elemental 07 - lonely hunger Read Online Free PDF Page B

due only to the fact that they didn’t know each other well, and the fact that something seemed to be sapping Leigh’s strength. Dylan tried to feel for the presence of water around the woman, tried to get a feeling, anything—any hint that could open up a place to search.
    “Dylan!” 
    He opened his eyes, called out of the trance by the sound of Aiden’s voice. He blinked and heat flooded him; elemental heat, burning away the chill that had come over him in the depths of his searching. Dylan was disoriented for a moment—he had been so far away from himself, completely focused on the search. 
    “Dylan did you find her?” 
    Aira’s hands were on his and Dylan almost pulled away; her energy blew through him, bolstering Aiden’s fiery essence.
    “Almost,” Dylan said, groaning. He had been so close—so close to finding a way to pinpoint where Leigh was. “She’s being held somewhere,” he told them, the impression still vivid in his mind. “They have her bound in something—I couldn’t sense what. But they wouldn’t have her bound up like that if she was part of the group.” 
    Aira grimaced.
    “Unless she was going rogue on them,” Aira suggested, frowning slightly. “We’re at the building. We need to question Oriel. Are you okay?” Dylan pushed Aiden’s hands off of his shoulders. He didn’t need any more of his brother’s hot energy flowing through him, roiling up the icy stillness his energy had become. 
    “Yeah,” he said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m okay. Let’s get to Oriel.”
    Dylan kept back, still composing his thoughts and pulling himself together as they went into the building together. It was a different holding building from the one the elders had kept Alex in—but it was similar in its nondescript splendor. As they walked through the doors, Dylan felt the tingle of the security features; the “cells” in the holding building were all selectively barricaded by different elementally-aligned materials. Fire elementals being held were kept in check by water-aligned materials: silver and copper on the walls, doors inlaid with lapis or quartz, and willow on the floors. Air-aligned elementals were kept trapped by earth-aligned items: iron in the walls, emeralds, jade, or jet inlaid in the door, and floors covered in ash, elm, or hawthorn. It was more difficult to barricade earth and water elementals, Dylan knew; fire did nothing to earth and it required a very large dose of air to weaken the element—and then, due to the characteristics of the fickle, flighty element, it tended to drive the elementals exposed to it into madness. Earth elementals were bound by the strongest water-aligned elements available, along with spells to bind the cells: not only were the walls ringed with both copper and silver, but the doors were ornately covered in rough pearls and aquamarine, the floors and inner walls covered with willow and hazel. The inverse was true for water elementals like Dylan; the cells to hold them had to be very strongly earth-aligned in order to curb the abilities of anyone with a water alignment. Dylan shuddered, imagining the cells: iron and lead cladding the walls, floors made of ash or elm, doors studded with emeralds and hematite. 
    The whole building was ringed, surrounded, choked with a variety of spells that would make it more difficult for an incapacitated elemental to escape—the elders had been thorough, guarding against each possibility that they could think up. If someone went into a cell in one of the holding facilities that the elemental elders had designed, they were not getting out on their own power. Dylan found himself on one level almost disagreeing with the elders; while those who were being held for judgment to discover if they were a threat to the elemental race certainly couldn’t be given any opportunities to escape, there was no such thing as the Geneva Convention for elemental prisoners. There were no real rules against what could