A muscle feathered in Damien’s jaw. “Zephyr, get every team on this immediately—Thiríon users in their beast forms and hunting his trail. I want him found, now.”
The teams Damien had sent out that night followed Cole’s trail until it went cold north of the city. My mind wandered to the possibilities of what he could be doing, what he could be planning. He and Marcus had been working with the darklings, that much I’d seen in his memories. Would he assume Marcus’ role under Melantha? Would he come after me?
No, there was no doubt in my mind that he would. The pure hatred burning in his eyes when he’d looked at me in the cell spoke to the depths of his desire for not only my end, but Damien’s as well as Selene’s, the goddess whose war his parents had fallen prey to.
“Let’s wrap it up for today,” Damien said. “You didn’t get much sleep last night, and I don’t want you to push yourself too hard.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to continue training, but I’d been more sluggish than usual today, and with the amount of training I’d undergone, my appetite had increased—the hunger was already starting to clench my stomach.
“I have patrol tonight,” Damien started.
I stiffened. “I thought you were off tonight.”
This would be his fifth night in a row, and while he always managed to catch a couple hours of rest curled up against me until the sun rose, the countless hours he’d worked over the past couple of weeks between patrols and the time spent overseeing my training and the training of others worried me. It was too much, even for him, and though he tried to hide it, there were times I’d caught glimpses of the exhaustion in his eyes.
“My team didn’t encounter any darklings last night, but one of the other teams wasn’t so lucky. Two were severely injured, so I’m stepping in.”
“Who?” I asked, my heart lurching.
“Maria and Deacon,” he explained. The names were familiar, but I couldn’t place faces. “I don’t know if you’ve met them yet. They’re all right, but they won’t be ready to return to the field for a day or two while they recover.”
It was a relief that they were okay, but I hated that they’d been hurt to begin with.
I dreaded the thought of another night in an empty house and the entire afternoon alone with my own thoughts. “Do you think I could I go visit Anna while you’re working?”
His brows rose, and his eyes softened as he took my hand. “You don’t have to ask permission, Cas. If you want to visit Anna, go ahead. I can drop you off whenever you like.”
“I’d like that. She invited me to visit and keep her company. It’d be nice to get out of the house.”
He lifted his hand to brush his thumb along my cheek, and the feel of it left my heart fluttering. “If that’s your wish, I’ll see to it.”
I melted into his touch, and he lowered to press a tender kiss to my lips.
Then my stomach growled.
He blinked, and laughter spilled from our lips. “I guess I’d better get you home and fed. Come on.”
3
DAMIEN
“It’s been two weeks since he escaped,” I said, irritation swelling in my chest. “Is there no way to retrieve the footage faster?”
James shook his head, settling his weight against the table full of photos. “Ah’ve got the card goin’ through a recovery software again. Each pass takes half a day, and what Ah’ve recovered from the first twenty passes has nae been successful. Ah almost couldnae get it out of the camera.”
I ran my hands over my face, and Barrett, Vincent, and Zephyr let out a collective sigh as they stood at my side, exchanging uneasy glances. That footage was the only thing that might point us in any direction—without it I didn’t know what we were going to do. How had he gotten free? Was it one of our own who’d aided him? Was there another traitor in our midst? No one outside of The Order knew where he was being held, or that we had even captured him.
My hands balled into fists. Three warriors were dead when we were already stretched so thin, and the one person with any information on the darklings and their plans was gone without a trace. I cursed as I looked over the photos laid out across the table before us—the guards’ bodies and the charred markings on the walls and doorway. Cole couldn’t have made those markings. Even if the shackles weren’t warded to prevent him from using his magic, blood magic wouldn’t leave wounds like that, and none of the guards who’d worked that night possessed abilities that could.
So, who helped him?
Barrett stood in silence at the table, rubbing his fingers along his jaw as he stared at the photo in his hand. “Those weren’t normal burns.”
I glanced at him briefly. “I noticed that too.”
Barrett slid a photo of one of the bodies to me. “This isn’t something a Flame Stoicheion would be capable of. I’ve never seen burns like this before.”
I had, but I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of it being what I feared it might be. It would be several more weeks before we got the autopsy reports back, so our quickest answers laid in whatever footage might remain on that fried SD card.
