Alinda. It had to be.

Which meant I had to get to her before that man did something.

But as I walked toward them, my knives began to pulse. They were sheathed and covered by the length of my coat, so the glow that usually came with an activation this strong was concealed from casual sight. But I could feel their heat through my jeans, and that meant the spellcaster was close.

I stopped again and looked around more carefully. I couldn’t spot anyone casting, but if there was ill intent behind the spell, they’d hardly be standing openly out in the street. Humans might not be able to sense spell work, but they weren’t the only ones gathered in the crowd.

I scanned the upper levels of the nearby buildings and, after a moment, spotted a woman standing in the shadows to one side of an open window. The only reason I saw her at all was thanks to the wash of light from the emergency vehicles making her bushy red hair glow.

Maran Gordan had hair like that.

I was striding toward the building’s entrance before I’d even really thought about it. If it was Maran, then I’d be damned if I let her escape me again.

But dare I chase her and risk losing Alinda?

We’d already lost the crown to Maran and her allies. We couldn’t afford to lose the sword as well, and Alinda might hold the clues we desperately needed.

I swore vehemently and stopped again, this time in the shadows of the building’s elevated walkway, out of Maran’s line of sight. I had no idea what the intent of her spell was, but— The thought froze as I looked back toward the gathered crowd.

Alinda and her watcher had disappeared. I scanned the street but couldn’t see them anywhere. Which could only mean that the spell Maran had cast was a concealment shield, though not one I’d come across before. There were generally two types—light and shadow, meant to be used in either day or night—and they were designed to hide a person from normal sight. But shadow shields were generally the less hardy of the two and could be unraveled by the faintest caress of light. Given the wash coming from all the emergency vehicles in the street, it should have been rendered nigh on useless.

Which meant this particular spell had been combined with something else—something that gave it a more robust nature, allowing its use in this sort of environment.

The knives were still reacting to that magic, even if more faintly, so the concealed shifter was still in the area. They would have reacted more strongly had the shifter and the woman walked past me, so they must have slipped under the tape and walked through the emergency vehicles to the other side of the exclusion zone.

I darted back to the tavern’s side of the road and raced up the steps leading to the first-floor level of The Rows. Once I’d run past the cluster of vehicles and the taped-off area on the street below, I paused and looked over the ornate metal railing, scanning for the vague shimmer that sometimes indicated the presence of a shadow shield. Nothing. But the knives’ pulsing remained constant, which suggested I was going in the right direction.