Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Ellery
My lightning rose higher as I stood in the clearing, turning as I prepared to savage the enemy, but no screams greeted me, no battle cries filled the air, and I didn’t scent blood or death. My confusion mounted as I started spinning in a frantic circle, but I saw no sign of death or destruction.
Everything was as it should be as amsirah glided across the clearing, going about their day like nothing was wrong while I was an increasingly flustered mess. Ryker was in trouble; I knew that as surely as I knew air filled my lungs, but there was no sign of peril here.
I should feel relieved; I didn’t. He was still in the encampment when I left him, but if everything was okay here, then where was he?
In their pens, the sheep baaed as the chickens pecked the ground. A woman carrying a bucket of water frowned at me as she stopped a few feet away.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Where’s Ryker?” I demanded.
“He’s in the woods, with the others, working on the new grouping of tree houses.”
I knew where they were assembling those buildings. I’d told myself I’d be cautious about this, but though I sprinted across the clearing and past the home I shared with Ryker with reckless abandon, I didn’t open another portal, so that counted as restraint.
It would take me longer to reach the new work area, but it was safer to approach this way; I never knew what I’d emerge to find if I used a portal. I told myself this, yet I couldn’t deny that terror invigorated my movements.
“Ellery!” someone shouted after me.
It took me a few seconds to realize it was Scarlet, but I didn’t stop to talk with her before plunging into the forest. Branches battered my flesh and tore at my clothes and hair as I raced heedlessly onward.
After a few hundred feet, a repetitive thudding sound floated in the air. It was distant, but I recognized the thud of hammers.
My brow furrowed as my uncertainty intensified. I still felt that draw of power deep within me, but was I wrong? Was Ryker perfectly fine, and this was some new development in our bond?
If they were still hammering, then things couldn’t be as wrong as they felt. If they were still hammering, then why was my heart about to explode out of my chest while the need to see Ryker clawed at me?