The Stone Wolf (The Chain Breaker Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg (digital book reader TXT) 📕

If she was friends with the sorcerer at the outpost, then maybe she wasn’t entirely bad. Regardless of working with Tristan.

I had worked with Tristan.

He would have to barter with her, and that was something he thought he could do. He didn’t know whether he would be effective or whether she would even be responsive to it, but he had to try.

Gaspar glanced over to him, frowning. “We’re going to find the kid.”

“I know,” Gavin said.

“And we’re going to find Olivia.”

“I know.”

Gavin climbed off the stone wolf, which followed him as he walked around the city, watching him as much as it watched the city. The damn thing thinks to protect me. He swept his gaze from side to side, trying to decide what he needed to do, but he was tired and knew that he should probably just return to the sorcerer’s lair.

His mind worked through what was going on here, the same way it had been doing ever since he had been attacked. Gavin had been trying to guess what the Toral was after. He had no idea what it was and whether there would be any way for him to figure it out without her telling him explicitly.

Gavin turned the corner and made a decision.

Cyran. The Mistress of Vines. The Fates.

All had been tied to a magic that had been exiled from the city years before.

Maybe there was something else in the city. Something more than the dark egg.

Now that Cyran was free, would he come back?

There would have to be a reason. It could be the dark egg, but that hadn’t been what he’d been after when he’d been here before. None of the jobs Cyran had demanded he pull had been tied to that. They’d seemed almost as if they were a way to test his capabilities.

The same way Tristan had tested me recently.

Despite his claims otherwise, Cyran had taken after Tristan in many ways.

Why Yoran?

He had gone to the one beneath Cyran’s home, so he knew what was there. In fact, he knew it so well that he knew there wasn’t anything he would find. It was his sleeping location and nothing more. But there had to be something in one of the other lairs.

He hadn’t visited them nearly as often as he should have. Gavin headed through the city. Every now and then, he paused and looked along the street. He had lost track of how late in the night it was, though he knew it was well past midnight. It was a time when he should be sleeping, and the city was thankfully quiet and empty. He passed a few patrols of constables, but he ignored them as he made his way to the first building. It was situated on the outskirts of Yoran, on the opposite side of the city from Cyran’s home.

He had tried to figure out why the Triad would have the lairs situated the way that they were. They were not centrally located within the city. None of them were terribly fancy, for that matter. They were simple constructs, and other than the structure beneath them, Gavin would consider them unremarkable. It surprised him that any sorcerer would be willing to accept such an ordinary abode. There was more to them than he knew. Older, as well. They might even be tied to the El’aras, since he knew they had once lived in these lands.

It was one more thing he had to investigate when he had time. And it was one more thing that suggested that the city itself was the reason there had been as much of a magical presence as there had been, even though sorcery had been outlawed and banished twenty years ago.

He stepped inside the building, slipping the enchantment that enhanced his eyesight on his finger. He looked around but didn’t see anything—empty, much like it always was.

He found the trapdoor beneath the carpet in the back room, much like it was in Cyran’s home. Gavin opened the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder, lowering the door again. He stood there for a moment, focusing on the darkness and the energy around him. He couldn’t feel anything and didn’t see anything, so he started down the tunnel.

There had to be something here that Cyran had been after. That was what had started all of this.

And then Tristan had come.

If Gavin was right, Tristan had helped Cyran escape from captivity. Which meant they were still working together.

Could it all be about the Toral ring?

Gavin hadn’t seen one in the city, other than the one worn by the Toral who had attacked him. He reached the chamber off the tunnel and used a bit of his core reserves to trigger it to open. He peered inside for a moment and could feel some energy, but there was nothing else. It was strange for him to be aware of the energy that was here, as if there was something he was supposed to find. Maybe it was simply his own connection to magic, and that somehow pressed on him in a way that gave him a tie to the power here.

Gavin was aware of that residual sort of energy rolling against him, something that had lingered here. He had never been quite as alerted to it before. It was as though leaving the city and returning had changed his sensitivity to it.

Or maybe speaking with Anna again had changed it.

He made his way through the chamber, sweeping his gaze around everything. It was empty, having been cleared of anything magical in the time he’d been here. There had been a few different enchantments, none of them useful—at least not to him—and some furniture, but nothing else. Certainly no magical artifacts like he had found in other places throughout the city.

Gavin stopped and ran his finger along the hilt of the El’aras sword. That was the only unusual thing he had found in all the places he had visited. And that had been in the lair beneath