His wretched mother is right—he could have fasted to practically any young woman in Gardneria. He didn’t want to be fasted any more than I did. But still, he did it.
For me.
I slump and exhale, looking to Lukas with a new, chastened understanding. “If you hadn’t stepped in, Damion would have forced me to fast to him,” I say, my voice rough with outrage as my heart aches for what Aislinn has likely endured. “Then he would have taken me back to his estate and raped me. And that would be my life. Every day.”
Lukas’s mouth tenses as he stares at me.
A stark realization takes hold. “That’s twice you’ve saved my life.”
Lukas cuts me a glare. “He wouldn’t have killed you, Elloren.”
“I’d be as good as dead.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head, serious. “You’d have found a way to fight him.”
“Maybe. But still, you were right. When you forced me to fast to you, you were being a friend to me.”
Lukas lets out a long breath and loses the last trace of his antagonistic demeanor. “What is it that you want?”
I’m the next Black Witch and I need protection comes close to escaping my lips. “I told you,” I say instead, “I’m ready to take my place with you.”
“No. Why are you here? Why are you back in Gardneria?”
It all crashes through me—my impossible task, my uncontrollable and therefore useless power, everyone I love in danger.
My life in serious danger.
“Because,” I say, my voice cracking, “I have nowhere else to go.”
Lukas studies me, his expression now searching. “I’ll help you,” he finally says, his voice low and adamant.
Tears burn in my eyes and I pull in a shaky breath, overcome with gratitude and wanting to find some way to express it. “Let’s go back in there,” I offer, gesturing in the direction of the Council’s Main Hall, “and I’ll dance with you. I’ll tell everyone in the room how happy I am to be fasted to you. I realize... I realize how much fasting to me, especially after how I fought you...the things I said... I realize how much I must have hurt your reputation.”
Lukas looks up at the ceiling and shakes his head before once again meeting my eyes, his expression going hard. “I don’t care what anyone thinks—” he motions between us “—about this. Whatever it is.”
A familiar, heated tension lights between us, and I can sense, by the intent way he’s now looking at me, that he feels it too. My uncomfortable awareness of his magic rises as I remember how many times the two of us have kissed, and quite passionately, the pull of our matching affinity lines an enticing, palpable thing.
I step back a fraction, abashed by my reflexive attraction to Lukas and his power when I’ve given my heart completely to Yvan.
“I’m to meet with Marcus Vogel before he makes his address,” Lukas says, breaking what felt like a momentary spell cast between us.
“Why?”
“He wants to meet with all the commanders of our Guard. Although I don’t think Damion Bane will be attending.” There’s no humor in his voice when he says this, only a volatile hatred swimming in his eyes.
Fear of what Damion might now suspect about me spikes.
I’m going to have to tell you what I am, Lukas. But...where do you stand? I have to know where you truly stand.
“When are you to meet with Vogel?” I ask.
He frowns and glances at a clock. “Now.”
It’s odd how dismissive he is. His whole demeanor is strangely brazen, and I have the sense that something significant within him has changed.
“Then you should go,” I prod, worried that my only ally here with any real power might be flirting with a dangerously open rebellion.
Lukas makes no move to leave. “Let him wait,” he says in a harsh, subversive tone that leaves me wondering. No one leaves a High Mage waiting. No one. Not even an incredibly gifted Mage. Not even a military commander.
“Don’t make him wait,” I caution, my own tone now one of undisguised warning.
Lukas considers me closely, a tendril of his fire loosening and flaring toward me. I can tell he understands that I sense how he feels about Vogel and that I agree, and it feels good, this meeting of our minds. Lukas nods, as if in acknowledgment of it.
“I’ll find you after Vogel’s address,” he promises.
“I’ll look for you.”
He holds out his hand. “Give me one of the hairs from your head, Elloren.”
Confusion flares and I draw slightly back from him. “Why?”
His mouth tightens. “I have a Noi tracking rune,” he says. “I can amplify my wand magic with it to cast a search spell.” He gives me a poignant look. “It might be a good idea for me not to lose track of you.”
