“I know where he might have gone.” Each word that left Aiko’s lips was carefully weighed, her gaze turning scrutinising as she looked across the room at Cass. “I heard them talking about it once… Daimon and… Esher.”
Tears laced Aiko’s dark eyes, the pain that beat in them sounding in his name.
“Where might he have gone?” Cass felt like a bitch for pushing, but she had the dreadful feeling that time was of the essence.
Aiko’s lips parted and then closed, and she stared at Cass, studying her in silence for a long minute before she finally spoke. “He likes to go there when he wants to be alone.”
Cass didn’t miss the emphasis Aiko placed on the last four words, the warning to give Daimon space.
She couldn’t heed it, no matter how much she wanted to do that. Something was wrong with him, and he needed help with his injuries. She couldn’t let him be out there, alone, vulnerable, in a bad place. She feared he would do something reckless.
More reckless than allowing daemons to hurt him.
“Please, Aiko,” Cass whispered, her voice heavy with the fear that flowed through her.
Cal and Mari exchanged a worried look. Aiko slowly nodded.
“Try heading to Antarctica, to Halley Bay. They talked about it once.” Aiko’s words offered both a solution, and a problem.
Cass looked down at herself, at her strapless corset and leather trousers.
Hardly the clothing for Antarctica, even in summer.
But she had been raised in the frigid remote reaches of Siberia. She had endured freezing winters. She was tough.
She could handle a little cold.
“Thank you.” She bowed her head to Aiko and hurried to her room, dug out the mundane black woollen sweater she had brought with her and pulled it on.
She pulled open the drawers on the dresser, seeking more layers, anything that would keep the chill off her long enough that she could find Daimon.
Nothing in them was of any use to her, so she went to the wall to her right and slid the panel open, revealing a cupboard. It contained a lot of shirts and some trousers. She hurried through them, pushing them down the bar, and breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the end and spotted something tucked in the far corner of the cupboard.
A coat.
She pulled it off the hanger and brushed it down, sent up a prayer that nothing was living in it because the black woollen jacket looked as if it had been sitting there collecting dust for at least a decade.
Cass slipped her arms into it, pulled it closed and formed the incantation, hoping it would work. It was always hit and miss when she didn’t know the location she wanted to transport herself to. Sometimes, the magical pathways that connected every place in the world had a different name for the location, and she ended up somewhere she didn’t want to be.
Sometimes, there were far too many places named the same thing and she ended up going nowhere.
She focused on Antarctica, on Halley Bay, not knowing what to expect if the spell did work and transported her there.
Magic hummed inside her, pulsed in her bones and flowed in her veins, wrapping her in a layer of warmth that quickly dissipated as she touched down.
Frigid cold blasted her, the icy wind slicing straight through the layers she had donned, numbing her flesh and freezing her blood. She huddled down into the coat as she squinted against the bright vast white that encompassed her, shuddering as the wind felt as if it was cutting her to the bone, flaying the flesh from them.
Snow battered her, saturating her hair in an instant, turning it to tangled black ribbons that sapped even more warmth from her skin. She turned and winced as the wind drove the icy flakes into her eyes, twisted away again and looked around her. Her legs shook beneath her, her feet so cold that she couldn’t feel them.
Cass scoured the area, expending valuable energy using a spell to seek out Daimon, a small voice at the back of her mind telling her this was reckless, dangerous, and that she had to go back. She couldn’t see more than a few feet through the blizzard and she was already dangerously low on energy. If she lingered, the cold might steal enough of her strength that she would be stranded.
But she had to find Daimon.
A stronger blast of wind hit her in the back, sending her stumbling forwards. She trudged in the direction the wind was pushing her, eyes darting as she tried to make things out. Fear rolled up on her, making her doubt each step she took as her heart pounded, thoughts that she might walk right into a crevasse or off a cliff ricocheting around her mind.
This was foolish.
She had to leave.
She couldn’t withstand such harsh elements for much longer. If she tried, she would lose her ability to teleport.
She would die out here.
Alone.
She pulled the jacket closed even tighter, burrowed down into it as a thought struck her, rising from her heart.
She didn’t want to die without seeing Daimon’s face one last time.
She wanted to see his heart through his eyes again, see him open to her, needed it and refused to give in until she had it. She ached for the feel of his arms around her, his skin heating her.
Cass pulled her right hand away from her coat and coaxed fire into her palm. It warmed her a little, but the flame was small, kept stuttering out in the wind.
She shuffled forwards.
Was it growing darker?
She looked around her, flinching as ice battered the side of her face. It was definitely growing darker. Her steps slowed. Her feet grew heavy.
The flame hovering above her palm died.
Cass’s knees gave out and she sank into the snow, teeth chattering as her heart clenched. Mother earth. Sweet gods. She curled over, hugging herself,
