Rindek was the Archmage. He was the one that would bring the realms down around them. But in most timelines, he would use his son’s power to do it.
Ash blinked away the images that flashed through his brain. Control was everything, so if he dropped his guard, his talent would take it from him, and drive him mad with the myriad of possibilities. Focusing on the physical helped to ground him, to build the walls that provided structure.
There was no shortage of distractions. Usually, they involved discomfort or pain. He pressed a hand over a half-healed wound on his forearm, hard enough that it hurt. Hidden by his light shirt and pants, the most recent cuts left by the icefire whip had mostly healed, but they still helped him focus.
He diverted himself from Demeti’s glare by scanning the meadow. The Dragon shifter wasn’t surprised to see that there wasn’t much left of it. He’d foreseen it all already.
Although the huge trees were largely unaffected, a few smaller roots had been snapped off and flung, along with young trees, branches, and even boulders. But the truly impressive thing was the great fissure torn in the earth itself. Over thirty feet deep, and sixty across, it was as though a giant hand had scooped up the soil and thrown it into a pile at the other end of the meadow.
Ash hadn’t been here when the Mover had lifted the earth and flung it, but his talent had shown it to him, long before it had actually happened. That the Sabres had made it out from under that alive was entirely due to the purple-scaled Dragon. He’d shielded them with his body, even as he himself had been buried.
Rindek rounded on Ash. “Did you foresee this kind of power in her?”
Ash stood his ground. “The possibility existed, yes. But it wasn’t a certainty.”
Demeti glared at him. The younger Torshin’s eyes were getting closer to his father’s shade of crimson by the day. A sure sign that he was messing with powerful energies.
Sucking life essences was also hard on hair follicles. Rindek’s hair was pure white, Demeti’s was streaked with it. Finn’s was still dark, with only a few white bits at the temple.
When life essence was accessed through a crystal, the leaching of color from skin, eyes, and hair was a slow process. The Watchers responsible for observing the lodestones, which housed the permanent realm gateways, ended up with white hair too. But that process took many years. Pull energy directly from living things as Rindek did, and it rapidly leached the color straight out of both hair and skin.
Demeti demanded, “Where is the Mover now?”
Dani. Her name was Dani, and both Demeti and the Archmage knew it. They just didn’t care. It surprised Ash how much that angered him. Dani was the first person Ash had met that was as damaged as himself. She hid it well, but he’d seen her past.
As well as parts of her possible future.
He stifled the anger—he needed to be thinking clearly if he was to twist the timelines in his favor.
“She is back where we found her,” Ash hedged. “Does she still have value to you? The alpha is dead. Your ability to control her is lost.”
Rindek’s eyes flashed crimson. “You know she does. Stop playing games. If I’d known she was so powerful, I wouldn’t have left her behind.”
“She enabled our escape,” Ash pointed out. “Without her, we might not have gotten away.”
“Dragons.” Demeti’s hatred hissed through the word as he glared at Ash. “How did they find us?”
“Yes, Ash.” Rindek’s eyes narrowed. “Tell him how you didn’t see them coming?”
Ash remained silent. His credibility with the Archmage was on very shaky ground. But soon, it would no longer matter.
Rindek glared at Ash. “I am giving you one last chance to redeem yourself. Tell me where the Mover is.”
Ash merely nodded. He already had that information. And he would give it to Rindek, but it was not yet time to do so.
“I will meditate tonight”—he lied—“and see if I can pinpoint a time and place.”
Demeti exhaled noisily and regarded Ash with disgust. Rindek’s mouth straightened, but he said nothing.
Ash wasn’t fooled. His work was almost at an end. He just needed to hold on long enough to put things in motion.
From that point onward, it would be up to Fate.
* * *
The full moon shone down upon the stone and plaster facades of Winnipeg’s century-old commercial buildings.
Tyrez wrapped the trench coat around his frame, but there was little he could do to disguise nearly seven feet of Dragon warrior. The humans he passed on the dimly lit streets shrank away from him, vanishing like smoke into the alleyways.
