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Chapter 22

The elderly Shade who'd owned the Carneath cottage had accepted a pittance for it, which I felt somewhat guilty about, even though I would have paid more had she asked for it. Much of the furniture would remain, but I wanted to tell Tallulah the news and ask what new pieces she'd like.

Especially for the nursery.

The thought was both a thrilling and a terrifying one. A child. Our child. I'd been so overwhelmed with emotion—and no small amount of panic, considering we had no home of our own, we weren't mated, and I was a blight on the realm—when Tallulah had told me, I couldn't even recall exactly what I'd said to her. Had I been supportive enough? She was prone to worrying, and I wasn't confident that I'd given her the reassurance she needed.

If I hadn't, I'd do it tonight,I resolved, sparing a nod of acknowledgment for one of the guards who was reluctantly taking a shift in here.

I'd shower Tallulah with affection, and do my best not to scare her off with the intensity of my feelings for her, and tell her that I'd secured the cottage. And perhaps, if I was very fortunate, we could discuss when it was she'd be looking to move in.

Unfortunately, I hadn't had a chance to speak to Captain Soren yet, but I didn't envision any obstacles there. He'd always been wary of the amount of time I spent in the in-between, and would probably happily encourage me to reduce my hours.

I'd half expected him to pull me aside after Tallulah and I had so publicly greeted each other at dinner. Perhaps it had been unfair of me, but I assumed that he would have some opinion on me getting involved with an ex-Hunter, and that opinion would be a negative one.

Not everyone held such narrow-minded views about my affliction. Most of them did, but not everyone.

I paused midstep, my shadows rippling with a sense of foreboding. A heaviness, like the very caspite that made up the in-between was holding its breath.

And then the air was vibrating, and I found myself trying to shield my ears from the overwhelm of noise, though it was impossible when it was coming up through the ground itself.

Once upon a time, the in-between had always sounded like this. The silence had only descended when the portals had gone dark.

They weren't dark now.

There was a group of Shades in the distance, who'd frozen at the sudden portal activity. They were too stunned to even move away from me when I started speaking to them.

"Alert the palace!" I shouted. "By order of the Guard. Tell them all the portals are open."

They began running in the right direction to get to the palace, which was a positive.

There were more of us in here, but I still wasn't abandoning my post. Not when I knew the layout of this place better than anyone.

I moved from portal to portal, inhaling constantly, searching for any trace of a Hunter nearby, and finding none. That didn't mean there weren't any, though. It just meant that they were moving sneakily.

While Sebastian and Lochan had been reporting back on negotiations to the Hunters Council, there was no way that this was some act of altruism on their part. We would have definitely been informed if a decision had been made to reopen the portals, which meant that either Sebastian and Lochan hadn't told the king, or they weren't involved in this decision either.

And I wasn't prone to giving them the benefit of the doubt.

"Evrin!" Soren called, running toward me with Astrid following close behind. "How long?"

"Minutes—"

We both fell silent, glancing around as the vibrations began to change, flickering and bouncing around.

"This is coordinated," Astrid said. "There are physical keystones that have to be inserted into place to activate the portal and removed again to deactivate them. They're messing with us."

She looked up at Soren, determination written all over her face. "Get me through there, back to Denver. I want visuals on that side. Then, you come back. You need to be here."

"You're out of your fucking mind if you think I'm leaving you there alone," Soren snarled.

"Where are Lochan and Sebastian?" I interjected, because the captain was never going to be rational when it came to his mate. "Has someone got eyes on them?"

Astrid made a sound of impatience. "Get me through, Soren, or I'm going to wait for the next time the Denver portal flickers on and run through myself—screw whatever is waiting on the other side. You are the captain. You need to be here."

Soren growled, scooping her up and taking off at a run toward the Denver portal, searching for a dark spot to walk her through to. "I'm sending someone in after you. Not you, Evrin," he called over his shoulder. "Stay here. Delegate areas to any members of the Guard you can find."

It was chaos.

I barked orders to anyone I could find, and in the absence of any other leadership, they seemed to listen to me. But they weren't actually useful. None of them had a good sense of direction in here unless they were walking toward a specific end point. The in-between itself had a good way of making one lose focus.

I fell silent as Selene, my superior, ran past me looking frantic, grabbing my arm on the way and dragging me with her.

"What is it?" I asked, alarmed by her frenetic demeanor. Selene was always calm under pressure.

"Austin. Austin has gone through to the human realm, I can feel it through the mating bond." She paused in what must have been the through point, but we could both sense that it was flooded with light on the other side. "He was visiting with Tallulah earlier."

My entire body went cold. "What did you say?"

"I didn't put it together until afterward. That you two were the couple everyone was talking about."

"Yes," I rasped, confident that everything that had been said was terrible.

"I can't pass through realms, I'm pregnant." Selene didn't give much away, but the despair in her voice was clear if you were paying close attention. "Even if I could, wherever he's being kept is flooded with light."

"We'll find some darkness, there has to be some. And once we do, I'll go through."

She nodded. "Thank you. But first, go to Elverston House and check if Tallulah is there. I suspect not, but…"

I suspected not, too. The persistent bad feeling that had been niggling at the back of my mind wasn't lessening.

"Does the king know?"

"He'll need an update. Elverston House, update the palace, then come back here," Selene instructed.

I nodded once before sprinting for the portal outside the palace, shouting instructions at a few members of the Guard as I went.

As much as I wanted to think there was no way Tallulah could have gotten past without me noticing, the chaos had been the perfect cover.

