The crackling in the hall intensified. The air in the room changed. Dried out. Abbee’s hair stood on end, and a bad taste lodged in the back of her throat. A flickering light emanated from the T-intersection at the other end of the hall. Bright, flashing lights. It was like a thunderstorm underground.
Kai grabbed Abbee’s shoulders and pulled her into the room. “Get behind me.”
Abbee put Kai between her and the doorway as a young woman rounded the corner of the intersection. At least, that was what Abbee thought she was. Hard to tell with all the lightning emanating from the woman’s body.
Abbee assumed this was Emma, Kai’s daughter. She was a scene of contradictions. She was short. Abbee had expected someone in their physical prime, but Emma was a lot rounder than any pupil of Ipsu’s should’ve been. Her hair was white and cut to her shoulders. It was tough for Abbee to judge the other woman’s age, on account of bright, glowing lines covering her face. It was as if all her blood vessels had light running through them. Her hands too. Every bit of exposed skin glowed and pulsed. She wore a big, fur-lined coat that hung open, showing a fine shirt and trousers beneath. Expensive boots. She had a thin outline around her body that didn’t seem part of her but moved as she moved. The outline was solid red.
Kai raised his hands in front of him and backed up. “Emma—”
The wizard’s daughter punched the air in front of her. The lightning around her collapsed to a single point at her fist and zapped down the hallway with a thundering boom. A shimmering blue dome appeared around Kai and Abbee. The lightning smashed into the dome and raged across its surface.
“Emma, don’t!” Kai shouted.
The woman vanished with a thunderous crack and reappeared right behind Abbee. Kai’s dome blocked lightning but apparently not people. Abbee took a step forward to get some distance, but Emma moved fast—too fast for a regular human—and put her hand on Abbee’s shoulder. Emma’s glow flared.
Pain exploded through Abbee’s body, everywhere and all at once. Abbee felt like every piece of her being was trying to separate. Glimmermote blasted out of her wrists.
Abbee brought her left arm up.
Emma let go and vanished.
Clack-clack-clack. Bolts sailed through empty air.
Emma reappeared on the other side of the room.
“Her!” she shrieked at Kai. “You brought her?”
“Emma, enough!” Kai shouted. “Stop!”
His daughter’s face was mottled with fury. She screamed something unintelligible and thrust both hands out. More lightning pummeled Kai’s shield. A thick cord of it slammed into a nearby stone table and blasted it to pieces. The lightning intersected Cragg’s illusion. He flickered into fragments before reassembling into one image.
The onslaught was overwhelming to Abbee. Every wizard she’d ever seen gave off a vibe of immense control. Even when they used their magic, it felt tight and precise. This was pure chaos. Wild and frightening. Emma was crazy. She wasn’t trying to hurt her father. She was trying to kill him.
Kai’s shield held under the assault, but the wizard staggered back, bumping into Abbee. She brought her left arm up, bunching Kai’s robes, and discharged her bolt thrower at Emma. Lightning stabbed out and caught all three bolts, shattering them in midair.
“No!” Kai shouted. “Stay out of it!”
“She tried to kill me!” Abbee shouted back. “I’ll stop when she stops.”
“This is draining her,” Kai said. “She’ll run out of energy soon.”
Cracks appeared in Kai’s shield. His breath sounded short to Abbee. She wasn’t sure who was going to last the longest, father or daughter. “How soon?”
“Should be—”
The wizard was cut off as Emma’s lightning took on an otherworldly green hue. Some of it turned black. Bolts glanced off Kai’s shield and impacted the floor, walls, and ceiling, blasting stone to pieces. Cragg’s illusion sputtered inside the maelstrom and flickered out. A deep fissure appeared in the ceiling over Abbee’s head, running across the length of the room. Kai grunted and went down on one knee.
Abbee looked over the wizard’s head at his daughter. The woman was a nightmare of sizzling energy and pure rage. Abbee wondered what had happened to Emma’s mother. Kai had mentioned she’d passed away. That sounded peaceful, like she had gone in her sleep. No mention of the wizard purge, which hadn’t been peaceful at all.
A wizard fight was no place for anyone else but wizards. Abbee glanced right. The doorway was two meters away. Emma had come from somewhere, and that somewhere might have a way out. Abbee pushed off Kai and hurled herself through the doorway.
