Page 158 of A Warrior's Fate

“This.” Kai pointed to another symbol above her head. “It’s my family’s crest.” He traced his fingers over the two curves and the circle in which they met. “It’s simplified, but that’s our wolves. The moon.”

Isla stepped back, now able to see the motif she’d found throughout the pack. She hadn’t noticed it in what was left earlier, but then again, she hadn’t been searching for it.

She spun on her heel and rushed back into the room, calling over her shoulder, “Is Jonah still at the shop?” She went to the desk in the office area, rifling through drawers until she found a pad of paper and a pen.

“Is that a genuine question?” Kai side-stepped from his spot in the doorway to allow Isla to slip by him again. “Why do you need Jonah?”

Isla swallowed. The honesty she’d wanted from Kai went two ways.

“I got one of these earlier today.”

“You what?”

“When I went to call home, in the city. There was a trail of the jewels from my necklace—the one that you gave me that broke after I shifted at the banquet—and it led to a message like this one. Like the one you’d gotten in Callisto.”

Kai heaved a breath. “Why wouldn’t you mention that earlier?”

“I was going to, tonight when we talked. There’s a lot more too, but we need Jonah.” She handed over the pad and paper. “Just copy this down and meet me up in my room. I need to grab some things.”

The warriors were staying on the hotel’s third floor of the opposite wing, but Isla was moving so fast, it felt as if she’d gotten there in a blink. Their hallway was empty and eerily silent as she stalked through it to her room at the end of the corridor. After today’s trek through the mountain, she wasn’t expecting anyone to be awake.

Still, she moved quietly, running through the items of her mental “shit-I-can’t-explain” checklist. The dagger, the broken diadem, her rubies, and whatever she had forged from the alleyway. They connected somehow to all of this. To each other. She just had to figure it out.

She was nearly to her door when a pull came. Not from Kai, but from something.

Isla faltered and turned her head, finding herself in front of Callan’s door. It was cracked open a sliver, and Isla couldn’t hear the snoring which she’d dealt with for the years they’d shared a bed.

Her blood ran cold when she spotted the tiniest swipe of crimson on the doorjamb.

Shit.

She wouldn’t give herself time to doubt.

She pushed on the wood.

Its creaking reverberated down her bones, loud in her ears. Too loud in what seemed to be an empty room. Chilled night air swept by her face, a current from the open window caught by her entrance. The shadows left by the sparseness of the moon’s aura made the room seem forbidding. Still, Isla took a few steps inside, risking a call of Callan’s name. She received no answer. And unless he was hiding in the closet, no one was here.

For a moment, she figured he’d taken Kai’s threat seriously and left.

But his belongings were still there. The trunk he’d traveled with, the bag with his gear, his sword, his armor. Papers were scattered across the bed’s blanketed surface. Some crumpled and torn. And Isla caught the faintest smell of smoke wafting from the bathroom as if things had been burned. Could be the reason for the open window?

She scanned the door. Where had the blood come from?

She tugged her lip between her teeth, and against that part of her with better judgment, she kicked the entrance closed, lest no one come upon her as she approached the mattress. There was a ball in her throat as she sorted through the files. A lot of them were Callan’s documents, as she had for herself. His papers to get into Deimos—which he would need to leave and get back into Io. Even the ripped sheets didn’t seem to be anything unusual.

She sighed, scanning the room again and noticing more parchments placed on the bureau backed by a mirror.

Her eyes were wide as she picked up an identification card for Edriel of Charon.

Edriel.

The false name Callan had been using, according to Kai. Where had he gotten this? Why did he need it?

Isla dropped the card back on the table, and her gaze slid to the map that had been beside it, worn from being folded and rolled so many times. The geography depicted was a stretch from Deimos, out west towards Phobos, and displaying parts of Callisto and Mimas. He had lines drawn through it, areas circled throughout Deimos’s four regions with question marks. All seemed to converge in one spot—a wide-cast circle encompassing the Wall.

“What does he have you looking for?” she mumbled under her breath, recalling Kai’s words to Callan before he’d ordered him away. Alpha Cassius had put Callan on some type of mission, other than the rogues, other than observing how she behaved here.

Isla narrowed her eyes at the map. Beyond the border of the Wall, within the marred parchment depicting the Wilds, were notes that nearly got lost in the dark contrast of the scourged land.

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