I sprinted for Elverston House as fast as my legs could carry me, conscious that it had been a while since I'd fed, and I wasn't at my strongest. In any other situation, it might have been disastrous, but my terror for Tallulah and the baby was more than enough to keep me moving.

Elverston House looked dark and imposing as I ran up the path, ignoring the boundary line that had been set for Shades.

"Tallulah!" I yelled the moment I was inside. I jogged straight up the stairs, inhaling deeply for any trace of negative emotions that may have lingered, and finding nothing.

There was an odd scent in the air though, something I couldn't quite place. Something… unpleasant. Unnatural.

I followed it to a cupboard upstairs and yanked open the door, stumbling backward in shock, when I realized I was staring into the in-between. Or at least, a path to it.

How could this be? There was no entry room built into Elverston House, or into anyone's house, for that matter.

As much as it didn't make sense, the evidence in front of my eyes was irrefutable. Though, even as I watched, the caspite seemed to be dissipating in the orb light that was coming through from the corridor behind me, which wasn't something that happened in regular entry rooms. This was… artificial, somehow.

Unnerved, I checked all the upstairs rooms for inhabitants, finding them empty, and lingering in Tallulah's room for a few extra moments until the aching pain in my chest subsided.

Austin was definitely in the human realm, and the fact that he was in a bright room surrounded by light on all sides suggested he was being held prisoner there. If Tallulah had been with him then, I was almost certain she still was now, but I did a sweep of the downstairs anyway before rushing to the palace, hoping against all hope that she was there.

Neither of them would just leave. Neither would go voluntarily. Perhaps, I might have assumed the worst once and thought Tallulah would do anything to get away from me, but not anymore.

The newcomers had to have something to do with this.

The palace was in uproar, with most of the court crowding into the dining hall, though it seemed more by chance than through organization.

"Evrin!" Meera said, grabbing my arm and looking up at me with panicked eyes. "I can't find Tallulah."

I nodded curtly, the reality of the situation settling in. Fortunately, the king and queen pushed through the crowd to get to me at that moment, so I didn't have to explain everything twice.

"Austin is in the human realm. Selene can follow the mating bond to his general location, but it's a brightly lit area with no obvious entry point. He was visiting Tallulah earlier today." Meera sucked in a shocked breath. "I went to Elverston House to verify it for myself, and there seems to be some kind of temporary entry room inside a supply closet, though the caspite was vanishing even as I stood there watching it."

I'd expected them to be as baffled by this phenomenon as I was, though of course, they had access to information that I didn't.

"My brother's creation," the king offered, not expanding any further than that. "I don't understand how it could have fallen into the wrong hands. Only a select few of us, plus the Council of Shades, have even seen it."

"Where are the new Hunters?" I asked sharply.

"Sebastian and Cora are here," Meera put in, frowning. "And their surprise and confusion does appear to be genuine."

"Their scents indicate as such," the king agreed. "But Lochan hasn't been seen for hours."

"Iris?" I prompted.

"Safe in her room with Damen," Ophelia replied. "Did you see Soren and Astrid in there?"

I filled them in as quickly as I could. "Can I speak to Sebastian and Cora? I need to get back out to the in-between as per the lieutenant's orders, but she would want me to do this first."

"Go ahead," the king said, stepping back and gesturing toward the bench where the two of them were sitting. There was no crowd of admirers surrounding them this time. They sat alone, looking convincingly confused.

"Do you have any news?" Cora asked hopefully the moment I approached. "We have no idea what's going on, we don't know where my brother is—"

"We believe your brother has somehow taken Tallulah and Austin back to the human realm, and is keeping them captive in a bright room that no Shade can access."

Cora's jaw went slack as she stared at me. "No. No, that can't be right."

I looked to Sebastian to see his reaction. He wasn't stunned the way Cora was, but he was frowning. "I swear to you, as far as I'm aware, we all came here with the same good intentions. We were both handpicked for this role, given our remit by senior members of various Hunters Councils from around the world. There was a very genuine push to open a dialogue with you all, to try to find some semblance of normality before the Hunters started a revolt."

"Why Lochan?" Meera asked. "You, I understand. You had that connection to Verity, and perhaps they thought that would come in handy. Lochan doesn't have a pre-existing relationship with anyone."

"Well, no," Sebastian admitted, his cheeks flushing. "That was something I raised with a few of the higher-ups. But Lochan is Cal Thibaut's protegee. No one can really tell him no—Mr. Thibaut holds the purse strings."

Meera cursed softly. "You didn't think that was pertinent information to mention? That Lochan works closely with Austin and Tallulah's grandfather?"

Sebastian's blush darkened. "I had assumed that Lochan would bring it up himself in his conversations with Tallulah. And I certainly didn't have any reason to believe he had separate goals in mind."

He switched his attention to me, eyes narrowing slightly. "You're the one who guards the in-between, right? Shouldn't you have seen them leave?"

"The in-between is an expansive place," the king cut in sharply. "And there were deliberate obfuscation methods at play from the Hunters. I suppose you don't know anything about that either."

Sebastian's scent soured, but his words had done enough damage. The mood in the dining hall had shifted, the negative attention I usually found directed my way back in full force.

They could hate me all they wanted. I wasn't going to politely and silently stay out of the way like I had time and time again.

"I'm going to check in with Selene. I'll send a runner to report back if there are any new developments," I told the king, giving the royal couple each a brief bow.

Before I could leave, Meera tapped my arm, cautiously requesting my attention.

"Don't give up on her, okay?" she murmured, something a little harder and more vicious in those dark eyes than I expected. "Don't underestimate the Hunters either."

"I won't. I'll be bringing Tallulah home. You can be certain of that."

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