I consider this, my brow lifting at his use of Noi sorcery. It’s flatly forbidden for Gardnerians to mix their magic with the sorcery of other lands. And Lukas can’t charge runes, since he’s not a Light Mage, so a Vu Trin with runic sorcery must have charged whatever runes he’s using.
“Are you allied with the Vu Trin?” I ask him boldly, my pulse speeding up as I wait for his answer.
Lukas looks as if it’s his turn to try to stamp down a lie that he’s unable to voice. “We share similar aims,” he answers, a cagey look flashing over his expression.
Emboldened by this and by Lukas’s defiance of Gardneria’s magical strictures, I reach up and pull a hair from my scalp, wincing slightly at the sting, then hand it to him.
Lukas places the hair in his tunic’s pocket, shoots me a look of fervent, unspoken solidarity, and leaves.
CHAPTER SIX
SHADOW WAND
ELLOREN GARDNER
Sixth Month
Valgard, Gardneria
Ironflowers.
They’ve been brought in for Vogel’s address, the blossoms rising from countless black lacquered vases that now ring the Mage Council’s entire Main Hall and the foyer it spills into.
The lights have been dimmed to enhance the sacred flowers’ ethereal sapphire glow, and the darkness provides me some measure of anonymity as I weave through the overflow crowd of Gardnerians. They’re gathered just outside the packed Main Hall’s open, arching doors, white-armbanded Mages straining to get a look inside as they murmur with bright anticipation.
Waiting for Vogel.
The scarlet of my dress has been muted to black by the deep-blue light, the green glimmer of my skin heightened, muting my individuality and subsuming me into the great sea of Mages.
A nightmare of conformity.
Rattled by how well I blend in, I reach for the vase beside me and pinch off one of the delicate Ironflowers, holding it between my fingers as I rub my thumb and forefinger against it in an effort to soothe my storming emotions. Soft as velvet, the petals move in a lazy spiral, their soft blue glow momentarily carrying my thoughts back to a gentler time.
There was a large Ironwood tree grove near my family’s cottage in Halfix, just behind our horses’ small stable. Every year, as spring became gloriously entrenched, the floor of the forest beneath the Ironwood trees would erupt in a carpet of small, glowing blue flowers, the trees flowering days later. I remember how happy and entranced Rafe, Trystan, and I would be when the flowers were finally in bloom, and can almost hear little Trystan’s voice—Ren! They’ve bloomed! Come see!
Grief slices into me, triggering a longing for my brothers so raw that it sends an ache through me. I stare down at the luminescent flower cupped in my palm, my grief rapidly morphing into a mounting outrage that focuses in like a lightning strike on this potent religious symbol of Gardnerian power.
Gardneria. The monster about to consume the world.
A troubled fire kicks up along my affinity lines as I close my fist around the flower, crush it, then cast it to the ground, the pu
lp’s glow now a muted midnight blue. Eyes narrowed, I peer back toward the Council’s packed Main Hall.
Blue torches on long iron poles stand around the raised dais at the hall’s far end, the orchestra that was there now absent, the music gone. Behind the dais, a huge Gardnerian flag hangs from the dark Ironwood trees set into the walls, the entire scene bathed in flickering blue torchlight.
I weave my way to the hall’s open doorway and slip inside.
Splayed before me is a sea of black-clad Gardnerians, packed together beneath the hall’s high domed ceiling. The ceiling is supported by Ironwood tree branches, a dense canopy of leaves painted on the dome’s curved surface.
“Vogel’s bringing back order to the world,” a Mage before me murmurs reverentially to the Gardnerians that surround him, as I catch snippets of hushed, jubilant conversation throughout the room.
“Manifesting the Ancient One’s light...”
“Ensuring safety for our children...”
“Beating back the tide of evil. Getting the invaders off of Mage soil.”
“Ushering in the Blessed Reaping Times...”
Resentment claws at me as I listen to them spin their religious delusions, all of them so sheltered from the misery they’re supporting.
