down, I watched it. It—it just . . . engulfed them.” He wrapped his hands through the air, closing them on the scene only he could see. “And when it moved on, they were gone.” He turned over his empty hands, palm up.
“Why didn’t it come after you?” Kiora asked softly.
“It tried. By the time it had eaten the others,” Niall swallowed again, “I was already very high. I could see the Shadow turning, searching. As soon as it found me, it started to billow upwards, coming after me.”
“What happened?” she asked, leaning forward.
“My magic came back and I bubbled.”
“Just like that?” Drustan asked.
“Yes.” Niall nodded, his rat nest of hair moving with him. “One second I could do nothing, and the next my magic was back as if it had never left. As soon as I bubbled, the Shadow screamed.” Niall shuddered. “The Shadow was mad at losing me, mad that I survived.”
“Why do you think your magic came back?” she asked.
He looked at her curiously. “Nobody has ever asked me that.”
“I’m not like everybody else.”
“No, you don’t feel like everybody else.” He leaned in closer, examining her features, his head turning to the side as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Who are you?”
She didn’t know if Alcander planned to tell the others who she was, but she figured it was safe to tell Niall. Even if he blabbed, no one would listen to him anyway. Leaning very close to him, she whispered, “I am the Solus. My Protector, a Witow, is trapped in the manor right now.”
The man gasped like a child, covering his mouth with his hands. A single tear slid down his face, tracing a line through the dirt and grime.
“Please, help me,” she said. “Why do you think you were able to bubble suddenly?”
He looked at her with all seriousness as his hands dropped back into his lap. “I think I finally got out of range.”
She placed her hands over his. “Thank you.”
Pulling one hand out from underneath hers, Niall placed his hand on top. His giant hand easily covered both of hers. “No, thank you.” He patted her hand twice before standing and lumbering away, somehow looking less disheveled than when they had met a few minutes earlier.
“Well, his description matches the legends of the Shadow,” Drustan said, absently spinning his fake bracelet.
“Yes,” Alcander said darkly. “That is the problem. The Shadow hasn’t been seen in—” he shook his head, “hundreds and hundreds of years. And now he says he saw it and escaped from it, with a description that matches the legends exactly.”
“Except for the escaping part,” Drustan amended.
“It’s hard to tell a story when you’re dead, isn’t it?” Alcander said pragmatically. “He would have to change that part, wouldn’t he?”
“You said yourself if had something to do with the Shadow,” Kiora argued.
“Something to do with the Shadow, not the Shadow.”
“I believe him.” Drustan smiled, nodding in the direction Niall had gone. “Look at him, does he look like someone who made up the story? He is devastated everyone thinks he’s crazy. Besides, Lomay said it would take something very powerful to prevent him from seeing what he needed. The Shadow also prevented the Wings from showing where it hid the lights. That is a strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Why are you so determined not to believe?” Kiora asked.
Alcander didn’t answer. He scowled at the sand like it had personally offended him.
“Because,” Drustan began slowly, “he doesn’t want to believe we are going up against the Shadow. That would be—”
“Suicide!” Alcander snapped. “It would be suicide!”
Kiora looked down, tracing shapes with her finger through the sand. “But that doesn’t make it a lie,” she said. “If we know what we’re up against, maybe we can move fast and get Emane out before the Shadow appears.” She looked up from her drawings hopefully.
Alcander snorted. “With a thread like yours, the Shadow will be there before we reach the front door.”
“So teach me,” she pleaded, leaning towards Alcander. “Teach me how to mask my thread. Teach me what I need to know so we can go get Emane.”
Alcander looked at her with steely eyes. “That’s not the only thing you need to learn. We will need to stay here for a few days and learn more battle techniques as well. You are not ready.”
She bit her tongue, clenching her fists at her side.
“Kiora, if you believe this story, you have to give me some