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“Does it?”
He kisses my neck. “We’ll get them back. All of them.”
“I know,” I lie.
I wish I were sure. Ophelia’s power over them is unfathomable. Terrifying. How can Jason and Emrys go from offering to feed Ashton, from being worried and here with us to following her like lapdogs, like their minds are wiped? It’s hard to believe it’s really happening.
“Tell me how you think we’ll find him,” I whisper. “You must have an idea.”
“We’ll use elemental magic to find his trail through the portal.”
“And to get out?”
“I will bleed a couple of my vampires. They still answer my call. That should be enough to grant us passage through the gate right now.”
Another point I don’t want to debate with him. These are the guys he said won’t care if he lives or dies, aren’t they? The guys I haven’t seen around since I started hanging out with Ash. And they will willingly bleed for us?
Let’s just hope he’s right.
The crowd has started to thin. I grip Ashton’s fingers in mine as we walk hand-in-hand back to the registration office, where Sindri and the elder purportedly left from. On the way, Ashton gestures at some of the vampires milling about in the yard.
A few detach themselves from small groups and follow us.
So far so good. But it’s not like we can stand in the door and perform the ritual. We stop there and Ashton turns to face me.
“What now?” I whisper. “I don’t know how to track people.”
“Our magic is connected, remember?” His fingers trail on my cheek, over my mouth. “Close your eyes, feel him. Together we’ll find him.”
Ashton’s magic is all around me, and I close my eyes, his fingers on my skin intensifying the sensation. Water, blood, wine, all trickling through me, making me giddy. I put my hand over his, turning my mouth into his palm.
“Feel him,” he says, leaning in, pressing his forehead to mine.
The element of the air.Arash. Foliage rustling, wings beating, whistling through the sky, voices rising inside my head.
Then only one voice.
His voice.
Sindri.
He’s shouting something, the air howling, carrying broken words and sounds. I frown when I see him, feel him. He’s kneeling on a floor somewhere and his hands are bound behind him. Twine or rope? I can’t tell.
All I know for sure is that he’s in pain.
So much pain. It burns and twists and cuts and breaks. It flays me.
I jerk, almost shoving Ashton away, but he only presses our foreheads together harder. His magic meshes with the wind, with whatever I am, and we move away from Sindri. I flail a little, not wanting to leave him and yet unable to stand that agony any longer—and we’re hovering over a building. It’s white and silver, with domes and fluted towers, and I’m sure I’ve seen pictures of it someplace. It’s inside a forest. A park? Houses edge it, and a river winds among green meadows. Idyllic.
Never trust the cover.
Ashton draws back, and I blink at him, a little dizzy. “You saw it, too?
“Is that a palace?” I whisper.
“The Arash Alcazar, seat of the House Arash. They have him in the basement.”
“Ash…”