Lightning stabbed at her, scorching her body and legs. Pain tore through her limbs. The cuirass’s protections apparently didn’t work against Emma’s magic. Abbee reached the hallway and broke line of sight with Kai’s raging daughter. The lightning fell away, continuing instead to blast away at Kai’s shield. Abbee’s hunch was right. Emma’s fury was directed at her father. Abbee wasn’t the real target. Mote wisped out of her wrists, and the pain in her legs subsided.
Abbee scrambled to her feet and met Kai’s gaze. The wizard nodded at her. “Left, down two, straight, right, up!” he shouted. “Go until—”
A narrow wall of pale green energy rippled across the floor at Kai. Stone tables, their tops cracked and splintered, lifted off the floor as the wave passed beneath them, and slammed back down. The wave broke across Kai’s shield and smashed into the wall behind him. More cracks appeared in the shimmering dome, and for the first time since Abbee had met him, Kai looked worried.
“Run!” Kai shouted.
Abbee ran. She sprinted down the hallway and turned left. She found another hallway leading to a stairwell heading down. Abbee ran down the steps as fast as she could without falling. A light in the ceiling came on as she rounded the landing and went down the next flight. She found two corridors branching off from that landing. Darkened, crooked halls with dust and old, shattered stone. The ceiling had collapsed in one of them. Abbee remembered Kai’s directions. Down two. She kept going downstairs, hoping that Kai had meant two floors and not two flights.
She got to the next landing. One hallway led away from the stairwell, which kept going down. Abbee wondered how far down it went. She entered the hallway. No lights in here. She dug out her thumb light. Held it in her right hand and thumbed it open. Bright light stabbed into the darkness, illuminating a long corridor.
Thunder shuddered through the walls and ceiling. Stone chips came loose and fell to the floor. Abbee hoped she got out of here before Emma brought the mountain down. She ran to the end of the hall and reached another T-intersection. Abbee went right and found a staircase heading both up and down.
Abbee went up. She got to the next landing and stopped. Another long hallway running in both directions. The stairwell kept going up. Kai’s directions had ended here. Abbee didn’t know where to go. The mountain boomed around her. She licked her finger and held it up, hoping to get a draft. She got one, from down below, but she couldn’t tell where the air was going. Up or across?
Abbee went up. Up and up. She passed halls and rooms, some of them collapsed and full of rubble. This place was enormous. Abbee wondered why someone had gone to all this effort to build something inside the mountain. She lost count of how many flights of stairs she’d climbed, but after several long minutes of climbing, Abbee felt a breeze. She rounded the next corner and saw light. Daylight.
Hope surged in her, and she bounded up the stairs three at a time. Abbee rounded the next corner and saw a big, round room with a sloped ceiling. No, curved. The ceiling was a dome. A big cut ran down the middle. The inside of the cut was squared off, but the outside was irregular rock. Abbee saw blue sky through the cut, and the opening looked big enough for her to squeeze through.
The room contained the strangest contraption she’d ever seen. It looked like a big copper vat that someone had turned upside down. It had a chair at the bottom with a small cylinder near where a person’s head might be. The copper vat had a big tube at the top end that poked up through the cut.
Abbee didn’t care what this thing was. She was happy it was still there and hadn’t tipped over from the rumblings below. She was down here, and the exit was up there, and the contraption looked climbable. It had grooves and ledges in its irregular shape. Abbee dashed across the room, mounted the chair, and jumped up to grasp the first ledge. A deep, thundering boom shook the mountain, and Abbee almost fell. Kai and Emma’s battle raged on. Abbee had to get out of here.
She heard a scraping sound behind her. Light bathed the copper contraption, and Abbee heard a familiar voice. “Whatever are you doing?”
Abbee twisted and looked over her shoulder. Cragg stood in an open doorway with daylight behind him. Abbee didn’t know where that door had come from—she couldn’t believe she’d missed it. Cragg looked solid. Abbee couldn’t see daylight through him, and the wind ruffled his clothing. She saw his breath in the cold air. He cast a shadow on the floor.
Abbee let go of her perch and dropped to the floor. She hit the ground and rolled to her feet. Clack-clack-clack. Her bolts flew at Cragg and missed, veering away at the last moment and passing through the doorway behind him.
Abbee blinked and shot him again. Same effect. The bolts’ flight bent, as if buffeted by a great wind, and flew outside. “What the—”
Cragg snorted. “I made that,” he said, nodding at Abbee’s bolt thrower. “As if I’d allow somebody to shoot me with it. One of the benefits of arming someone else is making their weapons useless against me.”