An image of Gardnerian mobs rampaging through Verpacia assaults my mind. My fellow kitchen worker, Bleddyn, lying half-conscious in the shadows of an alley. Olilly’s bloodied face and mutilated ears. Little Fern’s terror as she clutched at her doll, guarding her toy’s pointed ears.
Andras’s small son, Konnor, hiding his face against Brendan’s chest the day his Lupine parents were murdered. Diana’s entire people slaughtered.
Embers spark to a slow burn inside my lines as I lurk in the shadows of the Ironwood trees at the back of the room and beat down the desire to thrust my wand hand against the trunk at my back and burn this entire hall to the ground.
I pull in one deep, quavering breath, then another, and let Chi Nam’s steadying words echo in the back of my mind.
Gather yourself, child.
But I’m in so far over my head, there’s no clear way out.
I look to the leaves painted on the domed ceiling far above me as both fury and desperation swell. Aislinn is somewhere in Valgard and wandfasted to Damion Bane. My beloved friend is caught in the jaws of an unimaginable nightmare that could have been mine.
I’ll come for you, Aislinn, I vow, sending the pledge throughout Valgard with the force of a solemn promise. I swear it on the Ancient One. Somehow, I will get you out of here.
My thoughts turn to Sparrow, also trapped here in Valgard along with Effrey.
Sparrow, who saved my life this evening.
I’ll help you get out too, Sparrow. Both you and Effrey.
There’s movement onto the dais, and I straighten as everyone’s attention snaps toward the front of the hall. Excitement ripples through the air.
A procession of Level Five Mage soldiers streams in to line the back of the dais, followed by a throng of military commanders, Lukas and his father among them, followed by priests and Mage Council members, all assembling themselves in a long arc in front of the soldiers.
Marcus Vogel sweeps into the room and onto the dais, two Council envoys striding in behind him, and the room explodes into a frenzy of veneration.
The cheers are deafening, the Mages around me crying out his name, a woman beside me breaking into joyful tears as she calls out, “May the Ancient One’s Blessing be upon you forever!” again and again.
I’m unprepared for the furious emotion that overtakes me as I’m faced with High Mage Marcus Vogel for the first time since Diana and Jarod’s people were massacred. Affinity fire roars through my lines, my wand hand tingling then burning hot, and I pull it into my sleeve, fearing my hand might take on a molten glow.
Vogel steps to the front of the dais and raises one hand as if in blessing, and the massive crowd grows preternaturally silent and still, all eyes looking to their Blessed High Mage. Vogel’s features are raptor-sharp as he scans the crowd, his priestly robes black as a charred forest and marked with the white bird.
In his lowered hand, he holds a dark gray wand.
The vengeful fire in my lines rears hotter at the sight of it, my wand hand fisting as a crackling energy fills the demon-sensing rune Sage marked on my abdomen.
I freeze, alarm overtaking me as I consider what that might mean.
And then Vogel lifts his wand.
A wave of invisible black affinity fire hits me from clear across the room, its knifelike sting shooting straight through my lines. My whole body constricts, my gut cinching tight as I’m rendered suddenly immobile.
A flash of crimson lights my vision, and the room goes dark.
I inhale, cast into a sudden, claustrophobic panic, the image of the hall, the giant flag, the crowd of Mages—all of it disappears.
Roiling dark shadows now surround me.
An image forms in the shadow that’s closing in—the black silhouette of burned branches against a red sky, the dead tree rapidly melding back into the smoking, undulating shadow. And then, poof, both the smoky darkness and the shadow tree blink out of sight, the room once again lit up sapphire before me as I’m released from Vogel’s grip.
I reel, unsteady on my feet as I struggle to control my panic, hollowed out as the terrifying certainty fills me...
Vogel’s grown even more powerful. And it’s because of the wand.
That shadowy wand in his hand.
I can feel it in the way his magic is pulsing over the room in an odd, spiraling coil.
My gaze darts frantically across the hall, the Mages around me seeming oblivious to the reality of the creature that stands before them.
