PERIWINKLE

Night is falling through the forest around us. The trees have turned to silhouettes, the sky to slate-gray. The only thing that stops me from constantly stumbling on the uneven ground is my awareness of the shadows cloaking it.

Jonah aims the beam of the penlight attached to his keys at the terrain just ahead of him, needing the extra guidance. Mirage and Hail have long since merged with the shadows, and Raze only flickers out occasionally to give us glimpses of the trail to follow, but the sorcerer has to rely on his two legs.

So I’ve been doing the same as much as I can. It doesn’t seem fair to leave him tramping onward as if he’s alone.

Unfortunately, the pangs shooting up my legs from my sensitive feet and ankles are sharpening by the minute. We’ve been on the trail of that violent pack of shadowkind for hours.

The pain stirs memories I don’t want to be thinking about right now—noxious metals pressed against or into my skin, muttered words in the strange language that weaves right into my mind.

Jonah said the beasts that attacked us were probably under the control of another sorcerer. I can’t see how that human could be anything but malicious if they’re forcing shadowkind creatures to rampage through the forest.

Sorcerers are dangerous. Sorcerers push and cut and hurt…

I breathe as slowly and deeply as I can and stay quiet, hoping Jonah willw take my silence for fatigue. I don’t want to talk about the other emotions roiling inside me.

Of course, I don’t always get a say about what shows.

As we pass through a small clearing, Jonah veers closer to me. “Are you picking up on any impressions that worry you?”

My gaze darts to him. “No. Why would you think so?”

He dips his head at an apologetic angle. “I’ve just noticed—your hair’s been flickering here and there with a bit of that glow it gets when you’re feeling something strongly. Kind of an orange-y color that looks uneasy to me. But maybe I’m misinterpreting.”

He’s not, but I don’t want to tell him that. I also don’t want to lie.

I grapple with the problem for a few seconds before deciding to take a page from Mirage’s book and turn it into a joke. “It’s great being a walking mood ring. Always showing what’s going on in there whether I want to or not. It’s pretty spooky being out here when it’s getting dark, don’t you think?”

I haven’t exactly deceived him, but he can assume the atmosphere is what’s unsettled me.

Jonah lets out a rough chuckle. “You can say that again. Maybe we should head back… but we might not find a lead this good again.”

“You’re the only one of us who needs sleep,” I remind him. “It really should be up to you.”

He smiles tightly. “I can keep going for now. Rollick is counting on us.”

I’m not paying enough attention, and my next step brings my foot into a dip at a bad angle. The searing ache that lances up my calf has me biting my lip against a gasp. My nerves jitter, and this time I catch the flare of orange glower from my hair before I calm myself.

As much as I hate to abandon Jonah, awfully soon I won’t be able to hide my discomfort.

“My physical body is getting kind of tired,” I say as an excuse. “I’m going to slip into the shadows for a little while to give it a break.”

And to rest my throbbing legs.

Jonah nods without any sign of distress. But then, he’d never make me feel guilty over something like that, and he’s good at keeping his own emotions simmered down.

Maybe I should ask him to give me some lessons alongside Shanty’s… if we ever get back to the academy.

I hop into the nearest patch of darkness and ripple onward with all bodily sensations dispelled. In the shadows, I’m more clearly aware of Raze following the trail ahead of us, Mirage bouncing here and there among the trees to my left, Hail’s presence flowing along at a more measured rhythm farther to my right.

At least he hasn’t taken off completely like the fae man has sometimes acted like he wants to.

The sky is completely black when Raze pops out of the shadows and stays corporeal. He speaks in a hushed voice. “I think we’ve found something.”

I leap onward to the darkness to his side and find myself at the edge of a larger clearing. Reaching the clearing at the same time, Jonah points his light where Raze has indicated.

A log cabin stands against the trees at the far end of the clearing. It’s a squat structure, only one story tall and maybe twenty feet across. A smaller wooden shed stands beside it.

Moss creeps across both buildings’ walls and roofs, and no light glints through the single dingy window. As I pull myself back into human-like form, Jonah peers at it, braced as if for an attack. The other men materialize around us.

“I smell a human’s presence as well as shadowkind,” Raze says. “Just one. Male. But not very fresh. No one’s here right now—probably not for hours.”

Jonah frowns at the main structure. “It looks like a hunting cabin. The kind of place you’d trek out to on brief trips, not expect to stay in for more than a few days. Did the shadowkind creatures hang around here very long or just pass by?”

