If they even made it back at all.
“What kind of problem?” asked Dina, pulling Masika out of her thoughts.
Catherine’s jaw twitched, the faintest crack in her stoic mask.
“They’ve been taken.”
Tension swept through the room in a wave of harrowing silence.
“By who?” whispered a boy to the left of Catherine. He had a lean frame with a sharp jaw and copper hair that fell to his shoulders. Masika had seen him before, during her mandatory training sessions with Russo.Brayden, Masika thought to herself. She remembered hearing Russo call out his name in warning when he’d nearly rendered another boy unconscious during a combat match.
“There’s something else,” Catherine whispered, ignoring his question. “Before their positioning was lost, Thalia was able to record a final message. She…well…I suppose it’s best if you take a look for yourselves.”
Catherine lifted her hand and a swirling pool of darkness trickled out from her fingers.
From one blink to the next, the darkness began to shift and bend, creating eyes and a mouth and ears—until a fully formed face stared back at them, a projection made of smoke and magic hovering over the surface of the table.A girl.Recognition prickled at Masika’s consciousness—she was certain she knew her from somewhere.
Through the projection, Masika could vaguely make out a dark and foreboding forest looming behind the girl, but the image was too blurry to pinpoint any details.
And then the girl began to speak.
“This…this is Thalia Greevson…” Her voice was strained with exertion, her breaths labored and heavy. “We…we were able to make it to the border of Widow’s Forest—”Widow’s Forest. That was the forest that the Resistance believed hid the DemienOrder’s location. Not that it helped much in their hunt. Widow’s Forest was massive—stretching far enough that it even bordered the edge of Blackwood’s perimeter.
The girl’s face warped momentarily, static disrupting the sound. A deathly hush had fallen upon the meeting room as everyone listened, enraptured. “—a group of them attacked us. They knew our coordinates. I don’t know how, but…there’s no fighting our way out of this. I’ve already lost half the crew. You have to avoid the arrows…” Again, the message glitched, a garbled mess of static and sound: “—if you find this, don’t bother sending a search party…it’s not…I don’t think it’s worth—”
Static cut through the message once again as Thalia tumbled out of view, shoved aside by an invisible force.
A struggle echoed in the distance.
A bloodcurdling scream.
And then…silence.
The image of Thalia melted, the swirling mass of darkness slowly evaporating.
A terrible, piercing emptiness enveloped the room. Everybody seemed equally stunned by what they had just heard, a sort of haunted look in their eyes.
Catherine clasped her hands firmly over the table and let out a sigh.
“We haven’t heard from them since.”
Russo drummed her fingers against the table.
“When are we sending a search party?”
Catherine’s face hardened.
“We’re not.”
It was Brayden who spoke next. He slammed his hand against the table, rising from his seat with a jolt.
“Bullshit!” he cried, brows furrowed. Masika hadn’t noticedbefore, but he appeared to be even more distraught than the others. His skin had gone splotchy and pink, the whites of his eyes glassy with tears.
“Easy,” whispered a girl next to Brayden. She attempted to place a comforting hand on his arm, but he brushed her off, turning his attention back toward Catherine.
“You truly expect us to donothing?” he spat out. “To let them be taken—”
“Everything has changed,” Catherine interjected. “You know just as well as I do that we cannot afford to send out a search party. Hell, we can’t even waste any more time trying to look for the Demiens’ location! Wehaveto prepare for the expedition—” Masika leaned in closer, suddenly alert.Expedition?What was Catherine talking about? “—and that will be five bodies at the very least. Who will protect the base if we all leave? We’d be left exposed. Vulnerable.”