Marcus Vogel raises both hands once more and I flinch down, ready for another shadow assault. But Vogel’s power remains firmly contained.
The Council’s sole Light Mage steps forward, his dark garb marked with glowing deep-green runes, his white hair and beard flowing over his tunic’s back and front like a pale river. He lifts his wand and marks a suspended, verdant amplification rune to hover in the air before Vogel.
“Pray with me, Mages,” Vogel intones over the crowd, his words amplified by the light magery, his elegantly inflected voice resonating through me. Vogel closes his eyes as he begins to recite the Ancient One’s blessing, the entire crowd joining in with impassioned force.
Oh, Blessed Ancient One. Purify our minds. Purify our hearts. Purify Erthia from the stain of the Evil Ones.
In unison, everyone brings their right fists to their hearts with an all-encompassing thud. Everyone, that is, except me...and Lukas, who remains stiff as an iron rod, his hand gripping the handle of the wand sheathed at his side as he eyes High Mage Vogel boldly. It surprises me, Lukas’s refusal to pretend to be part of this communal piety, and strikes me as potentially foolhardy. As it did when I first saw him in his tent, a heightened awareness hits me that Lukas is in a very small minority of Mages still wearing the old military uniform.
Vogel opens his eyes and looks over the crowd. “Blessed Mages,” he says with simmering import. “Tonight is a night to celebrate what the Ancient One has wrought.” He pauses, and his devotees wait breathlessly, the faint noise of the entire crowd reduced to an almost imperceptible rustle of silken fabric.
“The Ancient One has brought us victory after victory over the heathen races who seek to destroy us,” Vogel proclaims. “Who seek to pollute our lands. Enslave us. And corrupt all that is sacred. And so the Ancient One has enhanced our runic magic, calling upon us to wall out the Evil Ones with border runes and holy purpose.” Vogel pauses as he takes in the crowd, and the Mages around me strain forward as if to breathe in his every word. “Beloved Mages,” Vogel calls out, his tone resonating with vengeful force, “we will drive the Evil Ones from our lands. We will wall them away
from our children. We will cleanse this land and bring the Reaping Times to all of Erthia.”
Thunderous applause breaks out and swells, aggressive cheers sounding as my mind snaps back to the image of the odd, glowing green line stretched out over the Malthorin Bay.
A terrible realization coalesces.
He’s building a runic border.
To magically keep non-Gardnerians out. To keep the Urisk imprisoned on the Fae Islands with no chance of escape East. And, eventually, to keep anyone who wants to flee East trapped in Gardneria.
Including me.
“A new day has dawned, Mages,” Vogel says as the applause and raucous cheers fade and the crowd settles back down into enraptured silence. “The Reaping Times are here,” Vogel says, his tone so ominous that it fuels the dread in my heart. He pauses, the room his, every ear straining toward him. “The Great Prophecy has been struck down,” he states with terrible finality.
Surprise bolts through me as a confused murmuring rises throughout the entire hall. Mages look to Vogel and to each other in sudden, obvious astonishment. Even most of the Mages on the dais seem thrown, including Lukas, who seems to be scanning everyone around him for some clue as to what Vogel means.
Only the attending members of the Mage Council seem unsurprised, their serene posture exuding confidence and triumph.
A crow flies down from the branches woven across the domed ceiling and alights on Vogel’s shoulder, and the sting along the rune on my abdomen abruptly worsens. Foreboding sweeps through me.
“The Great Icaral Demon of Prophecy has been found,” Vogel announces, his voice booming throughout the room.
Gasps hiss throughout the hall, and for a moment, I don’t fully comprehend Vogel’s words.
“The Winged Demon was located in Noi lands,” Vogel continues. “Glamoured as a Kelt and known by the name Yvan Guriel.”
The words strike like hammer blows straight to my heart. All the blood rushes from my head.
No. No.
“The heathen Noi were harboring the Great Demon on their Oonlan military base,” Vogel continues, his tone sharpening to a blade’s edge, “honing his power, intent on unleashing this weapon of fiery destruction upon the Holy Magedom.”
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