Chapter 3
THREE
ATLAS
I have no idea what day it is. Has it been two days or three since Rune was drugged and abducted?
My eyelids feel heavy and the words on the page in front of me blur every time I blink.
I shake my head sharply and drag in a deep breath.
Oxygen will wake my brain up. That’s all I need—a few good, deep breaths.
I reach to flip the page of Rune’s journal, and my fingers swell and harden to stone.
I shake that off too with a grunt and another stubborn breath.
If I’m losing control of my shift, it’s a sure sign I’ve gone too long without sleep.
But how am I supposed to sleep when Rune is out there somewhere, being held prisoner?
They could be doing anything to him. Draining his powers, torturing him…
And if they’re using dark magic like Cassius said he tasted…
I growl at the thought and flip the next page a little too hard.
The sound of paper tearing is like a bucket of ice water over my head, sending a jolt of awareness and adrenaline through me.
“No, no, no,” I murmur, smoothing the ripped page with my fingers as if that will somehow fix it.
A sizzle of blue light snakes along the torn edge, and the distinct scent of Rune’s magic tickles my nose.
My fingertips tingle as the light races along underneath them, healing the page right before my eyes.
I blink and then huff a laugh. Leave it to a mage to enchant their personal journal to be self-healing. The light fades and I trace my fingers gently along the path again, over the smooth, unblemished paper, hoping to pick up some kind of lingering energy or magic, anything.
“How many times have you reread that thing?” Cassius’s voice startles me. That I didn’t hear or smell him coming is just more proof that I’ve been awake too long.
I grunt in response. Truthfully, I have no clue how many times I’ve reread his journal.
Not just in the past few days, but since Drax gave it to me.
He and Mac found it in one of Rune’s little hideaways when they were hunting him down to ask him about a cursed amulet for Auri.
When Mac touched the journal, it cursed him.
But gargoyles are immune to mage magic—for the most part, anyway—so I got saddled with the job of searching it for any clues to his whereabouts or anything else that might have been helpful for getting the boss what he wanted.
Cas’s footsteps are so quiet that mortal ears would never be able to hear them, but now that I know he’s here and I’m paying attention, the featherlight pad of his steps reach my ears just fine.
The coldness of his skin has never bothered me.
It’s homey in a weird way. Cool and hard, almost as impenetrable as stone.
But I shiver slightly as he puts a hand on my shoulder and leans over me to peer at the book.
“You think you’re going to find any answers in there?”
I slam it closed quickly.
“We don’t know how the curse works. You might be infected just by reading it,” I say gruffly, ignoring his question.
Because, no, I don’t think there are any answers inside about who took him or why.
It’s a personal journal more than anything, with rambling entries about his day, ideas he seems to have been working through for new rituals to try, and a few recipes for baked goods.
But I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.
His scent vanished outside of Full Moon, and we don’t have a single lead or way to find him.
“Mac called Xanthis,” Cas says. “Or, well, he called his brothers, who called Dahlia, and she convinced her mate to take a phone call.”
I perk up, tucking Rune’s journal under my arm so Cas won’t try to touch it.
I’m just protecting him from the curse—it’s not because there’s some weird, possessive feeling in my chest that wants to keep the little scrap I have of the mage all to myself.
Xanthis is a dragon mage, and a powerful one.
Why didn’t I think of trying to get ahold of her?
“What did she say? Can she contact Rune somehow? Does she have any idea who might have targeted him?”
“No,” he says simply, answering all my questions at once.
I growl and start to clamber to my feet. “Then we need to go back to Full Moon and see if Jasper remembers anything else. Or Roman can try harder to pick up the scent of that bald man we saw Rune leave with.”
He gives me a small shove, easily toppling me back into my seat thanks to my exhaustion.
“Roman spent hours with his nose pressed to the ground out there. Whoever that guy is, he has access to powerful enough magic to mask his own scent and bewitch a demon to possess the bartender. Chasing our tails isn’t going to get us any closer to figuring out where your mage is.”
“He’s not my mage,” I grumble. “Why even tell me that Mac talked to Xanthis if she didn’t have anything helpful to say?
” There’s a rational part of my mind that knows I’m being unreasonably petulant, but I don’t care right now.
Maybe I should pay Xanthis a visit myself.
Goddess knows she’s only ever as helpful as she wants to be.
She might know more than she wants to admit.
