Scorched by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #7)(40)

I grinned despite myself. “Nothing. You’re just looking a little less…scholarly these days.” My gaze went back down to his abs.

“My eyes are up here,” Fenris said dryly, and when I met his gaze, I was relieved to see he looked amused. “My sparring sessions with Rylan have motivated me to take better physical care of myself. I was tired of getting beaten so easily.”

“I’ll say.” Lips twitching, I turned around and opened the door. “Cover those muscles up and meet me outside. The last thing I need is all the women in Solantha throwing themselves at you while we’re out today.”

Fenris snorted as I shut the door behind me, and I grinned again. But my amusement faded when I reminded myself that, pretty soon, the women in Solantha would no longer have the opportunity to throw themselves at Fenris. He was leaving, and I needed to enjoy what little time I had left with him. Even if the world seemed to be crumbling around us.



Comenius was an absolute wreck when we arrived—his clothing rumpled, his hair sticking up in all directions from having run his hands through it so many times. His cornflower-blue eyes were frantic as he paced back and forth in his living room. Elania was gone—her shop was opening in ten minutes, and she needed to see to her customers. But she’d left soothing chamomile tea for Comenius before she left, and had made breakfast for Fenris and me to eat while Comenius filled us in.

“I keep thinking about how I could have done better with her,” Comenius said, still pacing. “How I could have been more tolerant and more understanding. But Rusalia is so outrageously rude all the time that I couldn’t go on ignoring her bad behavior. She insulted Elania to her face last night after refusing to help her in the kitchen, so I sent her to bed without dinner. Elania and I were up late discussing how to deal with her constant tantrums, and she must have overheard our angry words. I woke up this morning to a note on my nightstand from Rusalia, and my bedroom window open.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “She must have climbed down the fire escape.”

“I’m so sorry, Com,” I said, not sure what else to say. I wasn’t used to dealing with belligerent children—I likely would have lost my temper with her much earlier, if I’d been in Com’s shoes. “Can I see the note? Maybe she left some clue.”

Comenius dug it out of his tunic pocket and passed it to me. “It’s in Pernian,” he said when I smoothed out the wrinkled piece of paper. “She merely writes that she hates Elania and me, and that she is leaving and will never return.” A tear slid down his stubble-roughened cheek.

“Oh, Com.” Abandoning my half-eaten breakfast, I rose from the kitchen table and enfolded him in a hug. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, hugging him tight. “We’re going to find her, even if I have to tear the city apart.”

“Don’t lose hope,” Fenris said gruffly. “She’s not the first child to have run away, and since she does not know the city at all well, chances are good we’ll be able to track her down quickly.”

Comenius nodded, returning my embrace. His shoulders loosened slightly, but I knew he wouldn’t fully relax until his daughter was returned, safe and sound. Releasing him, I forced him to sit at the kitchen table and help us come up with a list of places to look for her. Unfortunately, we couldn’t think of where to begin—the school had been shut down for structural repairs, and Rusalia hadn’t been around long enough to make any friends.

“She’s refused to go to the replacement school on the cruise ship,” Comenius said tiredly. “She claims she cannot understand the lessons, her classmates are all horrid, and the teachers don’t want her around.”

Big surprise, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. “We’ll have to track her the old-fashioned way, then. By scent,” I explained at Comenius’s confused look. “Do you have a piece of clothing she’s recently worn, that Fenris can sniff? He hasn’t met her yet.”

Comenius retrieved the girl’s nightgown, and Fenris changed into wolf form before taking a good sniff. Shifters could scent things better in animal form, and we decided it was best that I stay in human form since Rusalia didn’t know Fenris. Com was clearly torn about staying behind, but we convinced him that given her hostile mood, it might be easier for us to approach her and convince her to return. She’d recognize me on sight, at least, even if she didn’t like me. Besides, if she changed her mind and returned home, she should not find the door locked. Promising Com that we’d update him as soon as we could, Fenris and I went out to the fire escape, hoping to pick up her scent from there.

“She did indeed use the fire escape to leave,” Fenris said, his bushy wolf’s tail high in the air as he sniffed the ground. “Let’s hope she did not go too far.”

Leaving the steambike parked outside Comenius’s shop, I followed Fenris on foot. A few shoppers gave us strange glances—it wasn’t unheard of for shifters to walk around in wolf form, but it was a little unusual to see one sniffing around the way Fenris was doing. We followed Rusalia’s scent all the way down to Market Street, then promptly lost it amongst the crowds of people and the delicious scents of roasting meat and baked goods.

“There are too many other scents here.” Fenris shook his great wolf head. “I do not think I will be able to pick up her trail again.”