“Then drag him,” I suggested through my teeth.
Vox narrowed his eyes. “When Claire wakes up, she’s going to expect Exos in one piece, and if I drag him through a day’s worth of forest, she’s not going to be very happy with us. Especially if she knows you refused to carry him.”
Shit. He had a point.
“Fine,” I grumbled and shifted Claire into his arms.
Vox used his air currents to settle her weight against him, making me envious of how, even in sleep, she wrapped her arms around his neck and nestled under his chin. Vox’s breath caught at the movement.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I warned him. “Whatever that thing was, it was waiting here for us. And whoever put it in Exos’s head might be back to finish the job.”
Vox glanced into the darkness around us and shivered. “Right. Let’s go.”
I stormed on ahead with Exos slung over my shoulder, making no attempt to still my power or make the royal comfortable.
He would already have a headache when he woke up. No one would question a few bruises.
Cyrus
A trap.
The scent of it soiled the air as the Earth Fae dumped my brother’s body at my feet. I cocked a brow at the giant. “You know, at some point, we’re going to need to work through your Spirit Fae issue.”
He snorted, but it lacked heat as his eyes were on Claire in Vox’s arms. Her head rested against the Air Fae’s chest, her eyes closed in a fitful sleep.
I’d felt her panic as if it were my own, the terror an ice cube down my spine. It had sent me misting back to Spirit Quad with Titus hot on my heels, only to find the dorm empty.
Once I’d pinpointed her location, I sensed Vox and Sol already on their way back and advised the fiery redhead to calm down and wait.
He’d responded with a fireball to my head.
One that I’d doused in a tidal wave that had left him sputtering.
If I’d learned anything from today’s experience, it was that Titus served as an excellent sparring partner. Once Exos woke up, I would share the news.
Hmm, but this trap…
I crouched before his prone form and palmed the side of his head.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Vox warned. “That’s exactly how Claire ended up unconscious.”
Well, I’m not Claire, I thought, ignoring his caution and driving my spirit essence into my brother’s psyche to have a look around. Something in his essence stirred a foul note in the air, adding a hint of pollution in his aura that shouldn’t be there. Claire must have gone searching as well, her instincts driving her to heal her mate. But unlike my little queen, I knew not to touch things that didn’t belong.
Like that inky abyss crawling about in my brother’s mind.
“Hmm,” I murmured, assessing the scathing energy hissing about at my presence. It almost appeared to
have scales, the dark magic reaching out with claws, searching for the spirit it truly craved.
Claire.
“Exos was left alone on purpose,” I said, my eyes closed as I continued to dance with the foreign presence inside my brother’s mind. “The culprit wanted Claire to find him.”
Which explained why she’d been able to suddenly pick up his location when she couldn’t only a month ago. I’d wrongly assumed it was the enhancement of her elements. But no. It was all part of this wicked being’s plan.
That was two traps I’d fallen for.
There would not be a third.