Free Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg

Forgotten could by now. They could use it to distract him, and lull him into a sense of safety, before coming after him. “I need to know who it is,” he said, careful to pitch his voice low like Jessa did. “After what happened with Alyse, and what I saw in the forest…”
    Jessa stared at him for a moment and then nodded. “Let me sneak down there,” she whispered. “You’re too noisy.”
    She crouched as she darted down the street, somehow finding a way to remain hidden in the shadows along the rocks. At this time of night, there were many places for her to fade into the shadows, and Jessa managed to find them all. Rsiran remembered how she had once described her Sight, and the way that it gave her the ability to see gradations of shadows in the dark. Did she search for the darkest shadow or was there some other trick that she used?
    Jessa moved silently as well. Whereas Rsiran was too noisy, each step practically scraping across the stone, Jessa padded softly, the soles of her boots designed for her to sneak with as much silence as she did.
    Nerves caused his heart to flutter as he watched Jessa fade to little more than a dark figure outlined in the night. As she walked, he focused on the lorcith she carried with her. The charm pulled on him easily now. Rsiran made a point of keeping his connection to it and allowed the lorcith to guide him. Were he to ignore the lorcith, and focus on the heartstone in her chain, he had another way to keep track of her.
    Jessa stopped moving. He shouldn’t have allowed her to go without him. What had he been thinking? She was a skilled sneak—at least Brusus and Haern certainly felt that she was—but if Sarah and Valn had returned, and had found him… then Jessa would be in real danger. He could hold onto her, connected with the lorcith, but what if they Slid her someplace so quickly that he lost his connection to the charm or the necklace?
    Now that she had gone, there was nothing to do but wait, only Rsiran didn’t care for waiting. It left him feeling helpless, a sensation that he’d gotten far too familiar with over the last few months.
    Then the first sense of lorcith that he’d detected disappeared.
    Rsiran held his breath, checking to make certain that Jessa hadn’t disappeared, but she was still there.
    Slowly, the sense of her made its way back toward him. When she was barely two-dozen steps from him, he sensed the return of lorcith, this time much closer.
    Rsiran didn’t dare wait.
    He Slid to Jessa, grabbed her, and Slid away.
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    T he Slide pulled him quickly , the flash of colors and the hot, bitter scent of lorcith streaking past, almost the same as if he stood in front of the forge, and then they emerged. Rsiran’s Slide had brought them to Ilphaesn, but the part of the mountain that had once been hidden from him. This was where he thought Josun had been mining, though he still didn’t know what Josun had hoped to gain by providing lorcith to the Forgotten.
    As he emerged, he listened to the sounds of the mountain around him, the call of lorcith. Something about it had changed, but he wasn’t completely certain. Had he more time—and more willingness to search without Jessa—he thought he might be able to figure out what seemed different.
    Jessa released his arm. “What was that? They had disappeared. And why did you bring me here ?”
    Rsiran hated that he had to bring her to this place, but this was the first place that came to mind when he thought of finding a safe place to Slide. He could have Slid them to the smithy, but he didn’t want to risk them following them there, and at least here, they might follow, but there would be no way that they could Slide past the alloy that Josun had placed in the mouth of the cavern.
    “They hadn’t disappeared,” he said. “Not entirely. When you made your way back down the street, they had reappeared.”
    “Are you sure?”
    He pulled on the lorcith charm. “I could sense it when they left, and then