The flask seemed to warm in Reagan’s hand. Her blood. He remembered Hildegard filling the glass just a few nights ago and Jane watching him with a small smile on her face.
“You can track her,” Finn said, moving closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Whoever took her doesn’t know that. We’ll get her back.”
Reagan nodded, staring at the blood, but his mind refused to settle. Over half an hour had passed. Thirty-six minutes, and it took one single second to—
Clodagh Foley, the hybrid redhead, hanging on his gate flashed into his mind.
His power gathered, urging him. Reagan forced himself to breathe through the flux.
“Where’s the draught?” he barked, spotting Cerridwen approaching, hands full.
She stretched the map across the table while he poured Jane’s blood into the bowl of hot water, letting the liquid meld with the red streaks.
It had been too long since he had used blood this way. The method was vile, but sometimes leaving a trace behind was safer than carrying a relic that could be stolen or removed.
“Will it show you where she is?” Joy asked, her voice strained.
“Yes,” Finn replied steadily. “It will mark the last location of the owner at the time of casting.”
Reagan swirled the water with his finger while uncorking the vial with his teeth, and let it spill into the bowl. Steam curled upward, tangling with the scent of iron.
It had to be enough.
“All outposts are being warned,” Gwin said, moving around the table as he spilled liquid across the corners of the paper. “Barracus will send instructions to locate the Lady. Heil will report back once they do. Do you have the most likely location?”
She wasn’t Lady yet. If she were already the Lady of Mountheim, he would be able to pinpoint her instantly.
He pressed the soaked map flat, hands bracing on either side while the paper bled red from corner to centre, drying immediately where she wasn’t, narrowing their options, until a single wet dot appeared over one town. Yeary, a sparsely populated town in Ashenagth.
Reagan remembered the name. It was one of the marked locations by the Elven Lords.
“It seems your uncle was right,” Gwin muttered to Finn.
Reagan looked at her. “Send two squads there. I’m going ahead.”
His eyes met Finn’s as he tapped the location on the map, and Finnegan’s confirmation was wordless.
They flung and landed in a clearing with tall grass, surrounded by trees. It was already night-time. The wind carried the scent of sweet greenery and rusted metal.
They ran hard between untended vegetation, looking urgently for any sign of her. His rapid breathing filled his ears.
She had to be close.
Before long they caught sight of a solitary stone building beyond some inactive train tracks, weathered and large, like an abandoned forge.
Reagan slowed just enough to catch any sound, his every sense straining for the faint glow of lights deep on the second floor.
Battle mages surged one by one behind them, moving silently through the field in their direction. But when they crossed the threshold and swept every floor, the building was empty.
Chapter 52
Jane
Cahir dumped me in a small room with walls quilted in white padding. The material was everywhere, swallowing even the door when he locked me in. Everything was white or nearly white, as if I had been placed inside a box. The floor was tiled in neat squares, cold beneath my bare feet.
The bed was the only thing inside with me, a white sheet stretched tight over a thin mattress and a single stiff pillow waiting at the head. When I sat, I felt its hard surface.
Sterile light poured down from the ceiling, so bright I couldn’t see the lamps behind. The air smelled faintly of bleach, with something older blending with it. A stale scent that clung to the back of my throat.
