The Shadow Wand

by Laurie Forest

  Suddenly, it all washes over me. How I’ve held myself back from him. Not able to move past my grief over someone lost to me forever. While Lukas has risked his life for me again and again and thrown his lot in with me completely. And that look on his face last night...

  I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life.

  Casting off the last of my heart’s hesitation, I release my fire to him in a shuddering rush, and Lukas inhales sharply, his gaze growing even more impassioned.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him ardently, my voice breaking even as a tighter desire for him takes hold. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to care for you like you care for—”

  “Shh,” he says with real tenderness as his fingers thread through my hair.

  And then he pulls me closer, his fire blazing through me as our lips meet and he kisses me, long and deep.

  “Give me your fire, Elloren,” Lukas whispers as my power streams into his. “Give me all of it.”

  Flames rearing, I press him against the wall and kiss him passionately, my soft curves fitting against the hard lines of his body as Lukas embraces me, our lines fuse, and we give each other everything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHADOW FIRE

  ELLOREN GREY

  Sixth Month

  Northwestern Agolith Desert

  I wake to a shock of painful, wet cold.

  My panicked heart races as I spring up to a sitting position, my gaze darting wildly around as I shake my wet head. The fog of sleep rapidly clears as I struggle to adjust to what’s before me.

  I blink up at Valasca, my whole body shivering. She’s dressed in Vu Trin fighting gear, her expression blade-hard, a wooden bucket in her hands that I realize she’s just used to douse me with water. I clasp my wet blanket around my gray naked self as embarrassment and blistering outrage surge through me.

  Lukas stands just behind Valasca, dressed in a dark Noi tunic and pants as well, weapons strapped all over his body. His gaze on me is devoid of any of the affection and passion from last night, his fire held completely back.

  “What are you doing?” I cry at them, stunned.

  “Get up,” Valasca orders.

  “What? N-n-no!” My teeth chatter as I protest. “I—I’m un-c-clothed!”

  “Learn not to care,” Valasca says, her voice hard.

  “Well, I do care!”

  Valasca darts toward me and roughly grabs my arm, wrenching me up as I futilely hold the blanket to myself. Valasca tears the blanket away as I pointlessly try to cover my chest with my arm.

  “What are you doing?” I cry at her.

  Valasca leans in, her mouth a snarl. “Your training starts now, as we agreed.”

  “Not this way!”

  “Yes, this way!” Valasca vehemently snarls back. “Completely our way, Elloren! This is exactly how it works in Amazakaraan.”

  I want to scream at her. I want to lash out at them both. I glare at Lukas, stunned by his change in demeanor from last night, but he simply looks back at me with an expression of immovable resolve.

  “Fine!” I cry, furious and humiliated as Valasca tugs me along beside her, Lukas following, as I shiver and hurl epithets at them in my mind.

  Valasca yanks me down a tunneling passage that descends into the Vonor mountain’s base. Sparsely placed lanterns emit faint blue light to cut through the darkness, the rhythmic plink of water on stone becoming audible as the narrow passage eventually opens to reveal a vaulted cavern. A dark river of water courses through it, the space lit by several huge Noi runes marked on the deep-gray rocky walls.

  Water-drawing runes.

  I fleetingly wonder if Chi Nam built this entire river.

  Either Valasca or Lukas—or both—has already been here this morning, I can tell. There are a variety of weapons lined up on the surface of a huge, broad stone, and Vu Trin clothing and gear, including a folded towel, is neatly set out on another rocky table near the stream’s edge.

  “Get in,” Valasca orders as we halt just before the streaming water.

  Shivering, I dip my toe in the water and find it painfully cold. I whip my head around toward her. “It’s too cold...”

  “Learn not to care,” Valasca says as she shoves me forward.

  I fall face-first into the icy water and gasp, a blast of frigid pain knifing through me as I fall under its rune-lit surface, lines of black and blue rippling before my eyes, the stream deep with no solid purchase. My arms and legs flail against the freezing current as I fight back to the surface, coughing and sputtering as I break through and grab hold of some slick, irregular rock along the stone bank, my skin almost burning from the cold.

