Page 63 of A Tempest of Shadows

By the time the guards finished searching the town, two more men and another woman filled the prison carriages. The guards retreated toward their horses on the far edge of Nottingshire while Samael stood in the street, surveying the wreckage.

The smile on his face made my upper lip curve into a sneer. What was going on here?

“We have to stop them from taking those people,” Ellery whispered.

I grasped her arm before she could rush recklessly from the woods and get herself imprisoned in one of those carriages. I didn’t think my intervention would save her from Samael’s wrath this time.

“Your death won’t help anyone, and neither will getting thrown into one of those carriages. I’m sure my father knows what’s happening; I’ll find out from him, but we’ll get you to your mother first.”

She bit her bottom lip as she looked from me to the town. Her torment was evident on her face, but in the end, concern for her mother and common sense won out.

“Open a portal,” I told her.

Ellery slipped further into the woods as Samael strolled down the street, smiling at the cowering residents he passed. What happened to him?

He was never the kindest immortal, but he was never cruel, and I’d never seen him relish the suffering of others. I had no idea what changed him.

“Are you ready?”

I turned back to discover Ellery standing before the portal she’d opened. I frowned as I studied it while trying to understand what the amsirah in the town were trying to do when they stopped running and started moving their hands.

Why did they stop running and let themselves get caught?

“I am.”

Together, we walked into the portal and emerged in the woods on the other side of her manor. Thankfully, no guards were raiding the place, but some thick thatching had blown off the roof, and a shutter hung at an angle.

The manor hadn’t escaped the windstorm, but it hadn’t been too badly damaged. Standing beside Ellery, I watched as she closed the portal.

What were they doing?

I couldn’t get the image of the amsirah in Nottingshire stopping in the middle of the road out of my head. If Ellery and I could open portals, then why couldn’t they?

Then, a sinking sensation settled in my stomach as a new possibility occurred to me. It can’t be. There’s no way.

But as I thought it, my hands started moving.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Ryker

Ellery frowned at me while she spoke. “I have to go.”

My hands flew as I pictured Dragonia with its towering mountains and dragons sweeping across the sky. The image was clear and vivid in my mind, and… nothing happened.

I’d opened a portal already, but I hadn’t opened enough portals to drain me of my ability to do so. That would take at least two more times.

“Wait!” I said more sharply than I’d expected.

She froze with one hand on a branch held back to keep it from hitting her. “I have to⁠—”

“Can you open a portal out of Tempest?”

Ellery glanced back at her manor before moving away from the tree and releasing the branch. She walked back over to me.

Stopping beside me, her hands moved as if she were trying to open a portal, but nothing happened. Her brow furrowed as her hands moved faster. She tried for another minute before her hands fell, and her confusion turned to distress.

“What… what’s going on?” she whispered.