Page 44 of Moonveil and Magic

I reached out to scoop her up, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. “The boys said the wards would hold, Great-Grandmother. We have time.”

Violet turned her head, fixing me with a look of such profound, ancestral pity that my stomach dropped. Time is a luxury we have already spent. The shard is a beacon, darling, and even with the boys’ power, the Council’s bloodhounds will scent the First Dawn through a mountain of lead. Tell your puma and your wolf to stop preening. The hunt has begun.

Miles away, the first lines of that hunt were already being drawn.

Aggy

I stood on the corner of 4th and Main, my hands buried deep in the pockets of my heavy coat. To any passerby, I was just another woman waiting for a bus in the damp morning air. In reality, I was anchoring a massive illusion.

Every few minutes, I let a drop of my own mana leak out, shaped and coloured to mimic the specific sapphire frequency of the shard. I watched the Council’s black sedan cruise past for the third time, its tyres splashing through oil-slicked puddles. The enforcers inside were leaning forward, their scanners twitching as they chased my phantom trail.

“Go on, you bastards,” I whispered, setting my jaw tight. “Follow the breadcrumbs.”

I was leading them toward the old docks—miles away from the safehouse—but my heart was hammering a frantic rhythm. The Council was sending more men than usual. They weren’t just searching anymore. They were sweeping the city clean.

Kingy

Stationed at the far end of the district, I tapped into my knowledge of ancient linguistics to broadcast echoes of the shard’s humming through Ebonvale’s rusted underground radio towers.

I sat in a cramped basement, the air thick and hot, sweat glistening on my forehead as I fed my own mana directly into the old equipment.

“Hold on, Ivy,” I muttered, my fingers trembling against the dials. “We’re giving you all the time we can.”

Lola

I was a few blocks away at the district clinic, though I wasn't seeing patients today. With the practised ease of a nurse, I tipped a container of high-grade magical neutralising salts straight into the drainage system near the Council’s local substation. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would clog their sensors and buy us an hour of blurred vision.

As I stepped back into the shadows of the clinic’s brick façade, I caught sight of Shirl’s personal carriage pulling up to the High Hall. The air around the vehicle was so unnaturally cold that the puddles turned to ice instantly, the frost blooming like white, jagged flowers.

Across the street, I spotted Mia perched in a darkened café window. I offered her a quick, tight nod, letting her know the salts were down, before scanning the avenue again.

It’s not enough. A cold dread settled deep in my stomach. We are stalling a flood with a handful of sand.

Mia

My headset crackled as Lola’s nod registered across the street, but my eyes were locked on my untraceable deck, fingers flying over the keyboard as lines of code flooded my screens.

“They are moving,” I hissed into my mic, my signal bouncing through six hidden relays to reach the others. “The Circle just authorised a sanitation sweep for the South District. They’re not looking for the shard anymore, guys. They’re looking for Ivy.”

“How long do we have?” Aggy’s voice crackled back through my earpiece, tight with strain.

“Ten minutes, maybe twenty,” I replied, my eyes widening as more than a dozen Storm Legion enforcers marched out of the High Hall in full combat leathers. Their staves glowed with an oily, suffocating purple light—the signature of the Council's most aggressive suppression magic.

Through the camera feeds, I watched Lola swing her medical bag over her shoulder, cutting through the alleyway behind the clinic to head back toward Moonveil for Ivy’s defensive charms.

A squad of the Storm Legion stepped out of the shadows, blocking her path. She didn't scream. She reached for the neutralising salts in her pocket—her fingers brushing the glass vial—when the air around her suddenly... solidified.

“Lola!” I screamed into the comms, a jagged burst of static tearing through the line. “Lola, get out of there! They have a high-tier suppressor!”

Her line went dead.

I watched in horror as the purple light of an enforcer’s staff slammed into the pavement, anchoring the freezing spell. Lola’s medical bag hit the ground, the latch snapping open. Gauze, glass vials, and sterile supplies spilled out into the gutter—a haunting echo of the day she had been cornered by the Council years ago.

When the static cleared, the alley was empty. Lola was gone.

“Aggy, they took her,” I choked out, my voice trembling violently as I tried to force the signal to reboot. “They took Lola. I can’t reach Ivy. The whole grid is dark.”

Ivy