Unknown POV
Florida heat hit me the second I stepped out of the airport.
Not warmth.
Weight.
The kind that clung to skin, curled hair, and made the air feel swollen in the lungs.
I kept my sunglasses on.
Not because the sun bothered me.
Because humans noticed the wrong things.
They missed magic. Missed aura. Missed danger standing two feet from them if it smiled first.
But eyes?
They noticed eyes.
My bobbed hair barely brushed my shoulders as I adjusted the frames higher on my nose, dark brown strands already threatening to curl from the humidity. I looked like any other woman fresh off a flight—light carry-on, phone in hand, mild annoyance set neatly across my face.
A tourist.
A lie.
I walked with my shoulders loose and my posture forgettable, like I did not have orders stitched into my bones.
Find him. Retrieve him. Report.
My master had not sent me across an ocean to admire palm trees.
I slid into a rideshare, gave a normal address near town center, and watched the coast pass through the window.
Florida was almost offensively bright.
Blue sky. Clean pavement. People in sandals and shorts acting as though the world was safe because it smelled like sunscreen and saltwater.
Humans were always like this—living at the surface of things, never realizing how much moved beneath them.
If they had known what happened here three nights ago, they would not have laughed so loudly.
But they did not know.
They believed house fire.
They believed accident.
They believed grief arrived at random.
I knew better.
I had been there when the plan shifted.
I had watched the pieces move.
Katherine had been removed from the board in one clean motion—no hesitation, no mercy.
And Steven Salvatore…
Steven was supposed to be simple.
A boy raised human.
Unclaimed. Untrained.
A son who did not know what he was.
A retrieval.
That was all.
I had not expected him to ignite and disappear in the same week.
The rideshare stopped near town, and I stepped back into the heat.
The first thing I did was close my eyes.
Not for prayer.
For sensing.
My awareness spread outward in a practiced sweep, searching for the one signature that should have answered mine the moment I arrived.
A Salvatore thread.
A pulse.
A heat buried in the air.
Steven.
Nothing.
My eyes opened slowly.
That was wrong.
Newly awakened cores were rarely quiet. Even when frightened, even when trying to hide, they shed residue. Emotion. Hunger. Heat. The air around them learned their shape before they did.
But this town…
This town felt washed.
Too clean.
Like someone had wiped the scent from the walls and called it safety.
I walked anyway.
Sometimes the problem was distance, not absence.
I crossed the main strip first—gift shops, cafés, windows full of beach trash polished into souvenirs. I passed couples laughing over coffee, their affection bright and careless enough to make my mouth almost twist.
Love did not make humans smarter.
Only easier to find.
I moved deeper.
Past apartment buildings.
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Past side streets where people watered plants and unloaded groceries and pretended nothing ugly had ever happened nearby.
I kept my phone in my hand to look occupied.
I kept my sunglasses on.
I kept my senses open.
Still nothing.
No boy.
No pull.
No thread.
My patience thinned.
Fine.
Then I would follow the ruin.
Frightened creatures always returned to the same patch of ground until something forced them elsewhere.
The burned house appeared at the end of the street in a wash of caution tape, blackened beams, and human denial.
I smelled it before I reached it.
Smoke, old but stubborn.
Ash worked into soil.
Loss sitting in the air like something that had not agreed to leave.
Humans had already started cleaning it the way they cleaned all tragedies—removing what they could see and trusting time to lie for them after.
Charred remains still jutted upward like broken ribs.
A skeleton of a home.
A mother had lived there once.
Children too.
I regarded it with the calm of someone who had seen far worse.
I did not grieve the boy’s loss.
Nor did I pity a woman who had forgotten her place.
I was looking for Steven’s traces around what remained of the property.
The house itself barely carried him anymore.
Only a thin thread. Faded. Old. Not enough for someone who should have circled his own ruin in grief.
Interesting.
My gaze moved over the yard again.
If his presence was that faint around the house, then there had to be another route nearby—some path he had been using that kept him away from the road, the open yard, the obvious places.
A smarter path.
Or a hidden one.
That was why I could barely feel him here after the fire.
My mouth twitched faintly.
Clever boy.
Then I found it.
Not behind the house.
In front of it, half-hidden by the tree line.
A narrow forest path cut away from the property and disappeared between the trunks—small enough for humans to ignore, clear enough for someone desperate to use it more than once.
Not random wandering.
Routine.
Practice.
I followed it.
The air cooled under the trees. Town noise fell away in pieces until only the forest remained—still, damp, listening.
Then the path opened.
A clearing.
Open sky above. Dirt below. Trees standing around it like witnesses with better manners than most people.
The moment I stepped into the center, my skin prickled.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The air here was marked.
Scorch burns stained the soil—blackened crescents, uneven and recent enough to still bite at the senses.
Incinda.
My stomach tightened.
So the rumor was true.
He had fire.
That was not common anymore—not among the diluted branches.
A handful carried it.
Fewer manifested it this young.
And Steven had done it without guidance.
I crouched beside one of the scorch marks and let my gaze move over the dirt.
The pattern told its own story.
A burst.
Uncontrolled.