  My feet make contact with a rocky shelf, and I scramble to find some purchase to lift myself out of the stream, almost slipping back in.

  I finally manage to hoist myself onto the stone ledge, scraping my knee in the process. Trembling violently from the cold, I grab the towel to dry myself and glare hatefully at Valasca and Lukas, cursing under my breath.

  Lukas is leaning against the cave’s wall, arms crossed, watching me unsympathetically with none of his usual heat.

  “Are you done?” I cry at them both. “What is this accomplishing?”

  Valasca shoves a clean undergarment at me. Noi garb. Loose black linen pantalets embroidered with a small white dragon.

  “Just the dhunya for now,” Valasca orders, and I throw the undergarment on, cinching the drawstring tight, the embarrassment from being so undressed rapidly overtaken by angry resentment.

  Valasca pulls out her rune stylus, all business as she surveys my form and I stand there shivering.

  I look to Lukas, searching for something of who he was last night. The man I completely gave myself to and took as mine in return. But he’s all hard edges and closed off. Almost confrontational. On some level I understand his sudden harshness, even though it stings. This shift had to happen. My encounter with the wraith bats made it clear that I’m too emotional. Too quick to panic.

  Too quick to cave in.

  I pull in a wavering breath and rein in my anger.

  They’re trying to help me.

  Valasca surveys the tattoo-like rune chains that are draped all over my chest, as if checking on the source of my glamour. Then she touches her rune stylus to my abdomen.

  Sage’s Smaragdalfar demon-sensing rune lights up a glowing emerald through my gray Elfhollen glamour.

  “Amazing,” Valasca mutters with a pointed glance toward Lukas. “The potency of a Light Mage’s markings.” She shakes her head, as if in awe of Sage’s artistry, then lowers herself onto one knee beside me and begins drawing glowing blue Noi runes down the side of my leg, a harder, fleeting sting following her marks than when Sage drew her emerald runes.

  “What are you marking on me?” I begrudgingly ask, my mortification over standing here topless rapidly dissipating.

  “A series of runes that will draw on your affinity auras,” Valasca replies as she concentrates on forming the runes. “They’ll amplify the elemental power in all the Noi and Amaz weapon runes that resonate with your affinities.”

  “Where’s Chi Nam?” I ask as Valasca painstakingly draws, wondering if Chi Nam knows about these harsh Amaz ways.

  “Strengthening the shield around the Vonor,” Lukas replies.

  A tense silence falls as Valasca draws lines of glowing sapphire runes down the sides of both my thighs and arms, her brow knotted in concentration, and I suppress a shiver from the cave’s cool air on my exposed and increasingly lit-up skin.

  Seeming finished with the runes on my limbs, Valasca studies them appraisingly, then moves in front of me to draw a series of blue Noi runes all around Sage’s green demon-sensing rune. She then slips behind me to draw another row of runes straight down my spine.

  My tangled firelines prickle to life
, firing gold, my invisible earth power branching toward her stylus as Valasca continues to draw. My weaker water-and windlines stir under her sorcery, and surprisingly, I’ve the faintest awareness, for the first time ever, of a thread-slim line of light magic tangled with the rest of my lines.

  A barely perceptible glowing green line.

  Valasca strides back around to my front. “Splay your hands out,” she orders.

  I comply, and Valasca proceeds to draw a luminous Noi rune in the center of my palms, just like the ones she and Chi Nam have on theirs.

  “Are those weapon-retrieval runes?” I ask.

  Valasca nods. “They are. Press their center after deploying your weapon, and the weapon will fly right back into your hand.”

  I glance at Lukas, who opens his own palms to display identical glowing blue runes on his hands, his expression still dauntingly severe.

  Finally done marking me, Valasca murmurs a runic spell and taps her stylus on the center of my chest.

