Page 77
“Eran,” she called to her lieutenant. “Finish up here.”
Cold wrapped Adam and the light shifted from outside night to daytime interior.
Experience continued to teach him the differences in the elves who’d teleported him. While the knight’s felt jarring, likely as she did not take her passenger into consideration, and Dautre’s was nearly seamless, Adam could feel the shift in Argent’s. It was more than the difference in the spaces of from and to, but something subtler, something in the background, like moving from one room in a museum to another. You were so focused on the art that you missed that the walls had changed color, but as he paid closer attention, he began to notice the differences.
They were at the hospital, Mercy, and Adam immediately looked for Bobby as he followed Argent toward the ward with the empty people. Adam did not see his brother, which could mean he was off today.
Nor did he hear the banshee’s song, which he took as a good sign.
They passed a few of the rooms, and all looked normal, even in Adam’s Sight.
Then they reached Cole’s room and froze in the doorway.
The bed was covered in blood. It dripped and pooled along the floor, inching toward Emily, who sat crying on the floor, the two ends of her binding cord in her hands.
Spotting Adam, she spoke haltingly.
“I—I didn’t know what to do. I just came to check on him and it started . . .”
“And you bound it.” Adam inched toward her.
“Yes. It . . . exploded out of him, and it fought the circle for a while but I held it. I thought someone would come, and then it just died.”
“It’s okay, Emily. It’s gone. You can let the cord go.”
She sobbed and fell against Adam, her grief and confusion slamming into him. If he hadn’t still had his wards up from the banshee fight, he’d have been weeping with her on the floor.
“You saved many lives today,” Argent said quietly.
Adam wanted nothing more than to push Emily away, but he couldn’t do that to her.
“What happened to it?” Emily asked. “I didn’t try to kill it.”
“They can’t survive here.”
“Which is confusing,” Argent noted. “Why do they insist on crossing to where they cannot live?”
“The door will be opened,” Adam quoted. “The imprisoned will be free.”
“What is that?”
“Something the banshee in the spirit realm said. But it doesn’t make sense? Free to die?”
He looked to Cole, who lay still, his mouth a wreck, ripped open at the corners, his eyes now truly lightless. The monitors all showed a flat line.
“Where are the nurses?”
“We had this ward isolated,” Argent said. “Only sensitives and practitioners work on this floor.”
For a moment, Adam had forgotten that the elves owned the hospital.
“We need to check on the rest of them,” he said. “Tristan and the others.”
“Agreed. Then we must go.”
“Where?”
“It is time, Adam. We can put it off no longer. We must speak with my brother.”