Abbee set her jaw. The wizard was between her and freedom. She knew he was there, but he didn’t have a threat outline. No color. Abbee knew that meant Cragg wasn’t even thinking bad thoughts in her direction. He had to know how she felt about him, yet he was not concerned for his safety. He should be. The mountain shook again. Abbee wanted out of this place before Kai and his daughter brought it all crumbling down. But this was the man who’d subjected her to terrible torture. She wanted him dead. She wanted it to be messy.
Cragg arched a brow at her. “Look, I know you want to fight, but maybe we can talk first.” He pointed at the floor. “While those two are busy.”
The floor shook. Rocks banged off the copper tube behind Abbee with a loud clang.
“We should go outside. Come.” The wizard turned and walked through the door.
Abbee crept forward, ready for anything. She neared the door and smelled crisp air. She saw a platform outside with a thin metal railing. Cragg stood off to the side and made room for her. Abbee ducked out of the door and into daylight. It felt good to be outside. Out of the darkness. She put her thumb light away and stepped to the railing.
She spared a few quick glances to orient herself. The platform was made of metal with a thick grate for a floor. Several long beams under the grate went back into the mountainside. The whole thing had been painted in irregular gray colors to match the surrounding stone. They were several hundred meters down from the peak and had a wide, sweeping view of the shattered valley below. Abbee looked around and thought she saw the spot where she and Kai had landed from their sky descent. She wondered why Kai hadn’t come in through this door in the first place. Maybe he’d thought it too obvious and had expected a trap. The mountain shook. It hadn’t mattered.
Cragg lounged against the railing a few meters away from Abbee. He watched her with a mix of curiosity and caution.
“You said you wanted to talk,” Abbee said. “So talk.”
“First,” Cragg said, and Abbee tensed, but Cragg didn’t move, “an apology. I’m sorry about what I said earlier. That Ipsu left you because he thought you were worthless.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“You … What?”
“I lied. I was trying to trigger your latent, to gain an advantage over Kai. I gambled that you didn’t have truth-seeking, like Kai does. I mixed in the truth so it would confuse him long enough to provoke you. Look, Ipsu didn’t leave you because you were worthless. We only spoke twice more after I tested you in Joor, but I knew enough to know that he didn’t think you were rubbish.”
Abbee frowned. “Twice?”
“Once right after, when he told me to stay away from you. I think you stumbled into that conversation. He disapproved of my methods. And yes, he did rescue you. He was furious with me.”
“How do I know you’re not lying right now?”
“You don’t,” Cragg said. “But do you believe Ipsu would’ve used children to test you?”
Abbee knew Ipsu wouldn’t have done that. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That he wasn’t the monster; I was.”
“Eh, not really. Everyone I sent to you was dying already. You saved them from a horrible end.”
Abbee remembered bloody rags stuffed in mouths. “I don’t think they went peacefully.”
“Well, no, they didn’t,” Cragg agreed. “But it was quicker than dying of a nasty form of nagu flu. It swept through Joor that year and killed thousands.”
“Nagu flu isn’t that dangerous,” Abbee said.
Cragg shook his head. “This particular strain was different. It kept coming back. Even the best healers couldn’t keep it at bay. You didn’t save those people from a painful end, but you did save them from a long one.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Abbee asked.
Cragg shrugged. “The stories we tell ourselves shape us more than we know. If you keep telling yourself that some of the most important people in your life didn’t think you were worth anything, you might form a terrible opinion of yourself. I don’t want you telling yourself a lie.”
Abbee folded her arms. “You want something. Get on with it.”
Cragg nodded. “You’re carrying the traced gemstones. No, I don’t want them, but having them means you took Ipsu’s belongings. Was he … did he have a message rod?”
Abbee blinked.
Cragg saw it and let out an explosive breath. “You have it. Is it still intact?”
“I’m not giving it to you,” Abbee said. “You can’t open it, anyway.”
“Please, Abbee,” Cragg said. “It’s meant for me.”
Abbee frowned. “That’s impossible. Ipsu wouldn’t have had anything meant for you.”
“He would if I was the one who asked him to help Kai. He went there for me. Well, for all of us, but he was the only one who could do it.”
“Kai said he asked Ipsu to help with Emma.”
