“Yeah, but I’m the night watch captain, remember?” Rylan told her, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “If the keys aren’t on this fat ring I carry, I’m sure they’re in my office.”

“Sunaya,” Iannis said, breaking my focus, and then he spoke a Word. My surroundings vanished, replaced by the campsite. Darkness had settled over the woods, the only light source the moonbeams filtering through the canopy of trees. Iannis sat next to me, his hand on my shoulder, while Fenris and Elnos sat on the two logs across from the fire pit, watching me intently.

“Why did you do that?” I cried, shrugging off Iannis’s hand. “I need to be there with them!”

“I need your full attention for a moment,” Iannis said simply. “I decided to eavesdrop directly on your conversation so that I wouldn’t have to interrupt you. I know that you and your friends want to rescue the shifter children. But if we are to rescue anyone, we must first disable the wards.”

“Right.” I let out a long sigh. “Any ideas on how to do that? You said something about an object being tied to the spell?”

“Yes, the achor,” Iannis said. “Though it won’t literally look like one. It can be any sort of object.”

“I wish I was in there,” I muttered, looking up at the hill that separated us from the compound. “I could use my nose to sniff it out.”

“You do have Rylan to do that for you,” Iannis said. “Can you ask him if he’s scented anything magical during his rounds?”

“Hey Rylan,” I called—thankfully, I could still communicate via mindspeak even if I couldn’t see what he was doing. “Did you smell any magic anywhere during your rounds?”

“Actually, I think I did,” Rylan said. “There’s a guest wing of sorts around here, and when I was passing one of the rooms, I thought I caught a whiff.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I had other things on my mind,” Rylan retorted. “But you’re right; I probably should have mentioned it. Aside from the wards, there shouldn’t be anything else magical in here.”

I relayed the information to Iannis, who nodded. “Tell Rylan to leave Noria and get to that guest room. It shouldn’t be hard for him to locate the anchor, using his shifter senses.”

“Leave Noria!” I exclaimed. “But what if something happens to her in the meantime? We just found her.”

“I understand your fears,” Iannis said gently, squeezing my hand. “But it will be much more difficult for Rylan to do this if he has Noria with him. I doubt that the director will take too kindly to Noria running around the compound late at night, when she is already under suspicion.”

“All right.” I let out a hefty sigh. “Can you get me back into the scry-eye now?”