Page 116 of The Demon's Discovery
“I don’t smell anything, but my ears just got painfully full for some reason,” Grace commented, trying wiggle her jaw to clear the pressure.
My stomach sank. The closer we got to my classroom, the heavier the air got.
“Magic,” Rylan said, drawing his Light blade.
Magnus shifted as we walked, the sound of his stone feet against the floor a grating noise that made me clench my teeth together.
I noticed the dust motes immediately when we walked into the room—too many, too clustered, pointing me toward Greta’s worktable… and the empty space atop it.
“No!” I swore, crossing the room in a blink with my mist, palms slapping the bare wood. “Lilith’s book!” I roared, the anger I had just moved beyond back with a vengeance. “That thief portaled in here andtook. My. Book.” The insult of that happening right under our noses incensed me.
“How did he get past the wards?” Rylan asked, pacing.
“Fae magic works a little differently, but it smells like earth magic.” Calla frowned as she looked around the room. I felt her discomfort as well as Grace’s, the feeling that their home had been violated shared by all of us. If he could come and go as he pleased, even here, he was far more powerful than we’d already given him credit for being.
“He may have bound himself to the book. The fae pages… I’ve never seen it done, but it’s possible.”
“I’ve never felt him,” I said. “There are memories in the pages, echoes of the previous caretakers, but he’s not there.”
“Are you?” Rylan asked. “You’ve spent plenty of time with it in the past.”
I frowned. “No.” I’d never recognized myself there, nor Lilith, who should be the first to show. I said as much, and Rylan tilted his head.
“That’s illogical. Notably so. I don’t even know how one would remove the traces of several people like that.”
He wasn’t wrong, but that was a problem for another time.
I stepped over to the locking cases, checking for any missing items, but we’d already pilfered so much it was hard to tell. The safe was next, to be sure that the extra containers of the elixirs were still where they should be. Relieved that nothing else had been touched, I turned to my mirror and started another desperate attempt to reach Tap. I also tried to reach my other brothers telepathically, but the links were weak at best and Rylan had been the only one I’d ever had a decent connection to. But I was not ashamed to ask for any help I could get. We needed a portal to the fae realm, and we needed it now.
“I cannot sit around waiting. I’m not even sure what we’d be waitingfor.” I felt ready to climb out of my skin from having no immediate goal to accomplish. Tap still couldn’t be reached, and we were losing valuable time. I rubbed the stone of my ring withmy thumb, sending Greta the same message she’d been trying to give me in the hours since she’d been taken.
“Magnus, could some soldiers fly to the crossroads perhaps? We could continue to scour the manor, try to reactivate the original in the maze in the meantime?”
He shrugged. “I’m sure I have some enthusiastic youth who could make the trip, but that still leaves us two days out.”
“I’m going back to the manor. You can join me or not, makes no little difference. But I want to be sure I wasn’t hasty when I first tried to access the portal.”
There was a quick discussion about who would join and who would not. Grace opted to stay behind since we had guests, and Calla won an argument about whether or not she should be allowed to join. Magnus and I kept our amusement to ourselves—mostly—as she got directly in my brother’s face, going so far as to poke him in the sternum with her finger as she made several relevant points about her magic not only being powerful, but also the best match for that of the fae realm out of any of us.
“I will not be coddled, Rylan Stolas, not when it comes to things like this. You need me to?—”
“Ineedyou to be safe!”
“Youneedme to not murder you in your sleep, but I’m not making any promises about that if you forbid me from helping with this, or anyothersituation in which I’m perfectly capable of holding my own. I can fight, I have my own powers—ones that have been well proven, I might add—and I amnotgoing to be left behind because you think that’s the safer option.”
Magnus cleared his throat and shifted next to me, the corners of his mouth twitching as we lingered in the entryway of d’Arcan. My heart cheered for her. I loved her boldness, and she wasn’t wrong, though I did understand my brother’s stance. I predicted similar arguments in my future.
Grace, bless her, began to applaud. “Well said, my lady! Get out of here, the lot of you.” She shooed us out the doors with her hands. “Go find a way to get Greta back and leave the fighting for the damned fae who took her, if you please.”
Rylan sighed, his hand at the base of her spine as we gathered in the courtyard. “Have I mentioned today how much you infuriate me, Little Owl?”
“Only once or twice,” she replied, wrapping her arms around his neck. He gave her a boost, his arm under her rear and she locked her legs around his middle. He snapped out his wings and took flight in the same moment he dove in for a kiss. They were disgustingly in love and a perfect match for one another.
I shook my head and leapt into the sky after them, absolutely refusing to give up any similar interactions my future might hold with Greta.
The remainingstaff were all in bed by the time we got to the manor, though a butler dutifully responded when he heard the doors open, a large umbrella in his hands. I apologized for the late interruption, and he scurried back off to his quarters, only too pleased to give us the run of the house.
We separated, efficiently searching the easily accessible rooms for any trace of magic, but there was none to be found inside.