  All the runes pull in under the glamour, no longer visible under my false gray hue.

  Valasca hands me the Vu Trin uniform, and I throw on the black fireproof battle tunic and pants. Then I sit down on a rocky outcropping and jerk on socks and my boots and weapons belt, taking out all my residual ire over Valasca’s roughness and Lukas’s emotional distance on my boots as I cinch the laces tight.

  Valasca pulls out my newly green Wand from a long sack propped by the cave’s wall and I’m filled with an inexplicable relief as I take it in hand and slide it into the belt sheath, knowing they made a point of bringing it here for me.

  Lukas strides forward and begins fastening runic weapons to me along with Valasca, who throws a series of silver Vu Trin star weapons diagonally over my chest while Lukas attaches the sheathed Ash’rion blade to my upper arm. Valasca then secures a cunning sheath around my shoulder that holds three additional blades as Lukas comes down on one knee before me, yanks up my pant leg’s hem, and straps another sheathed knife around my lower leg. Valasca expeditiously does the same on my other side.

  I swallow as Lukas checks the fit of the sheath with a look of grim concentration, his hands on me sparking a remembrance of his hands caressing me last night. His sinuous touch down my legs, along my thighs. How he murmured my name over and over. There’s no trace of this ardent affection now, and I feel his emotional withdrawal acutely, even as I struggle to see past my own reflexive emotions and understand.

  The knives fastened, they let the hems of my pant legs drop to cover them. Then the two of them rise to their feet, step back, and survey my form.

  “I think we’re ready to take her out,” Valasca says to Lukas as if I’m not even there, my wet hair in limp tangles against my face.

  Lukas scrutinizes me once more, like I’m a thing. A sword. A weapon to be wielded. He nods and meets Valasca’s gaze. “Let’s see what she can do.”

  * * *

  For the next few weeks, as the portal knits together and charges, Valasca and Lukas work me hard.

  Chi Nam is a constant presence in the background, calmly splitting her time between strengthening the Vonor’s shield, charging the portal, and silently overseeing my weapons training. I can sense her guiding hand at work in everything, both Lukas and Valasca often exchanging wordless looks with her that are met with Chi Nam’s quick, almost imperceptible nod.

  Each morning, Valasca wakes me with a dousing of icy water, which I now know is a trial that all Amaz soldier apprentices endure to learn to control their response to discomfort. I learned this the second time she threw me in the painfully chilly water, after I cursed her up and down and she snarled out the motives for her actions.

  Defiantly rising to her challenge, I soon learn to wake and get myself to the freezing pool just before she and Lukas arrive, confrontationally stripping off my clothes while they stand there, arms crossed. Then I grit my teeth and jump into the freezing cold water before Valasca can push me in.

  And every day, before dawn, Valasca enhances the charge in the runes on my body, and I’m outfitted by the two of them with weapons then brought to a makeshift practice area they’ve assembled at the far end of the broad curving ledge outside the Vonor. Lukas and Valasca have thrown up a series of wooden targets marked with concentric circles and shapes of various sizes. Some of the targets are hung from ropes strung on the mesquite tree limbs just past the ledge, these targets teaching me to deal with a moving target.

  They instruct me in how to throw stars and blades and spears and how to wield a runic crossbow, zeroing in on blades when it becomes apparent I’m the most comfortable with the weight and feel of these weapons.

  They drive me relentlessly, push me to do exercises to strengthen my arms and shoulders and chest, and teach me martial arts sequences to improve my control over my body and my balance. Every muscle in my body aches and burns, but they drive me until pain is cramping through me and I can barely manage another throw, my shoulders screaming with discomfort.

  They have me practice in extreme heat. In the dead of the frigid night. And through it all, they purposefully keep me sleep-deprived by waking me with water or harsh taunts or simply grabbing hold of my arms and forcing me to my feet.