Emotion-triggered.
Not technique.
A tantrum.
My mouth twitched again.
Salvatore blood did adore drama.
But beneath the fire residue was something else.
A second layer.
Not human fear.
Not love-scent.
A tether.
Fresh. Strong.
The shape of a new familiar bond pressed into the clearing like a second heartbeat fused to the first.
So he had not been alone after all.
He had secured a conduit.
A companion.
A tool.
Whatever word one preferred, the result was the same.
Steven had become harder to retrieve.
I rose slowly and let my senses stretch outward again.
If the bond was fresh, then direction might still cling to the air—
And then the air refused me.
Not violently.
Just firmly.
Like an invisible hand laid flat against my chest.
Stop.
My eyes narrowed.
I turned toward the far edge of the clearing, where the air shimmered faintly—so faint a human would never have noticed it.
But I did.
There was a seam there.
A place where something had opened…
and then closed.
Not an active portal.
Only the aftertaste of passage.
And woven around it—
green residue.
Worth.
My spine went cold.
So this was not a disappearance.
This was extraction.
The boy had been moved—invited, lured, escorted, whatever word made it sound tidier, but the end remained the same.
He had stepped behind Worth protection.
The irony almost amused me.
Worths despised Salvatores.
Worths preached order while pretending they had never built themselves around control.
And yet someone among them had opened a door for him.
I stepped closer to the sealed seam and pressed my senses against it carefully.
The warding did not strike.
It did not warn.
It simply denied.
Polite. Absolute.
Like a locked gate in an expensive neighborhood.
I exhaled through my nose.
So.
Someone clever had reached him first.
Someone had seen the flare and understood what it meant.
Someone had decided Steven Salvatore was valuable.
My fingers tightened around my phone.
Time to report.
I turned away from the sealed passage and moved several paces from the center of the clearing, posture smooth, face unreadable, as I selected the contact with no name—only a symbol.
The call connected immediately.
No ring.
Just his voice.
Low. Controlled.
“Report.”
“Master.”
Silence.
Not empty.
Expectant.
“I located the boy’s training site,” I said. “A clearing behind the burned property.”
“And?”
“He is gone.”
The word sat cleanly between us.
“I cannot sense him anywhere in town.”
The next silence came colder.
“Explain.”
I let my gaze rest on the scorch marks.
“He manifested Incinda,” I said. “Recent. Unstable. Emotion-linked. The soil is scorched in multiple places.”
The line went still enough for me to imagine him—expression fixed, anger folding itself into something more useful.
Then:
“He has fire.”
“Yes, Master.”
A beat.
“Continue.”
“There is evidence of a new familiar bond,” I said. “Fresh tether. Strong residue.”
That mattered.
I heard it in the smallest change to his breathing.
“A familiar,” he repeated softly. Then—“Fang.”
“Yes,” I said.
I gave him the rest without pause.
“And there is Worth residue at the edge of the clearing. Green warding. A sealed seam consistent with portal passage.”
The air on the line changed.
Not surprise.
Insult.
“Worth,” he said, the word thin as a blade.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe the invitation was activated here. The seam is closed. It refuses my reach.”
He said nothing for a long moment.
Then, calm as poison:
“So someone moved him.”
“Yes.”
“And you did not stop it.”
“I arrived after the fact,” I said evenly. “But I can confirm where it happened.”
Another pause.
Then his voice lowered, becoming more dangerous for how controlled it stayed.
“Stand by.”
My stomach tightened. “There, Master? Or—”
“There,” he cut in. “Remain in America.”
I stilled.
“And keep your distance from the familiar,” he added. “If it detects you, it will warn him.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Yes, Master.”
His voice softened by a fraction—not kindness. Planning.
“We move to Plan B.”
My pulse kicked once.
Plan B meant another piece was being lifted onto the board.
“You will not ask questions,” he said. “You will wait.”
I swallowed. “Understood.”
“I have a contact,” he said.
He offered nothing more than that.
No name. No explanation.
Just the shape of a new move I was not meant to see yet.
His voice returned, final and flat.
“You will remain available. You will remain invisible. And you will be ready.”
“Yes, Master.”
One last breath came through the line—low, restrained, furious.
“We were supposed to reach him first,” he murmured.
My throat tightened.
Because that was the truth.
The boy had been unclaimed.
Untrained.
Wide open.
And now he was behind green wards, carrying fire in his blood, with a Waters princess at his side and a familiar tethered to his soul.
Harder to retrieve.
Harder to control.
Harder to punish.
His voice dropped to something softer and far worse.
“Do not fail me again.”
The line went dead.
I stood in the clearing with the phone still warm in my hand.
Above me, the sky remained bright and harmless.
Below me, the soil still held the proof that Steven Salvatore had ignited here.
And at the edge of the trees, the air still shimmered faintly with Worth residue—like a door that had closed in my face and had no intention of opening again.
I stared at that sealed seam for one long moment.
Then I turned away.
Because the hunt had changed.
This was no longer about finding a boy who did not know what he was.
Now it was about beating whoever had recognized his value first.
And next time—
I would not arrive too late.