Cragg snorted. “Emma’s a lost cause. And yes, you settling in Akken was a bonus for Ipsu. But he was with Kai to find something that Kai had. Something he took, and I need it.” He straightened. “Please, Abbee. I can open that message rod.”
“I don’t believe you. Ipsu is … was a Class Three Refractor. He couldn’t have used the rod.”
“All he had to do was write the message and put a cork in the rod. Any cork would do. It was warded to me and me alone already. It didn’t matter that he was a refractor. Don’t you want to see what he died for?”
“He died because he was collateral damage,” Abbee said. “The hunters were after Emma.”
“The hunters were after whoever had those traced gems,” Cragg said. “They assumed it was Kai, but got Ipsu instead. They never saw Emma. And they would have been after Ipsu if they’d known he was carrying that message rod. They would have killed him if they’d known what was in it. What I hope is in it.”
“What? What could possibly be so important?”
Cragg smiled. “Only a little something that will save the world.”
Abbee wasn’t aware that the world needed saving. “From what?”
The mountain boomed, and the platform shook beneath their feet. “It will take too long to explain. But it’s the reason Ipsu did what he did, and I’m doing what I’m doing now.”
“That’s conveniently vague,” Abbee said. “If you sent Ipsu to Kai, why trace the gems in the first place?”
Cragg shrugged. “Kai’s paranoid. He’s predictable.”
“Oh,” Abbee said. “He’d have suspected something was wrong if you hadn’t been trying to find him.”
“Well, I was trying to find him. Ipsu was gone a long time. He sent me two messages in twelve years.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Still looking.’” Cragg chuckled. “Typical Ipsu.”
“Looking for what?”
“If you give me the message rod, then I’ll be able to tell you.”
“The cipher that Ekon and Kai were talking about?” Abbee guessed.
“No,” Cragg said, shaking his head. “I already know the cipher.”
“You—what?”
“Look, as I said, we don’t have time for me to catch you up. I used the cipher as a distraction. It kept both Kai and Ekon busy. The hunters and the network too. I made sure nobody learned anything dangerous.” He nodded at Abbee. “You’re carrying the answer. I hope. I hope Ipsu found what we’ve been looking for. The world is doomed if he didn’t.”
“Doomed from what?”
Another earthquake rattled the mountain. A big one. Metal squealed under Abbee’s feet, and the platform tilted downward. Abbee’s arms windmilled as she fought for balance.
Cragg grunted and pushed off the balcony. He sighed. “I can see this is going to take a while, and Kai is holding out a lot longer than I expected. Emma looks close to finishing the job Vani started, and tearing down the rest of this mountain. You know I could just kill you and take it anyway. Well, perhaps not kill you, but certainly do enough damage that I could pluck the tube from your broken body before you could knit your broken bones and muscles back together. You think you can resist me?” He held out his hand.
Abbee flinched. Nothing happened. “What?”
“If you’d be so kind as to take my hand, I can warp us to a safer location.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Abbee said. She wanted to kill him for what he had done to her, but he was a wizard. The moment she made a move, he’d put her in a body lock. He knew what she was, and he knew how to immobilize her. Hurt her. He could warp her into solid rock. There was plenty around. Besides, she wasn’t going to fall to her death—she had the cuirass. She’d even enjoy the trip down the mountainside.
“I can hurt you, but I give you my word that I mean you no harm,” Cragg said.
Abbee knew that much from his lack of threat outline, but if she hadn’t seen Emma’s red outline, Abbee would’ve thought the cuirass was malfunctioning. She couldn’t believe Cragg meant what he said. It must be some trick. The last time she’d encountered this man, he’d had her locked in a basement and tortured.
Another earthquake shook the platform, hard enough to shear off the metal pins holding it to the cliff. The platform dropped out from beneath them. Cragg half fell, half lunged forward and grabbed Abbee’s arm. Abbee felt a squeezing all over her body. She blinked, and she was somewhere else. Her stomach heaved.
She was about to throw up when she felt another squeeze. The world shifted again. And again. Two more blinks and squeezes and moments of rising bile. Abbee caught a glimpse of more gray stone and a window when Cragg let go of her. Or maybe she twisted out of his grip. She couldn’t tell. Abbee collapsed onto a hard stone floor and vomited all over it.
