Page 239 of A Warrior's Fate

“What do you remember?” Kai asked.

Daisy wiped a tear that had been sliding down her cheek. “I—I was at the shops in the marketplace, looking for a dress for the Equinox, and there was this woman on the street selling this jewelry, and it looked beautiful, so I tried some on. And—and I don’t remember. It’s just…dark.”

I remember darkness. Everything being dark, and I don’t know anything but the darkness before the darkness—Lukas’s words that had nagged Isla since he’d said them. Gaps in memory, loss in memory brought about because he’d been cursed.

“Did it look something like this?”

They all spun to Jonah at the mouth of the alley. In his hands, he held a fallen stick from one of the few trees planted along the boardwalk. At the end of it swung a necklace, the delicate gold chain ending in a circular pendant. It hung loose, wrapped at one side with a link in its chain broken. Isla was too far away to see what was etched on it but couldn’t help but notice how quickly Jonah dropped it away from watchful eyes.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Daisy said, but Isla barely heard it.

Her eyes darted across everyone as she counted. One, two, three, four…Adrien, Kai…

She shot to her feet, her heart in her throat. “Where’s my brother?”

CHAPTER 49

Isla had felt such fear like this quite a few times in her life. Too many times in the most recent years of it. And in every instance, she swore the sensation of her stomach bottoming out got worse.

“Did you see him walk away?” she asked no one in particular as she stormed past them onto the boardwalk.

She scouted for her brother’s tall frame, his golden hair. Nowhere. The walkway was empty. “Seb!”

No response.

Adrien was at her side. Ameera not too far behind.

Kai, still with the frightened Daisy, tried to ease her mind. “Maybe he went back to the tavern.”

Maybe. But that wouldn’t have made sense.

Isla took a few more steps down the wood, and then it hit her. That scent. The one she couldn’t quite place. One she’d been seeking for over a week now, and one she maybe shouldn’t have let her guard down for.

“No.”

She took off in a sprint, her name called in question aloud and through the bond, but Isla only had it in her to respond to Kai, giving him one word, one identifier before she tuned him out. Heavy footsteps came from behind her, but she wasn’t sure who followed.

She sought Sebastian’s scent, his aura, listened for his voice. Her mind went to the worst, and it cycled through the prospect of the pain of loss over and over until her claws emerged and her body thrummed with power. If something had happened to him. If something—

Isla stopped.

There, on the other side of the canal, at the end of the dock where the water opened to the more expansive river, was Sebastian.

She ran and tackled him with a hug that had him collapsing into the rail, and thankfully, that image of a happy family of four, becoming three, becoming two blew away on a brine-kissed wind.

“What are you doing over here?” she asked him, holding back any berating words she had in mind.

Sebastian, however, barely uttered a word. Even his touch on her back, as he wrapped a loose arm around her, was weak. He glanced down at her once, and the look in his eyes was distant yet focused, somehow. He lifted his head to train his gaze along the waterways and the surrounding buildings.

Isla stepped back from him, her stomach coiling again. It was Adrien, Rhydian, and Ameera who’d followed her. Kai probably couldn’t leave Daisy’s side without the fear she’d completely break.

“Seb?” Adrien chanced the call to his friend, moving to Isla’s side.

He turned to them, appearing dazed. “Do you smell that?”

Isla’s brows shot up. He noticed it, too.

“Smell what?” Adrien asked.

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