Page 78 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

To the point.

My gaze remained on my mate, who sat beside the heiress of Hazelharbor, looking equally captivated by her words and pissed on her behalf.

“I don’t know that it is,” Magnolia said, shaking her head vehemently. “You didn’t hear him. He was… desperate.”

“Dr. Green, I have to agree with my son,” Ciaran said apologetically. “I’m sorry my visions haven’t stabilized enough to be useful. Outside of the enemy hunting through New York City, I haven’t seen anything consistent—and I can’t even make heads or tails of that.”

Guilt wrapped a cruel fist around my insides and yanked.

The day I won the duel against his mate, the Seer of the South’s magic had scrambled. He still caught fragments here and there—mostly of a phantom haunting a burning Manhattan—and those visions proved more than useful when they came.

But he couldn’t search as Ally had.

Not that anyone could search like Ally.

Grief was a cruel bitch.

One we were all painfully acquainted with.

“As it stands, I cannot see you,” Ciaran continued. “Not even here, in the immediate present, inside my own home.”

He shook his head, his hands clasped between his knees. Braced on his elbows, he hung on the witch’s every word as intently as his son did.

“How would anyone even set a trap in The Middle?” Portia asked. “No one has ever survived traveling between realms.”

She seemed to catch the words as they left her tongue. A grimace pinched her features a heartbeat before her rich brown eyes flicked among the three of us.

“Sorry.”

“It is what it is,” I said flatly.

The Grayshell party had a fool’s chance of completing the mission Ally had assigned them.

We all knew it.

There was no point pussyfooting around the facts.

“But Adrastos managed to lock Aren fucking Amadeus out of his own goddamned hierarchy. I think it’s safe to say nothing is sacred.”

“And what about him begging the witch for help?” Portia pressed.

“He could be trying to regain her trust. Con her into⁠—”

“No,” Magnolia snapped, cutting me off.

I tilted my head and studied her.

It wasn’t the grief I expected to find in her eyes this time.

Confusion, maybe?

But also that quiet contemplation born from replaying the same moment endlessly.

She squeezed her eyes shut, tan fingers hovering over her lips.

“He was desperate.”

“Need I remind you that this is the same warrior who tricked your entire hierarchy into believing he was an ally?”