Page 75 of Scarlet Wars
No hesitation this time. My haze lashed out, searing into the stone at our backs, and thick scarlet chains welled into existence, bolting the soldier hard against the rock. He strained uselessly against them, metal rattling in the frozen silence, but there was no escape.
“I won’t tell you anything,” the soldier hissed, a useless defiance against what was coming.
I didn’t even look at him. My gaze remained fixed on Caden. “Now what?”
He leaned in slightly, his tone low, and precise. “Focus your energy on his mind, not his body. Think of it like digging, pulling the memories up one by one, sifting through them like pictures in a book. Don’t linger. Don’t hesitate. Flip until you find what you want.”
My fingers flexed, scarlet haze pulsing. “And what I want is the warrant.”
“Exactly,” he said with a sharp nod. “Every thought he’s had about it, who showed it to him, where he saw it, what it said. Drag it out. Tear it free with force if you have to.”
I frowned, then redirected my focus onto the man chained in front of me. Crimson energy licked across his skin, searching, probing.
“Grab his head with both hands if that feels more comfortable,” Caden suggested.
I did, my palms pressing hard against his temples. The moment I closed the circuit, the magic surged, violent, and immediate. It was like shoving my hands into a furnace and finding not fire but thought, raw and jagged, spilling against me in a torrent.
Memories flickered, faces, voices, pages of a document I couldn’t quite read.
But in the blur, I knew I’d found the thread I was looking for.
“I have something,” I mumbled, mostly to myself, barely audible over the hum of my haze. The man beneath my hands jerked against the chains, but I hardly registered the movement.
“Good,” Caden said evenly, now standing at my shoulder. “Imagine pulling it to you, as if reaching for a book in a library. Choose it. Claim it.”
The memory glowed in the tangle of his mind, a single filament of clarity in the chaos. My fingers dug harder into his skull, and for a heartbeat I swore I could feel the paper under my hands.
And then, there it was. Words. A signature. The presidential seal burned across the page…
My eyes snapped shut as I ripped free of the man’s mind, his soundless scream still echoing in my skull. And that’s when I heard it.
“Shit,” Caden muttered under his breath.
The portal cracked open behind us, light tearing across the clearing as Rachel stormed through, and shouted, “What thefuckare you doing?”
NINETEEN
CADEN
“Did you, or did you not, cross into the Human World all by yourself and against all orders?”
Not even five minutes after we’d returned from the woods, Rachel’s voice lashed through the War Room, ripping into Emma with no mercy for her choices on the battlefield.
“And did you, or did you not, then proceed to leave in the middle of battle, abandoning everyone on this team?”
I leaned back in my chair and let the cold of the metal seep into my spine as I watched them both.
Emma’s eyes dropped to the floor, shoulders tight, head bowed low. Never thought I’d see Miss Know-It-All drop her gaze for anyone, let alone Rachel Varez.
Never thought it’d turn me on as much as it did, watching her submit.
Fuck. How I wanted her to submit like that tome.
“Did I, or did I not, give you specific orders to stay within the sphere?”
Emma gave the smallest nod, lifting her chin just enough to meet Rachel’s glare.
“And did you not completely ignore my command?”