Raze stalks around the edges of the clearing, his reptilian tongue flicking over his lips. I gaze down at the ground and notice the imprint of a boot sole in the dirt.

Not too long but wide. Like the person who made it was as short and stout as that cabin.

An image of a man who fit that description wavers up from the depths of my mind, and I close my eyes. My pulse stutters in my veins with a fresh prickle of pain through my ankles.

It’s okay. Raze just said that no one’s here. And whoever was here, it obviously couldn’t have been that man.

Raze returns with a grim expression. “As far as I can tell, most of the shadowkind creatures that were here recently came from different directions. The faintest trails are scattered. The most recent trail is all of them together, heading in the direction where they ran into us.”

Hail’s voice is flat and cold. “So the sorcerer gathered them here and then sent them off on a hunt.”

Jonah grimaces. “It appears that way. Let’s take a closer look and see what we can find.”

As we walk closer to the cabin, his light glints off tiny shapes amid the scruffy grass. Mirage leaps in before I have a chance to look at them more closely. “Stars on the ground to match the sky!”

An instant later, he recoils with a wince. “Stars that burn—we’d better learn. They’re silver and iron.”

I halt, peering down at the trampled earth. Little ringlets of pale gray metal shine amid the grass—few enough of them that I can barely pick up on their repelling quality from here.

My forehead furrows. “They look almost like…”

My voice trails off with an icy smack that hits me in the gut. Hail finishes for me. “Links from one of those hunter nets.”

I can’t restrain my shiver. My heart is suddenly pounding twice as fast.

Stolen novel; please report.

Why wouldn’t this sorcerer use the same tricks to subdue shadowkind? From what Gnash said, all kinds of human hunters rely on those tools. Even the academy’s staff turn to the metals shadowkind find noxious when they need to contain us.

But the prickling sensation has spread all over my skin. Echoes of interlocking links searing into my limbs and face…

I swallow thickly and try to drag in a steadying breath, but the air flows shakily into my lungs. My stomach has balled into one big knot.

My legs stiffen under me. “I’m going to stay out here. Keep watch. I’ll shout if I see anything.”

Jonah shoots me a concerned look, but I manage to smile at him. When Raze hesitates as if to stand guard over me, our ringleader beckons to him. “Come on. We might need that sense of smell of yours to help us investigate.”

All four of the men push into the cabin.

I take a couple of steps back from the scattered links and reach for the exercises Shanty started to teach me. If I can just smooth my breathing out… Picture somewhere calming. The park in that city—

A crackle amid the underbrush makes my pulse lurch. He could be coming, storming back here to capture us all. We have to—

I clench my hands against the blare of panic. No. What’s happening here has nothing to do with my past. I need to get a grip on myself, calm down, and actually help with this mission.

The thought has only just passed through my head when Mirage bursts out of the cabin clutching a few metal objects in his arms. “Look what we found!”

They don’t gleam as brightly in the dim moonlight as the bits of netting did in Jonah’s penlight beam, but I can make out their shapes well enough. A tarnished, scuffed medal, a small trophy cup with a dent in the side, and a figurine that I think is an award, the head knocked right off.

Panic floods my mind all over again. All I can see is the display case in that basement room, all the memorabilia the one who caged me kept of his “defeated enemies.” A wail careens from my mouth.

He’s found me again—he’s going to trap me and haul me away and—

The horror explodes out of me in a wave of darkness thicker than any part of the night. Mirage yelps, and there’s a shout from somewhere behind him. Distress and pain, reverberating into me from all of them—

A few firm words cut through the cacophony in my head. I jerk the agonized energy pouring out of me back inside, reigning it in by some means I didn’t know I had.

Then I’m standing there, trembling and panting, staring at Jonah—who just gave me a sorcerous command to stop.

I only get a glimpse of his fraught expression where he’s standing in the cabin doorway before he’s spinning toward the other men. “Is everyone okay? If you need to take to the shadows for a bit to recover, we can sort out the rest after.”

Mirage is lying on the ground just a few steps away from me, the trinkets he was holding strewn on the ground, his arms wrapped around his stomach. Little puffs of essence drift of up over his body, but he inhales raggedly and opens his eyes.

“It hit hard, but not too deep,” he says. His gaze flicks to me with a knitting of his brow. “So many secrets to keep.”

