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“He’s not with you guys?” She popped a grape in her mouth before following my gaze.
“I haven’t seen him this morning,” Kaori said.
“Me neither.” Isla brushed crumbs from her lips with a beige cloth napkin. “Could he be visiting his beasts?”
He’d only just regained the ability to summon Valda and use her power to open the beast-realm door. Undoubtedly, he missed hiscompanions. It wasn’t a stretch to think that when he rose and we were still sleeping, he used the opportunity to slip into the beast realm.
“Or maybe he’s with Boo and Rook,” Ozias said, plopping to the bench beside Isla. She cut him a hard glance, but she didn’t object to his presence.
Calem stiffened as his earlier mirth vanished. “Boo and Rook are in the woods. I saw them on my morning walk, but I didn’t see Gaige.”
Unease threaded through my gut. Was he really in the beast realm? Valda needed time to recover between activating her power, but admittedly I was unaware of what that time frame looked like.
He would have told you.With everything happening, he’d know I’d worry over his absence. Which meant, there was no way he would have disappeared without at least leaving a note.
Abandoning my breakfast, I turned on my heels and suddenly I was sprinting toward the house. Panic clawed at my throat as I tore through the front door and rushed into the bedroom. His clothes were strewn across the armchair, his bag at the foot of the bed. His scent still lingered in the room. Cedar and pears and the salt-tinged musk of us. My heart hammered against my rib cage. No note. Where was he?
The rest of the Council wasn’t far behind me, and soon too many bodies were in a space that had been wholly mine and Gaige’s not hours before. My throat swelled and I turned away from the sight of our mussed sheets and pushed into the main living space.
“We have to find him,” I said.
Calem’s face was bone-white. “Do you think…”
“Don’t.” I choked on my words and gripped the edge of the kitchen counter to steady myself. “Don’t say it.”
“He can’t be lost to the shadows,” Ozias whispered anyway. His words scraped against my skin, and I flinched.
“I don’t understand.” Raven began to pace, her booted feet pounding in time with the roar of my pulse in my ears. “I thought he’d learned how to control them.”
“He did,” I managed. “And…and I would’ve noticed. He was rightbesideme.” Gods, how had I not noticed? How had I slept when he’d been stolen away by the very power I’d forced him to wield?
“We still don’t know…” Calem fumbled for words, and then he looked at Kaori. “Can you go to the beast realm and search for him?”
She grimaced. “Of course I’ll try, but the beast realm is massive. Unless a Charmer enters with another Charmer or is part of their family, they don’t typically manifest in the same location. It could take years of searching, and he’d be more liable to return here in far less time.”
“So we wait?” Ozias asked.
“We can’t just sit here.” I slammed my fist into the counter, fracturing the wooden surface. “He’s not in the beast realm, and you know it.”
“Okay.” Ozias glanced between all of them before landing on me. “What do we do?”
Keep it together.But I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to handle this situation. Gaige was gone. I’d only had him for a handful of moments, and yet I knew in my bones the memories would stay with me for the rest of my unnaturally long life. I couldn’t let him go. I wasn’t ready.
I never even told him that I loved him.
“We’re bringing him back.” I shoved away from the counter and stalked up and down the short length of the house. “There has to be a way.”
“Kost…” Ozias’s words were too soft.
“Just because we haven’t witnessed someone returning from the shadow realm before doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” I answered before he could even state the obvious, trying to smother my own doubts with a conviction I didn’t wholly feel. “We have to try.”
“Okay, but how?” Calem shifted his weight from one foot to the next as he tracked my own agitated movements.
“A beast?” I tipped my chin toward Kaori and Raven, but they pursed their lips and shook their heads. I rounded on Isla. “A mage?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She wrung the hem of her tunic. “To be honest, I’m not sure a mage from any other class could do it, either.” She finally met my probing stare. “We have nothing to tether the magic to.”
I stopped abruptly in front of her. “But you don’t know for sure. Can you contact mages with different powers? Convince them to help?”
