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alignment as Aiden was, she would be too strong for any of his attacks to do much to her. 
    “Well, she’ll have been kept in a water-aligned cell. Between Dylan’s abilities and my own, we should be able to get everything out of her that we need.” Dylan nodded slowly. He knew very well how to use his own alignment against fire elementals—his earliest training had been sparring against his brother. 
    “I need to meet with one of Alex’s cousins before we go.” Aiden glanced at Aira.
    “Which one of us goes with her?” he asked, looking at Dylan. “Or should we both go?” Dylan shrugged.
    “It’ll be an air elemental. If Aira can’t handle the woman, then you can. Besides, it’s probably better that you’re not separated from each other right now.” Dylan remembered—with a sense of dread—telling Leigh that as long as Aiden and Aira were together, they were unassailable. He thought to himself that anyone interested in deposing Aira would be more than happy to take the occasion to snatch her away if Aiden wasn’t around. Fire elementals were susceptible, at least a little bit, to Aira’s magical attacks—they were less susceptible to Aiden’s, but they were also less likely to do anything to try and attack him. Earth elementals were more likely to grab for Aira on their own; their elemental natures gave them advantages over her, and all it would take would be the right amount of earth magic and elementally-aligned materials to subdue her. Fortunately, Aiden’s fiery energy was all but impervious to anything other than the very strongest, most in-depth earth magic, and earth-aligned materials didn’t bother him at all. Dylan tried to remember more details of what he had seen in the scrying bowl. 
    “What if it turns out,” Aira said slowly, looking at him, “that Leigh actually was involved in the attack?” She hesitated a moment. “I know you don’t think she’s capable of it, but she was a spy and we have to consider that she might have been looking for an opportunity for the others.”
    “She did say that her family’s not of the opinion that you need to be deposed,” Dylan pointed out. “Apart from that…if she is involved, then of course she has to be punished just like everyone else. But I don’t think she is. I think she might be a captive. I wish I had seen for sure who was in the bowl; whether it was Leigh, or she was the person they were talking to.”
    “We’ll ask Oriel about the organization, we’ll figure out a way to blast their anti-tracking magic out of the water, and then we’ll get to them,” Aiden said confidently. “And then maybe sometime this decade we can finally take our honeymoon.”
    “So Aiden’s coming with me to meet with Alex’s cousin. What are you going to be doing, Dylan?” 
    Dylan shrugged.
    “I’ll be doing research. In the car. Waiting for your meeting to end. My life is so exciting.”

 
     

    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    DYLAN TRIED ONCE MORE, WHILE they were driving to the building where Oriel Peters was being held, to reach out with his mind and find Leigh. While he had been waiting for Aira and Aiden to get through with their meeting with Alex’s cousin Aurora, he had been skimming through some of the books of lore and magic that Aira’s grandmother Lorene had left behind when she passed. He wished idly that he had access to the full library, kept in the home that Lorene had bequeathed to her granddaughter. But there was no time to drive all the way up to the property; Dylan would have to make do with what he had already taken. 
    It seemed, at least according to the information he had at hand, that there were a few tricks that elementals could use to cover their tracks when they were on the run. For air elementals, at least those sufficiently strong in their alignment to take to the skies, it was a simple matter of covering themselves with the migratory paths of birds—easily enough done, and something that Aira could have managed if