Alarmed, I glance toward Jarod, whose face has paled.
“This is a Gardnerian dance,” a soldier with the stripes of a Level Three Mage barks out as he stalks toward Diana and Rafe, three more soldiers close on his heels as the music falls away.
A look of white-hot defiance crosses my brother’s face. He shoots the Mage a mocking smile, pulls Diana into an embrace and kisses her deeply.
Waves of shock rip through the room, followed by an angry swell of voices.
The Level Three Mage reaches for his wand. “No!” I choke out, grasping at Jarod’s arm. “Rafe doesn’t have any magic!”
“I know,” Jarod says tightly, the hard muscles of his arm coiling beneath my hand.
Diana pulls away from Rafe, a mischievous look in her eyes. Then she exuberantly grabs my brother’s hand and tugs him after her, the two of them laughing as they bound through the crowd and out of the hall. A torrent of breath releases from my lungs at their escape, the clamor of angry voices soon dissipating along with the threat of violence as the soldiers slowly blend back into the outraged crowd.
After a moment of tense silence, I turn to Jarod. “Do your parents know about them?” I wonder if all hell is about to break loose on both sides of the aisle.
Jarod’s jaw grows rigid. “They do. They’re coming to Founder’s Day.” He hesitates. “Father wants to have a talk with Rafe.”
I shoot him a panicked look. I’ve been looking forward to Founder’s Day, when parents and families traditionally flood into Verpax to visit University scholars. Uncle Edwin is finally well enough to come see us, and I’ve been overjoyed at the prospect of seeing him after so many months apart. He recently sent me a letter, transcribed by one of Aunt Vyvian’s servants, telling me that his health is slowly improving and he’s finally able to walk again with the aid of a cane.
But now, my happy anticipation dims as a sharp worry takes hold. The Lupines may be accepting of a great many things, but I imagine that acceptance does not extend to the descendants of the Black Witch.
“It’s not just my parents and younger sister who are coming,” Jarod worriedly says, glancing at me sidelong. “My father’s entire guard will be accompanying them, as well.”
I grasp my glass tighter. “Your father’s not coming to threaten Rafe, is he?”
Jarod looks out over the crowd, the music tentatively stepping up to quell the collective trauma. “No,” he says with a troubling lack of conviction. “At least I hope not.”
Jarod’s attention is caught by something across the room. He inhales sharply as his eyes fill with emotion. “Aislinn.”
I follow his gaze and soon spot Aislinn’s slender frame gliding through the crowd like a panicked bird in flight. Jarod and I both step forward, away from the shelter of the trees, and I motion to Aislinn with a small wave. She waves back, her eyes widening as they settle on Jarod.
Aislinn’s slightly out of breath as she reaches us. “Jarod. You’re here.” Her openly besotted look quickly tamps down, and she looks away from Jarod, flustered. “I’m so glad I found both of you.”
“I thought you were still in Valgard,” I say, surprised. Aislinn was finally going to tell her father the truth—that she doesn’t want to be fasted to Randall, the fastmate her parents have chosen for her. “Weren’t you going home to talk to your father?”
Aislinn nods stiffly, her eyes filling with anguish. Jarod puts his glass down on a nearby table and places his hand gently on her arm. A Gardnerian woman chatting with her friends nearby catches sight of the gesture, registers that there’s a Lupine in her midst and shoots us a look of deep distress. Their entire group breaks into alarmed murmurs and rapidly flees to another part of the hall.
Tears spill down Aislinn’s face, and she wipes them away with the back of her arm. “Father says I have to fast to Randall. As soon as possible. He was...very angry when I disagreed. It was horrible.” She chokes back a sob, her shoulders shaking. “He told me that a daughter who disobeys her father...is a daughter no more.”
“Oh, Aislinn,” I say, my heart going out to her. “I’m so sorry.”
Her face tenses miserably. “I’m trapped. Father was going to pull me from the University. I had to apologize and beg him to let me stay, and he made me travel back here with Randall. We argued the whole way. Father has him watching me all the time now—I just escaped from him. I’ve got to get away.” She wipes at her eyes again, the silk arm of her tunic streaked with dark lines of tears.
“Come away with me,” Jarod says, his voice filled with calm authority.
Aislinn looks up at him, incredulous. “Jarod, I’d be cut off from my family. Completely cut off. You don’t understand. I...can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Jarod insists, a courageous light in his amber eyes. “Aislinn, this is a mistake. Come away with me right now.”
Aislinn peers out over the crowd, then back up at Jarod, as affection and trust wash over her face. My heartbeat speeds up, and I sense that if Aislinn goes with Jarod now, there’s a chance she’ll leave with him for good.
“Go,” I urgently prod her with a quick glance to Jarod. “You should go with him.”
“Aislinn!” Randall’s arrogant voice calls out from the crowd, and my hope for her plummets. He rushes toward us, looking obnoxiously attractive in his cleanly pressed uniform.
“Unhand her, right now,” he orders as he approaches. When Jarod simply glares at him, Randall roughly grabs Aislinn’s free arm and yanks her toward himself.
“Let her go!” I exclaim.
Aislinn makes a hurt sound and instinctively recoils.
Jarod’s eyes go wild. His lips pull back over long, white teeth as a low growl emanates from his throat. He makes a slight lunge toward Randall, muscles tensed, and I flinch back.
“Get your hand off of her, Gardnerian,” Jarod snarls. “Or I will rip it off.”
Startled, Randall lets go of Aislinn and stumbles back. “Aislinn!” he insists shrilly. “Get away from him!”