Hail is leaning against the cabin’s outer wall, one hand clutching the side of his face, the other tucked under that arm. His pale cheek looks scraped raw, more essence trickling off of him. He simply stares at me, but he’s on his feet, so Jonah must decide he’s not on the verge of keeling over.

And Raze… Raze crouches on the ground on the other side of the door. As I watch, he shifts from basilisk to humanoid form. Maybe his scales protected him some, but he obviously didn’t bring them out immediately. A few patches of the bronze skin on his arms give off whisps of essence.

Only Jonah looks uninjured. He was the farthest back—he must have gotten me under control before the worst effects of my outburst got to him.

Or maybe my strange power hurts shadowkind faster than it does mortal beings.

My throat closes up so tightly it takes several seconds before I can pry it open enough to speak. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—I got scared—the emotions overwhelmed me.”

My voice breaks with a hitch. I wrench my gaze to Jonah. “Thank you for interrupting the outburst. When the emotions surge out of me like that, I don’t know how to yank them back on my own.”

Or if some part of me does, responding to his command, it’s not a conscious part.

He offers a tentative smile, but the other three men are all staring at me. Shame tingles through my hair, casting a reddish-orange glow into the air around me.

Hail, for all his impenetrable cool, winces.

When it's clear this emission isn't going to hurt him, he seems to feel he needs to recover his honor with a caustic remark. It ends up sounding more stunned than snarky. "How the fuck does a pipsqueak like you fling out a power like that?"

Raze doesn't say anything, but his jaw works. I can feel how taken aback he is in the salty-bitter torrent of emotion coursing off him.

I told him we'd protect each other, and then I hurt him.

I take another step back, my eyes filling with tears. The urge grips me to spring into the shadows and flee, as far away from here as I can get.

If I move fast, Jonah might not be able to catch me. I could go all the way around the world, never set foot within a thousand miles of the academy again, be ever so careful how I ease in and out of the mortal world.

It would be better for them too, wouldn't it?

At my next backward step, Jonah speaks up in a quiet, steady voice. "Peri, it's going to be okay. You're not in trouble. You didn't do that on purpose."

I swipe at the first tears that trickle down my cheeks. What does it matter when I injured my supposed team anyway?

He keeps talking in the same soothing tone. "Something upset you—it set you off. That might be the key to figuring out what we're dealing with here. Stay with us, and let's work it out."

If he had any idea—what upset me was something from months and years ago, nothing that's really here. Just a few vague similarities...

But what if this sorcerer is similar to my former captor? Is it possible that what I know about that awful man could be useful in finding this one?

Mirage has rolled onto his feet. He studies me with his bright eyes, his mouth slanted. "You didn't mean to hurt us, did you, Rainbow?"

A choked sound escapes me. "No. Of course not. I never do."

Hail's eyebrows shoot up to the fringe of his pale hair. "How often have you exploded like that?"

More times than I want to admit to. But before I can decide how to answer, Raze's eyes widen even more. "That was like—right before we were threatened with banishment. You were upset about our dorm room. There was this surge of darkness..."

I have to answer the question in his voice. "Yes. That was me. That's why I'm here."

Hail blinks, looking at me as if he's never seen me before.

Jonah breaks into that line of conversation, setting a reassuring hand on my arm. "You can help us finish this mission, Peri. Tell us what bothered you."

Deep down, a lot of me still wants to escape all their bewildered gazes and vanish into the woods. But every memory of past pain summons a growing determination to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Isn't that what I've been trying to do all along? How can I say I want to make up for the wounds I've dealt before if I don't do everything possible to stop this new threat now?

I consider Jonah's face, focusing on the emotions simmering beneath his controlled surface. Watching for a lie. "Are you going to tell Rollick that I lost control?"

If I'm going to be banished as soon as we go back to the school... I don't know if it'll change anything, but I'd at least like to be prepared.

Jonah shakes his head. "You didn’t do any significant harm. And now we know that my sorcery can reign in your power, at least if I catch you early on in an outburst. That makes you less of a threat, not more."

Is he going to follow me around every day we're back at school?

Actually, that idea gives me a bit of a thrill that I'm not sure he'd appreciate.

I rub my hand across my face again and square my shoulders. "Okay. I'm not sure how much I can help, but I'll try. There are a few things here... They remind me of a sorcerer I knew before."