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Your connection to the commander,” Cheneth said, taking a seat behind his desk and setting his glasses next to a stack of books. Once they were off his face, his entire demeanor seemed to shift. No longer did he have the thin, bookish appearance of the scholars, almost as if the glasses managed to obscure the brightness in his eyes. “Lachen knows something about what we do. That much was clear the moment he decided to send you here. But I still am not certain what, exactly, it is that he knows, and I haven’t been able to find out anything more. The commander has hidden his agenda well, which makes him dangerous. Now that we know what we face—with Tenebeth and the ability to taint the elementals—we can’t afford to have such dangers.”
    “You’re not only concerned about Lachen,” Jasn said.
    Cheneth leaned forward. “Eldridge told me that you were tainted, but you managed to heal yourself.”
    “That’s what the water elementals claimed.”
    “Hmm. And are we certain that you are truly healed?”
    Jasn frowned. Was that the reason Cheneth had brought him here? Was that the reason Wyath had remained at his side much more than was necessary? He had thought it tied to what they had done, the way they had saved the draasin, but what if there was another reason?
    “The water elementals wouldn’t speak to me otherwise,” Jasn said.
    Cheneth nodded curtly. “That is probably true enough. And that they speak to you at all is a blessing. Without you, we would have lost the female draasin.”
    “Is that all you care about, Cheneth?” Wyath asked. “The draasin?”
    Cheneth sighed. “I came to the barracks to understand the war and found something else entirely. Connections to elementals different than anything I’d ever encountered in Hyaln, and that when the wise remained.” He shook his head. “Now I think my task is to understand the elemental connections and how Tenebeth impacts them. I care about the same thing that you should—and that the order should—that we learn what we need to survive what comes.”
    “And what is it that comes?” Jasn asked.
    Cheneth frowned. “Darkness comes. You faced Thenas. There will be others like him, others who have been equally tainted. That is what we must be ready to face. If we are not, if any of us is not, then we will fail.”
    Jasn almost said nothing, but he knew the reason Cheneth had brought him here. “You mean Katya.”
    “Your Katya. We knew her as Issa. If she has been claimed, you must be ready, protected, so that they cannot claim you as well. But that’s not who I meant.”
    “Who, if not Katya?”
    Cheneth grabbed a cane resting against his desk and tapped it once on the ground. “More urgent than Katya is Bayan.”
    Bayan had been missing since he had nearly died. Jasn wanted to go after her, but where would he even start to look? Someone—he suspected Thenas—had abducted her while he was buried beneath the rock, but without a way to find her, there was nothing they could do.
    “I’ve told you I can help,” Jasn said.
    “Not with this. We need you here, learning what you can do, what your connection to water can do. Besides, I think Alena needs you here.”
    Jasn sighed. He knew she did. The connection between them told him how Alena suffered, how the connection to the egg continued to draw on her, pulling her shaping ability away. And the longer it happened, the less likely she was to survive.
    “You’re going to leave Bayan?”
    “No. Eldridge searches. Wyath will search. We will not leave her.”
    “And what can I do?”
    “You can help Alena find a solution to her problem. She does not care for the one I offered.”
    Jasn opened his mouth to say something about his desire to find Katya, to understand what had happened to her, but closed it. She had been gone for over a year. It was possible Katya really was gone, or if not, far enough removed that there was nothing he could do for her.
    But Alena… he could still help her.