“If you’d settle down and listen to me, I could tell you that she did have some useful advice.” He arches one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows at me, and I growl again.
“Well, fuck, why didn’t you say that? What did she say?”
“You need to sleep.”
“Fuck sleep. I’ll sleep once we know who has Rune.”
Cassius puts a hand on my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.
“At, that was Xanthis’s advice. You need to sleep.
You felt a connection with him while you were asleep before.
That’s how you knew he was in trouble, and that’s the best way to open that channel of communication again if there is one. ”
“I’ve tried focusing on the connection,” I say. “It hasn’t worked.”
His lips thin and he narrows his eyes.
“But you haven’t slept,” he insists. “Come on, I’m taking you to your room and you’re going to sleep. I’ll put a thrall on you if I have to.”
I snort but let him guide me up out of my chair. “Your vampy tricks don’t work on me.”
“They might when you’re dead on your feet already.
Your defenses are shot. You haven’t even noticed that your body is trying to force a shift while you’re sitting here.
You need rest, and something tells me your gargoyle wouldn’t do shit to deflect my ‘vampy tricks’ when it knows as well as I do that you need to sleep. ”
Maybe he’s right. And, fuck, am I glad he’s got one arm looped through mine, guiding me to my room, because I don’t know that I’d be able to navigate the mazelike hallways of Auri’s compound in this state.
When we reach my room, he opens the door and gives me a little nudge inside.
“And don’t come out until you’ve slept at least ten hours,” he says.
I nod and yawn, my body on autopilot as I trudge towards the bed and collapse into it. I settle Rune’s journal against my chest, and sleep pulls me under before I even hear the door click shut.
RUNE
“Just tell me what the point is, you monosyllabic bitch.” I curse and rattle the bars of my cage as Elvira, also known as my prison guard, drops my food off right on schedule without a word.
She hasn’t said much since the first day when she mentioned a war, no matter how nicely I’ve tried to talk to her every time she shows up to feed me or bring me a fresh toilet bucket.
“I’m going to turn you into a toad when I get out of here,” I mutter under my breath as she disappears.
Seriously, I’ve been here five days, assuming I’m counting the meals right, and other than my not-so-chatty guard, I haven’t seen another soul.
Why would someone capture me and then not even bother to come by to Villain Monologue about how smart and powerful they are?
I rattle the bars again out of sheer frustration, then glare at the soggy grilled cheese sandwich.
I have such a long list of people I’m going to curse to absolute hell when I get out of here, and whoever is making me these shitty sandwiches is definitely high on the list.
I drag my fingers through my ratty, dirty hair and slump onto the ground, reluctantly reaching for the sandwich with my free hand.
I need to keep my strength up. While I force myself to eat the bland food, I make another fruitless attempt to pull at any magic I can.
It’s hopeless though. Any reserves I might have had when they threw me in here are long since depleted, and they made damn sure that there isn’t a single source of energy down here for me to draw from.
They might still be doing something to bind my powers; I would have no way of knowing.
Either way, the result is the same. I’m completely fucking impotent.
I shove the rest of the sandwich into my mouth and swallow it down. Then, I reach for the plate. It’s plastic, so it’s not much use as a weapon, and there is absolutely zero energy to draw from it either. Whipping it hard at the wall like a Frisbee is mildly satisfying though.
While I’m banging my head against the bars out of sheer boredom and frustration, I suddenly feel a little spark. I gasp and go still, focusing on the feeling.
Please don’t be imagining things, please don’t be imagining things, please don’t be…
Another little flicker right in the center of my chest makes my breath catch.
Holy shit, there really is something there.
It’s barely there, nowhere near enough power to pull anything from, but I close my eyes and focus on it.
It feels like the tiniest invisible thread running from my sternum to…
I’m not exactly sure where. I pluck at it with my mind, and something vibrates back.
Something warm and protective. I almost laugh out loud.
I haven’t needed anyone to protect me in a long time, and I can’t fathom anyone who would want to. Maybe I’m starting to lose it.
I focus again, gathering what little frissons of magic are lingering inside me, too weak to actually do anything with, and I send them down the invisible string.
I have no way to know where the magic ends up, if it ends up anywhere at all, but the more I stroke the connection with my mind, the less alone I feel.
I might be imagining things, but it feels like it gets a little thicker the longer I focus on it, until eventually I start to drift off to sleep.