Page 64 of Rose and Shadows
He removed his metal mask and flipped his hood down.
Remnant.
He wasn’t alone.
Rhyza Thaine stood with him. Actually right beside him, their hands clasped, the intimacy of it clear.
She wasn’t in her casual yet elegant attire of a blazer and neatly pressed jeans this time. Her dark hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, her amber eyes blazing with harsh emotionand urgency as she stood there in a brown worn aviator jacket and a pair of ripped jeans shoved into motorcycle boots.
Before either Sylas or I could express a single word, Remnant informed us, “The concoction has cured. The stake is prepared.”
“And its target is in our sights,” Rhyza added.
I started.
Sylas stepped forward. “Lazriel has been located?”
“Between the efforts of us all, we were drawing really fucking close,” Rhyza told us. “We’d narrowed it down to two locations on our end.”
“Two on mine and those assisting from our vantage point,” I informed her.
“The Shadowed and the Shifter Stabilization Unit also compiled a pattern alongside Velra’sThryneintel using Sorin’s movements, much of which coincided with Victor’s.” She screwed up her face. “Victor’s sadistic, highly misguided puppet.”
Remnant slid his hand from hers and stroked her back, the action managing to soothe a feral growl starting to escape her, her eyes flaming with the sign of a shift.
I wasn’t surprised. Her son was missing and in the hands of a madman.
Remnant spoke, “We need not continue down any of those paths now. Lazriel was able to mind-link with me.” He grimaced, which said a great deal for the normally stoic Commander of The Shadowed. “His panic and pain… he weaponized it in order to form the link, despite being severely compromised.”
Sylas started forward. “Severely compromised?”
“He is being weakened and incapacitated by holy water and having been denied a single feed in all the time that he has been gone.” Another grimace sent a chill down my spine. “Given what Victor is subjecting him to… the extreme physicality of it…” He stopped himself. “Suffice to say, I now know where he is. But I’llneed assistance breaching the ward that protects Victor’s newly created pocket dimension.”
“Newly created,” I mused. “No wonder it has been such an arduous task attempting to locate them—the place has never existed before.”
“Yes, indeed,” Remnant said. He eyed Sylas then. “The ward is necromantic.”
Sylas’ eyes narrowed. “Morien is there.”
“He was there. Lazriel communicated that he left to meet withPuritas.”
Sylas gritted his teeth, but focused on the situation at hand. “Let’s move.”
As he brushed past, Remnant snatched his arm.
“What?” Sylas barked in his urgency, turning back to him.
“You were weakened recently? Very recently.”
“I’m fine now.”
Remnant frowned, and I saw Rhyza doing the same, scanning the area.
They needn’t have bothered searching because Velra burst out of the bathroom in the very next moment—thankfully fully-clothed and in what we’d termed herbattle gear, her leather corset and pants. She’d obviously heard enough of the conversation. She was bone-dry, meaning she’d dried herself with her magic in her haste.
She pulled up short, however, at the look on Remnant’s face.
He knew.
