. He’s going to kill him.”
“He won’t kill him,” I said, but Dovelyn was right. The King was a sadistic asshole, and once he realized we disobeyed him, that we committed an act of treason—because leaving the Luxian city, not only with Scottie and Peter, but now rescuing Sie from the prison would be seen as an act of war—I didn’t know what the King would do…
“Let me go,” she said, looking straight at me, and it broke me to see her in so much pain. Dovelyn never cried, and she never begged, so to see her breaking now… “I’ll warn Rainer and find Brock.”
“They’re going to have a trap for you. He knows you’ll come for him—”
“I’ll have my shield up the entire time,” she cut me off. “No one will see me.”