  When I’m not training with them, I’m with Chi Nam as she drills me in the runic systems, my proficiency in the violin giving me a blessed edge in learning to rapidly slide my fingers over a rune-blade hilt to find the proper runic combinations faster and faster and faster.

  I’m so exhausted at night that I fall asleep in Chi Nam’s meditation room the moment my head hits my bedroll, all alone in the space since Lukas now sleeps in another cavern far removed from me.

  All this time, Lukas remains aloof and closed off, and my emotions become increasingly tumultuous in response to the jarring withdrawal of his ardent attentions and bolstering fire, even though I understand with my rational mind why he’s doing it.

  Both he and Valasca have tersely laid out that I have to adjust to forcing my emotions aside. To stand firm in the face of loneliness and isolation and exhaustion and even terror. But it’s becoming near impossible. I’m like a frayed rope, dangerously close to snapping, and my pained resentment builds and builds in me until I want to hurl every weapon I’m wielding straight at Lukas to assuage the hurt that’s rising.

  * * *

  On our twentieth night here, Valasca goes out to hunt and scout the periphery of our location, and I’m alone with Lukas for the first time since we were last intimate.

  A late-night chill has fallen over the stone ledge outside the Vonor, a sliver of the crimson-hued moon rising above the mesquite treetops.

  My exhaustion is so acute that I can barely function.

  They woke me hours before dawn, and every part of me hurts. I might be growing stronger and more adept at using rune weaponry, but Lukas and Valasca add drill after drill, never letting up.

  I throw the last blade, the wooden target before me riddled with knives and stars, all perfectly lined up from the perfect aim the Wand has conferred to me, my speed and agility vastly improving. My anger over their relentless, overly harsh training mounts with each blade I throw, pain knifing up and down my arm. I throw the last star and turn to Lukas, my eyes blazing with refusal to do more.

  He looks at me coldly. “Again,” he says.

  Anger ignites.

  I hold out my palms and use the retrieval runes to draw star after star out of the target hung from the tree before me, the weapons flying through the air and hitting my rune-marked palms with painful force, one after another, as I grasp hold of them each in turn and fasten them to the diagonal sheath across my chest. Then I draw two of the knives back into my palms, angry tears welling. Suddenly, my anger and hurt and exhaustion are like a vicious tide that I can’t beat down. I throw the knives to the ground with a growl and yank the star sheath off and hurl that to the ground as well, then round on Lukas and
throw as much angry affinity fire toward him as I can. As my invisible fire power batters into him, he stands firm and glares at me, unmoved by my magical protest.

  “Where are you, Lukas?” I cry, feeling like a shattered fragment of myself. “I gave myself to you the last time we were together. And now...it’s like I’m nothing to you. You say it’s to train me, but it’s like I’m a weapon now and that’s it.” Pain strafes through me as my fire chaotically knifes out at him then falls apart into a frenzy of unfocused heat, my voice cracking. “I need you, Lukas. And I want to be more than just a weapon to you!” And suddenly, I’m on the brink of emotional and physical collapse, tears stinging at my eyes as it all rushes over me. What we’re up against. How he’s broken our connection just when I need him the most.

  For a moment, we’re locked in a silent battle, Lukas’s gaze on me so severe that it’s almost violent in its intensity.

  And then he strides toward me, his expression fierce as he comes at me at the same time as his fire roars into me. His lips come down on mine as his body makes contact, pressing me against the stone wall behind me as he grasps hold of me and drives all of his fire and all of his earth affinity branches straight into me in an overpowering rush.

  Lit up by the force of his magic, my desperate want for him breaks free and I throw my own fire, my own branches into him, our magery grasping for each other and taking fierce hold as I kiss him back just as intensely, his tongue in my mouth, my tongue around his as our power merges and builds into a fiery cyclone.

  Lukas draws back, both of us breathing heavily as he holds tight to me, his eyes wild.

  “I love you, Elloren. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Stunned, I can’t speak.

  “Is that it?” he demands, his voice rough. “Is that what you want?”