Voss swallows, turning a sickly shade of pale. “Anyway,” he mutters, looking anywhere but at me. “I’m a busy man. What is it you want?”
I lean forward, locking his gaze. “The little Digger girl. I know you have her. She is to be returned to my block immediately.”
Voss lets out a choking sound, his teacup rattling violently against its saucer. “Oh. Er. You’re too late.”
“Too… late?”
Voss begins to pant, his chest seizing, as I let my power trickle across the desk and into his lungs. The thought of returning to Aurora empty-handed, watching that fragile light of hope die in her eyes, makes the darkness in my veins boil.
“Do not test my patience,” I whisper. “Where is she?”
“Gone," Voss gasps, his hands clawing desperately at his throat. “Just gone. Beyond the jurisdiction of Quo Reformare. I can do nothing about it.”
I hiss in annoyance, severing the pressure just enough to allow him to breathe freely again. He collapses over his desk, drawing in ragged gulps of air.
“Explain,” I command.
He shakes his head, trembling. “Some Guild girls informed me that she was a runaway, and not sixteen like she claimed. I ran her name and the tattoo identifying mark through the system and it flagged an active extraction request from a legal guardian. They left with their charge twenty minutes ago. I couldn’t have kept her if I wanted to, de Vaux. The paperwork was ironclad.”
“Legal guardian?” My fingers tighten on the velvet armrests. “Who? Give me the name.”
“The Grieves family. Businessmen with far, far-reaching power.” Voss’s face hardens with a desperate, defensive bravado. “I am quite sure your father is an associate of theirs. I followed the law. There is nothing to be done.”
Followed the law. There is nothing to be done.
Am I to break my first promise to her?
Unthinkable. I cannot be a person too weak, too slow, too useless to save her family.
The despair would shatter her, and the fragile thread of trust we just spun would snap forever.
No.
There is only one viable permutation.
I will have to leave this fortress. I will have to track this Grieves family down, tear the sparrow from their hands, and return her to Aurora myself.
A cold, heavy finality settles into my bones. The options I have are narrowing down to an inevitable conclusion.
Aurora cannot stay here without me, with the scum, and the warden while I hunt, which means the timeline has changed. No more games.
I will have to break her out of here entirely.
Standing, I smooth the front of my uniform and turn on my heel. Warden Voss is already irrelevant.
Instead, I must prepare to tear down these walls.
My beautiful ballerina must bidadieuto Quo Reformare.
???
On my return, I find Aurora in a different cell.
That of Clay and Imran.
She is squatting next to a cot, her shoulder pressed against the wolf as she tends to the dying boy.The moment she sees my face, she is on her feet, lunging toward me.
“Well? Where is Sky?”
