Page 110 of Serpent and Shadow

It was going to become a problem soon, I knew that.

It would become a serious problem not long after that.

I tried not to think about it.

Unfortunately, it was starting to affect me in ways I struggled to hide. I knew Alaric noticed. Jolie seemed to pick up on something wrong, too. With Nyx, there was no way of knowing. She was almost as difficult to read as Blackstone. As for Luc––

“I hope you don’t mind my just jumping into it, then,” Forsooth said, clearing his throat as he raised a hand already rippling with magic. “I think it’s probably better if you see it first, then we can discuss what you think it means.”

Without waiting for my response, he made a number of mudras with the same hand. If he recited any incantations, I didn’t hear them, but I was reasonably sure Forsooth was beyond incantations when it came to a lot of things.

He had his own ways of focusing his magic, including with his bear primal, which currently sat by his chair, staring up at the loops of magical stars cascading from the ends of Forsooth’s fingers. Those stars gradually swirled into a dense cloud before forming into a large, oval-shaped image that reminded me of a mirror.

It slowly began to sharpen into something more complex.

I’d seen him do something like this before. I hadn’t yet learned the spell, but I knew it was a way of sharing memories between Magicals. I also knew they’d been using it to transmit intelligence, including from inside Dark Cathedral.

At first, the image was dark.

Then, a sparking cloud of magic flared out, shining a deep blood-red. It flew across a long, narrow space, illuminating everything in its path.

Rows of beds grew visible on either side as it flashed by.

Screams erupted in the small space.

The sounds were quickly silenced, but I knew it wasn’t via natural means. I heard Latin recited in a female-sounding voice, and knew it was a sound-deadening spell.

It may have quieted them, but it didn’t stop them moving.

Small bodies ran around in the dark, eyes wide as they bolted for the back of the room, obviously in an attempt to get away. There was no where to go. The spell had shot through the room’s only door. Whoever’s vantage point I shared, they were closing the gap to that same door with swift strides, surrounded by cloaked figures.

Seeing those kids, most of whom looked somewhere between eight and ten years old, running, mouths open, caught in silence, somehow made the image more disturbing, not less.

“Here!” someone yelled.

The robed figure whose eyes we shared abruptly turned. It was a strange sensation as the view inside the mirror-like surface jerked sharply to the left.

Another robed figure stood in a second doorway, motioning them over.

“He’s in here!” the same voice said, sounding excited.

I felt sick. I was suddenly sure I didn’t want to see this.

It felt like I got dragged to that doorway, anyway. The person whose eyes I shared walked right up to the robed figure standing there. Both doors appeared to be cut right into the dark grey rock. Our eyes looked into another long room full of beds.

The difference was, I counted four wizards and three witches who held these kids motionless in their beds. The Dark Cathedrals stood at various points around the room, hands up as they used magic to trap the students in their bunks before they could get out.

“Inside,” the witch at the doorway crowed. “Orrin’s got him. He’s in the closet.”

That sick feeling in my gut worsened.

Gods, no. Don’t show me my brother being killed––

I didn’t realized I’d looked away until Forsooth’s gentle voice spoke.

“You’ll want to see this, Leda,’ he prodded gently.

I took a breath, then forced myself to look back at the mirror-like image.