Was he imagining Aria’s expression to be one of relief? Whereas Nikolai’s mouth straightened—with disapproval? Lucas couldn’t get a read on it.
Nikolai raised a dark brow. “There is a town close to here.”
“You’ve been here before?” Lucas pressed.
“No.”
When Lucas regarded him with some incredulity, Aria piped up. “He can sense it.”
Lucas grimaced. “But if you want to use a gate, why not use the one back at the house? Was it no longer operating? Who knows where it would spit us out, but it would be away from here.”
Nikolai’s gaze slid away from him. “The white-haired women are coming through there.”
Lucas stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“Because I can feel them hunting me.”
Lucas swallowed. “Why are the Watchers after you?”
Nikolai’s mouth pulled straight. “I did something back home that I don’t think they’ll like. They are already near the gate. So we cannot use it.”
Bloody hell. This just got better and better. What had Nikolai done “back home”?
Aria piped up before Lucas could ask. “There should be another, we just have to get to the town.”
“Do we know if it has a gate?” Lucas asked.
“If not, they’ll know where there is one we could access.” Aria shot him a frustrated glare, but she turned to Nikolai. “If you can sense the presence of a town, you might be able to detect if it has a gate.”
Nikolai raised a brow at her. “How would I do that?”
“They run on energy, too,” Lucas pointed out. “The permanent ones are always anchored to lodestones.”
Nikolai shot him a look where the black ink drifted across the icy gray, and a chill shot down Lucas’s spine.
Aria nodded eagerly. “You should be able to detect the lodestone. They are pretty distinctive, even I can sense them when I get close to one.”
Eager for the distraction, Lucas regarded her with surprise. “You can?”
“Yeah. As long as my crystal dust is topped up, I can sense them too. Not like Nikolai, but I get impressions, anyway.”
Lucas hadn’t realized Dragons had that ability. As he added that fact to his “how not to get killed by the dudes you rob” file, he focused on the issue at hand. “We know Demeti had a gate,” he pointed out. “Nikolai can use that one to get an idea of how they feel.”
Nikolai shot him one more dark look before he sighed, nodded, and closed his eyes. A moment later, his mouth pulled straight. “Yeah, okay, I got it.”
The words were hardly more than a whisper, as though he wasn’t speaking to them, but Aria commented.
“You feel it?”
“Yes,” Nikolai said in a normal tone. “It is distinctive. I am checking that town now.” A pause, and then he shook his head. “I don’t feel the same thing at the nearest town.”
Lucas frowned. “Keep looking.”
Nikolai didn’t answer, but he also didn’t open his eyes before he nodded. “I feel one. There is a larger settlement farther away. I think it has one of these lodestone things, and a gate.”
“How far?” Lucas asked.
Nikolai’s eyes popped open as he considered. “Another day and a half, maybe, if we keep moving.”
