Page 26 of Storm In The Sky

He couldn’t be here right now. He couldn’t listen to Winter and allow himself to fall for him. It would set him up for heartbreak, and this time, his heart would never recover.

Chapter Nine

Keylon kept his focus firmly on the notepad on the table in front of him as he played with a pen. He could feel the other mages watching him, but thankfully, none of them had asked him what was wrong. By now, everyone had to know that he’d run away from Winter and had been avoiding him ever since. He could feel Penley and Ansley vibrate with the need to ask what was going on, but every time one of them opened his mouth, Jarvis glared at him. So far, neither had dared to defy him.

For a bit, they’d leave Keylon alone, which was what Keylon wanted. They needed to focus on Carlyle and what they could do about him, not on Keylon’s love life or his freak-out.

Jarvis placed his phone in the middle of the table after dialing Emory’s number. Carlyle’s dragon had left the castle a few weeks ago, and while Jarvis apparently heard from him regularly, it was the first time Keylon would talk to him since then. He was worried about the dragon, even though he should consider him an enemy. Carlyle had hurt Emory as much as he’d hurt the mages—if not more—and Keylon trusted him.

“Jarvis,” Emory said when he answered.

“I hope we’re not bothering you,” Jarvis said. “You’re on speaker so that the others can hear our conversation.”

“Oh. Hello, everyone.”

There were a few murmuredhellosback, but everyone was tense, including Emory. Keylon could hear it in his voice.

“I called to ask you about a place we found that we believe is connected to Carlyle,” Jarvis explained. “As you know, we haven’t been able to find him or Sol, so we decided to try to locate the two humans who work for Carlyle.”

“And you managed that? It’s impressive.”

“I could do it only because one of them left the place Carlyle’s shielding from my spells,” Ansley explained. “I believe that the shielding spell is on a place rather than on Carlyle himself.”

“We found Simon in a small cottage,” Jarvis interjected.

He explained to Emory where the cottage was and what they’d found, but Keylon’s thoughts drifted away from the conversation. Like always, they went straight to Winter.

He’d been trying to talk to Keylon these past few days, but Keylon was hiding from him. It was cowardly, and he knew he should stop and face whatever was going to happen, but every time he thought about doing that, he panicked.

Winter had said all the right things. He’d even kissed Keylon, which was what Keylon wanted, right?

He did want it. He knew he’d never get Alvin back, but he could see himself finding a new relationship with Winter. Things wouldn’t be the same, but they didn’t have to be.

But instead of giving Winter a chance and seeing where things could go between them, Keylon was on the run. Every time Keylon saw Winter, he left the room. He’d stopped answering the door both in his office and his rooms in case it was Winter. That meant he was also isolating himself from the other mages, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. He needed to protect his heart, and that was what he was doing.

“Yeah, I recognize the place you’re describing,” Emory said, bringing Keylon back to the present conversation.

“So itwasCarlyle’s.” Jarvis didn’t sound surprised since that was what all of them had assumed.

“He had places like that scattered around the country. Carlyle always said it was so we could choose where to go when we wanted to be alone.”

Keylon sucked in a breath. He couldn’t even imagine how Emory felt when it came to Carlyle. Carlyle had done the worst thing he could ever have done to a dragon. He’d taken almost allof Emory’s magic, which meant that Emory had lost his dragon for decades. Without magic, he hadn’t been able to shift. It was a miracle he was alive. Keylon wondered why Carlyle hadn’t taken all magic he could get from Emory. Had he still felt something for him? Was that why he’d left him enough magic to survive for decades?

But that was the past. Penley had managed to give Emory his magic and his dragon back, and Emory had decided to use it to get revenge on Carlyle. He’d left the castle almost right away, and he had yet to return.

Keylon was surprised to realize he missed him a bit. They hadn’t been close before, even when Carlyle had still been a decent person, but Emory had been around the castle for a bit after they’d found him, and even though he’d been mostly quiet, he was a nice man to talk to. Keylon wouldn’t call him his best friend, but he did call him a friend, and he was worried about him. There was no way to know what Carlyle would do if he ever got his hands on Emory again.

“We found an object there,” Jarvis explained. “A small ceramic figurine of a cat. We haven’t manipulated it too much because we can sense there’s magic inside of it, but we can’t make out the spell.”

“He used objects to store magic.”

Keylon leaned back in his seat. With the right spells, Carlyle could have stored an immense amount of magic, depending on when he’d started. What had he been planning on using it for?

“That means that if he gathers enough of them, he can recover the magic he lost while being trapped,” Penley said. His eyes were wide.

Keylon thought he was afraid and understood the feeling. The thought of Carlyle recovering his magic so quickly made him want to scream. They’d worked so hard and had lost so much, and it had been for nothing.

“Yeah,” Emory agreed. “It’s a problem. You think you can continue tracking the two humans? We might not be able to find Carlyle, but if we find those two, we can stop them from taking any more of these objects back to Carlyle.”

---