My blood was boiling.

The communication channel wasn’t working. I couldn’t reach out to our team on Strava. I’d been trying for the past hour, at least.

The telescope feed was quite accurate, though, and the blood spell worked, so, at least for a while, I’d had eyes on them. I’d watched over them while they searched the resort. The lenses moved and changed their angles to follow them around, connected to them through Arwen’s blood spell.

The first few hours had been relatively uneventful, from what I could tell. Rose and the team had made it to the cave, which we couldn’t even see from Calliope, even with that nifty telescope, because of the thick jungle foliage. However, I’d taken notes from Derek’s video, and I’d marked the cave’s location on the screen map, so I knew where they were shortly after midnight.

Then they’d gone back to the resort and had taken the boats out. Once they reached a small island with a lighthouse and a modest pier, it all went haywire. I saw the ice tower go up, courtesy of Nevis, but then the entire screen flashed white, and I couldn’t see anything for the better half of an hour.

The door to our operations room on Mount Zur opened with a click, demanding my attention. I stood up straight just as Caspian walked in. His aura was warm and gold, as always, instantly soothing me.

“Is everything okay?” Caspian asked, frowning as he sensed my angst. With our souls connected, I couldn’t hide anything from him. Not that I would’ve ever wanted to, anyway.

I shook my head. “Not really.” I pointed at the white screen. “It’s been like that for a while now.”

Caspian came over and stared at the screen for a few seconds. “Have you heard from them?”

“Comms aren’t working,” I groaned. “Even with all the upgrades that Jovi fitted them with. I don’t think we’ll be able to talk to them.”

“We were supposed to at least have eyes on them,” Caspian replied, crossing his arms.

“I did, until half an hour ago,” I said. “They were okay, on another island about seven miles northeast of Noagh. Then the screen went white and—”

I stilled as the screen flickered several times, and then the telescope feed came back in full view. I held my breath, trying to figure out what we were looking at. The topography had changed. They weren’t on the lighthouse island anymore.

“I guess it’s working now?” Caspian cocked his head to the side, visibly confused.

“Yeah, but… Hold on,” I replied, then fiddled with the screen controls to zoom in on the forested island. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Ben and Rose come out of the woods first, followed by the rest of the crew. “They’re okay,” I breathed. “Thank the stars.”

“At least we’ve got a better view now, instead of just black dots,” Caspian said.

It wasn’t exactly high definition, and I only had a close-up aerial view, but I could tell that they were all in one piece and moving at a steady pace. I looked around and saw nothing that would set my instincts ablaze, either.

Nevis generated another ice path across the water, which they used to get back to the resort, without taking the four boats they’d left on a neighboring island.

“As long as I’ve got eyes on them, I’m cool,” I muttered. “I would’ve gone ballistic if the feed didn’t come back soon.”

Caspian chuckled softly, then put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. His body heat seeped through my skin. He kissed me, ever so gently, making my heart sing. One minute alone with him was all I needed to settle my nerves. Caspian was my cure for pretty much everything.

“What do we know so far?” he asked.

“Nothing new, from what I could tell without an operational comms system,” I replied. “My guess is they’ll pack a message in a swamp witch spell and send it over soon enough.”

“Do you think this is Neraka all over again?” His brow was slightly furrowed, and his jade eyes glimmered with concern—the kind I hadn’t seen since I’d first landed on Neraka myself.

I shook my head again. “They’re not stuck there. We can see them,” I said, giving him a reassuring smile. “We’ve been over this before, babe. This definitely isn’t like Neraka. We’ve learned our lessons.”

He nodded, then looked at the screen. “What about them? Did you see what they’ve been doing?”

“For the most part, no. I’ve only seen them move around, here and there,” I replied. “The telescope follows them around with its blood spell. Otherwise I’d probably lose them, if I had to operate it manually. But then that white flare came up and blocked the feed.”

“And no sign of Derek and his group, either.”

“Nothing. Rose and company checked the resort and the cave, then moved farther to the northeast by approximately seven miles,” I explained briefly. “Now, they’re going back to Noagh. I suppose they’ll rest up and start fresh in the morning.”

Caspian grunted, then walked over to the telescope and checked its lenses.

“Not that I’m a genius with these things, but the charms look intact,” he said. “Whatever that flare was, I don’t think it came from here.”

“Are you sure? I should get Jovi or Arwen to look at it, though, just to be certain.”

He shrugged, then gently moved the telescope around, keeping his eyes on the large screen. I followed the feed until a strange view unfolded before us.

“Hm…” he murmured, staying by the telescope. “That’s strange, don’t you think?”

It was a round building, something akin to an ancient Roman coliseum, but made of glass or diamond or some kind of clear and sturdy crystal. It shimmered strangely under the moonlight, but the image was clear enough to make me conclude that it wasn’t a natural element.

“That’s a building,” I said. “That’s artificial…”

“Was it supposed to be there?”

I exhaled, then flipped through the annotated maps I’d saved on my tablet, to the same coordinates. “Oh, boy. No. This wasn’t there before,” I replied. “At least, not before we scanned the planet and started building the resort.”

“Let me see if I can zoom in from the lens, directly,” Caspian said, turning one of the small gears at the end of the telescope. “There’s still some wiggle room, I think.”

I listened to the mild clicks of the gear as he twisted it. A crackling sound came out from the telescope, prompting Caspian to freeze. We looked at each other with wide eyes, then back at the screen. My stomach dropped.

The telescope feed was gone completely.

The screen had gone black.

“Oh, no,” Caspian muttered, looking horribly guilty. It nearly broke my heart.

“Crap,” I croaked.

We were going to have to get Arwen in to try to fix it. If something had broken, it was most likely a part that could be replaced. Neither Caspian nor I was an expert on the matter, however, and, after what had just happened, we wouldn’t have touched the telescope with a ten-foot barge pole, ever again.

At least our search crew was okay, even though Derek and his group were still missing, and there was the weirdest construction that had appeared out of nowhere on an island—dangerously close to Noagh.

The weirdness factor on Strava had just been dialed up to eleven.