“Sorry about that,” Cragg said. “All the receiving rooms around here are blocked. I had to take short hops to get here. I never had stable tandem warps to begin with, so it’s no knock against you to react badly to five in a row.”
Abbee threw up again. One more heave, dry this time. She stayed on the floor until she was sure her stomach had calmed down. She spat out acid-tasting spittle and wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
Abbee sat back on her heels and looked around. They were in a big room with a long wooden table and benches. Skylights in the ceiling brought down sunlight, and a bank of low, long windows occupied one wall. The other side had plaster from floor to ceiling. The room was otherwise bare of decoration.
“Where are we? Where did you take me?”
“It’s all right,” Cragg said. “You’re in a safe place. This is the wizards’ enclave in Veronna.”
“The enclave?” Abbee asked. “I thought that was closed. Nobody can get in.”
“Nobody but a wizard,” Cragg corrected. “And anybody a wizard brings along for the ride. There’s nobody else here. Just you and me, and that’s it. Don’t worry. The hunters can’t get in here.” He grimaced. “They’ll have some hard questions, though, when they realize where your tag is pointing them. But you’re safe.”
“What about Emma?” Abbee asked. “She’s a wizard, right? Can she—”
“No,” Cragg said, shaking his head. He fished a small stone disk out of his pocket. “You need one of these to get in.” He put the disk away. “Or be touching someone who has one.”
“Kai said he never taught her to warp. Did you?”
“No,” Cragg said. “We’ve not met in person. We only communicated via illusion anchor.”
“Where did she learn how to warp, then?”
Cragg shrugged. “Well, sometimes acolytes warp when under severe emotional duress. It’s dangerous, and people usually die in the process by warping into solid objects. Emma must have studied how to do it before now. Either that, or she’s incredibly lucky. She was warping a lot. Don’t worry. Even if she did manage to warp in here, the enclave reacts poorly to intruders.”
“You make it sound like this place is alive.”
“It’s not. It just has a lot of protective wards.” Cragg looked at the ceiling. “I’ve had it to myself for years.” He smiled at her. “It’ll be nice to have company for once.”
Abbee clambered to her feet. “I’m not staying.” She considered the wizard. Still no threat outline. “But since we’re no longer in the middle of an earthquake, tell me what’s so important about this message rod.”
“May I?” Cragg asked.
“I want your word that if I give this to you, and you can’t open it, you’ll give it back.”
“Sure,” Cragg said. “You have my word.” He gave her a quizzical look. “If you can’t open it, why do you keep it?”
“I … I don’t know. Ipsu wanted me to give it to someone, but he died before he could say their name.”
“Well, you’re in luck, because that person is me.”
Abbee remembered his earlier threat. He could turn her inside out and just take the message rod. She had no choice. None whatsoever. Worst case, Cragg couldn’t open it, and best case, it was meant for him, and she’d finally find out what was in it. Abbee pulled on the cuirass’s tabs, and the armor came loose. She popped the buckles for her jobs case and swung it around her midriff. It was a little uncomfortable under the cuirass. She worked the straps loose, opened the case, and was about to fish around inside for the message rod when she remembered the traced gems. Abbee stepped over to the table and, with her back to Cragg, pushed the contents of her jobs case out onto the weathered surface. Gems spilled out. The message rod came out. So did the quartz-tipped stick. She picked that up and put it back but left all the gems on the table. She closed her jobs case and spun it back around, then tightened the cuirass again. She picked up the rod and turned around to face Cragg. Hesitated. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Cragg held out his hand. “I promise I will not.”
“And you’ll share what’s on it? Here on the table?”
It was Cragg’s turn to hesitate. “Fine.”
Abbee gestured at the table. “And when you’re done, you can remove the trace on those gems.”
“Or I can take them back,” Cragg said, “since they’re not yours.”
“Payment for holding on to this message rod this entire time,” Abbee said. “And I’m guessing you have a lot more and won’t miss them.”
“True.” Cragg held out his hand. “The rod?”
Abbee pushed the rod into Cragg’s open hand. The wizard grabbed the cork and twisted it free. Abbee couldn’t believe it. Cragg had been telling the truth. Ipsu had carried something meant for Cragg. Hurt and nausea roiled her stomach.
“It’s true,” she whispered. “He … in Joor, he knew?”
“He didn’t know,” Cragg said. “Well, he knew I’d test you, but he didn’t know the method. He was furious with me. Used language I’d never heard before coming from him, including some obscure swear words that Kivan deepwater sailors say.”
