Page 30 of Sevan

Lorelei didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she did her best to clear her mind of worry, of fear, and most of all, of hate. A pure mind was the only answer. If the hag fed off power, energy and emotion, Lorelei needed to be a blank slate.

Concentrating, the things around her seemed to amplify. The cold, hard stone floor now seemed to have a distinctly musty order. She’d smelled something similar as a child. The lagoons near the edge of the red sea were known to emit odd odors dependent upon the way the winds blew.

Stegian’s castle wasn’t near the lagoons.

What is going on?

Opening her eyes, Lorelei found herself surrounded by overgrown foliage in shades of red, green and yellow. The red leaves, so long as they weren’t attached to a tree with a sage-green trunk, were safe. If they were, and she was somehow nestled in a patch of poisonous ollenna trees, then she wasn’t much better off than she’d been in Stegian’s dungeon.

It was still a mystery how she’d even ended up outside to begin with. Could her own inborn powers have kicked in and removed her from harm’s way, or had it been the baby?

Concern for the safety of the child she now carried kicked in and Lorelei struggled to sit up. Pain rippled through her upper leg, causing her to cry out. The slightest ruffling in the bushes behind her told her she wasn’t alone. “Who’s there?”

“Me,” Jacquelyn said, appearing next to her quickly. The young girl put her hand out and covered the wound on Lorelei’s leg. “This is deep and it’s infected.”

“I’ll heal.”

Jacquelyn’s penetrating gaze suggested otherwise. “I’m picking up traces of ollenna poison. You might have cut yourself on one of their razor-sharp thorns when struggling or…”

“Or they could have deliberately put it in my wound.” Lorelei bit back tears as she held her cry of pain in as well. “Bloody hell, Jacquelyn, I’ve not the strength to heal myself of something that major right now and I can’t possibly walk back to the compound.”

Jacquelyn nodded. “I know. I’ve been trying to reach Sevan and the rest of them but Stegian is going out of his way to jam our technology. He knew we’d come looking, and he knew they’d need my help.”

“Yeah, but did he know I’d end up out here instead of locked in a torture chamber with Samson?”

“Did he hurt you again?”

Lorelei snorted. “No, but a hag came into the room with the intent of draining the baby’s life force.”

“How did you end up here?” Jacquelyn asked. “You just appeared out of nowhere and my sensors instantly picked you up.”

“That, I don’t know.”

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