Abbee stared at him. Kai had been right about Ipsu. She put a hand out on the table to steady herself. Ipsu. She’d kept his memory alive all this time, thinking he’d always looked out for her, but it was his fault. His fault she’d endured torture. His fault she’d been forced to kill people. Children. All because of Ipsu. She couldn’t believe it. Her time in the woods with him, her training, the running, the sparring, listening to his teaching every night at the campfire, she’d thought he’d been preparing her for something. All her life, preparing—and to find out now, after all this time, that he’d been dressing her for slaughter. She felt sorrow and anger and hopelessness all at once. Felt sick with betrayal. She felt things she’d sworn to never let herself feel ever again. Tears leaped unbidden to her eyes, and Abbee let out a gasping sob.
“Whoa,” Cragg said. “Easy now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Abbee snarled. Ipsu had been working with Cragg all along. The man who’d saved her from a mover pit, been a better father to her than Kril Danner ever had, who’d protected her when she couldn’t and trained her to survive any conditions, that man had betrayed her at every level. Abbee felt like she was about to explode. “He gave me to you. He—”
“Don’t you want to read what’s in here?” Cragg asked, holding up the uncorked message rod. “Going to be difficult if you—”
“If I was so interesting to you, then why did you leave me in Graywall?”
Cragg blinked. “What? I didn’t know—”
“Don’t!” Abbee snapped. “Don’t lie to me. I overheard you that first night. You were talking to some woman. You told her not to run any tests. You knew exactly where I was. You could’ve done anything to me in Graywall, but you didn’t. I never saw you again until today. Why leave me there?”
Cragg shrugged. “For safekeeping.”
“You’re the reason I was moved to that special wing,” Abbee said.
“Yes. You were supposed to stay there a lot longer, though. Your friend Parn Trippers let you out early.”
Abbee flinched. “Don’t ever call that man my friend.” She frowned. “Wait, was it his idea? Twenty-three years was such an odd … It was you, wasn’t it?” She stepped forward. “It … You. You’re the reason I was stuck in Graywall for so long. You—”
Cragg shrugged again. “Like I said, safe—”
Abbee screamed in reckless rage. Tingly pinpricks dotted her skin all over, and mote spat from her wrists.
Cragg vanished with a thunderous crack and reappeared at the other end of the room. The wizard shivered and shook out his arms. He let out an uneasy whoop. “That smarts.”
Abbee drew in a ragged breath and slumped onto the bench beside her. She exhaled just as raggedly. She felt out of control. An image of Emma screeching like an unhinged lunatic flickered through her head. Abbee didn’t like feeling like that. It was unprofessional. She felt ridiculous. Yes, Ipsu had taught her, but Abbee was the one who’d practiced resilience in the face of unyielding pressure. Abbee was the one who’d survived all this time on her own. She’d done that. By herself. Abbee sighed. She again wished Ipsu were still alive, so she could confront him. The worst thing he’d ever done was die before she had found closure. Well, he’s not coming back, so I’d better get it together. Abbee exhaled, long and slow.
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?” Cragg asked.
“Yes. Come back down here and show me that message.” When Cragg hesitated, Abbee added, “I’m okay, I promise. We’re not done talking about Graywall, but I want to know what Ipsu thought was worth dying over.”
Cragg muttered something under his breath and walked back over to Abbee. He stopped a couple of meters away and arched a brow at her.
“I’m fine,” Abbee said. She gestured at the table. “Let’s go.”
Cragg tipped the rod into his hand. A single roll of paper slid out. Cragg went to the table and smoothed out the paper in front of Abbee. She peered over his shoulder and recognized Ipsu’s horrible penmanship.
He keeps it in his pocket.
Cragg breathed a curse. Repeated it in a louder voice. “This is—” He turned the paper over, looked at the blank back side, and slapped it back down on the table. “Twelve years, and this is all—dammit!”
“What does it mean?” Abbee asked. “Is it about—”
Cragg answered by warping away with a thunderous boom. Abbee stared where the wizard had stood. She blinked. He’d left her here. Where—
Cragg reappeared with another ear-shattering crack.
Abbee rubbed her ears to clear the ringing. “Will you stop—”
“I need you,” Cragg said, putting his hand on Abbee’s arm.
Abbee’s throat still felt raw from vomiting. “Wait—”
The world shifted again.