Aislinn stares up at Jarod, her eyes gone wide.
A metallic screech tears through the air as four soldiers unsheathe swords and close ranks behind Randall. Emboldened, his expression turns smug. “You are seriously outnumbered here, shapeshifter,” Randall says, artlessly drawing his own sword.
Jarod lunges forward, lightning fast, grabs up Randall’s sword and bends it in half with one hand, casting it to the stone floor with a deafening clank. Randall and the other soldiers flinch back in alarm as a snarl works its way up from the base of Jarod’s throat.
“I am the son of Gunther Ulrich,” Jarod growls, teeth bared, as he grasps hold of her arm once more. “And I could take on every one of you. And win.”
Randall’s throat bobs as he swallows nervously, frozen in place. “Aislinn,” he finally croaks out in a halfhearted demand.
Aislinn shakes her head, as if trying to wake from a spell, her face agonized. “Let me go, Jarod,” she says hoarsely. “I have to go with him.”
Jarod’s head whips toward her. “No, Aislinn. You don’t.”
“Let me go, Jarod. Please.”
Jarod stares at Aislinn for a long moment, his face violently conflicted. He releases her arm.
“Get over here!” Randall orders, a slight tremor in his voice as he thrusts his hand out at Aislinn. She takes it without a word and lets herself be led away.
Jarod stares after her and, for a moment, I fear he’ll go after Randall, there’s such violence in his eyes.
I’m desperate to console him. “Jarod, I...”
Before I can say anything else, he shoots me a wild-eyed look, then stalks across the hall, through the mortified crowd, and out a back door.
I hesitate for a brief, agonized moment before following him, but by the time I reach the terrace outside, Jarod is nowhere in sight. I race through a maze of potted evergreen
trees and frosty ice sculptures as I rush toward the terrace’s railing, spotting Jarod’s dark silhouette far across a long, barren field, and I know I’ll never catch up with him.
The wilds lie just beyond the flat expanse.
I call out after him, but to no avail. Despairing, I turn, and the largest of the ice sculptures catches my eye, illuminated in the terrace’s blue lantern light. The sculpture looms over me, the frozen visage of my famous grandmother staring down, wand raised to slay the Icaral lying at her feet—an exact replica of the monument outside Valgard’s Cathedral.
Black Witch.
The words are soft on the cold air.
I look toward the forest just as Jarod stalks into the line of trees and is quickly swallowed up by the blackness of the wilds.
CHAPTER SIX
A WORTHY GRINDSTONE
The lonely quiet settles into me as I stare out at the forest, my heart aching for Jarod and Aislinn.
I let out a long sigh and turn toward the sculpture of the Black Witch, gentle pinpricks of snow falling on my face. Glancing down, I run my fingertips along the edge of the Icaral’s stingingly cold wing, wishing I could will him back to life. I glare back up at my own face, carved in ice, and silently rail against Carnissa Gardner’s cruelty as the cold seeps through my silks and sets me shivering.
“It’s beautiful.”
I take a deep, steadying breath, recognizing Lukas’s voice.
His hands slide around my waist as his long body presses lightly against my back, a luxurious warmth cutting through the chill, my fire lines stirring in response to his touch.
“Beautiful,” he says, his voice silken. “Like you.”
Conflict fills me. It should be a struggle to be with Lukas Grey, but it’s just too easy to surrender to his pull.
Lucretia’s voice echoes in my mind. We need you to find out where his loyalties lie.
Tenuously justified, I melt into Lukas’s arms, reaching up to grasp the Snow Oak pendant. As soon as I touch it, my earth and fire lines give a warm surge, and I let out a shuddering sigh. Lukas moves closer as the dark branches of his earth lines shiver into being and slide through my wakening lines in a tantalizing rush. My breathing deepens as our affinities twine, line by line...
The wood of the forest pulses from clear across the field, like a fire flaring. A palpable spasm of fear jolts through the trees, as if the wilds are collectively flinching back from us.
Then nothing—a cowed silence, like a terrified child trying to escape the notice of monsters. I’m momentarily filled with a heady sense of strength as I survey the dark forest, Lukas’s breath warm on my cheek.
Together, we’re dangerous.
A reflexive alarm sounds inside me, and I pull away from Lukas, my pulse quickening as I teeter on the precipice of this new, seductive power.
“You feel it, don’t you?” he asks, smooth as glass, his emerald eyes glinting in the sapphire lantern light.
“Something just happened,” I tell him, shaken. “A surge in my affinity lines...and then...a reaction from the trees.” My brow tightens with distress. “The forest has always made me slightly uneasy. But now... I have this feeling that it hates me.”
Lukas’s gaze flickers toward the wilds. “The trees sense your grandmother’s power quickening inside you.” His voice drops to a whisper. “And they fear us because we have Dryad blood.”
I’m surprised by his bold, forbidden statement. I glance around, relieved to find that we’re still alone on the terrace. “It’s not safe to talk like that, Lukas.”
The side of Lukas’s mouth lifts. “Ah...the Gardnerian charade of purity. I find it amusing.”
His casual cynicism infuriates me. My hand bumps against the frozen edge of the Icaral’s wing as I frown at him. “I don’t understand you. How can you fight for them if you don’t even believe any of it?”
Lukas’s expression hardens. “There is no ethnic purity, Elloren. Only power, and the lack of it.”
A bonfire flares at the far end of the broad field. A number of Gardnerians are gathered around the fire and sending up a celebratory Yule cheer. Blue paper lanterns rise, their glow luminescent against the black winter sky.
I’m momentarily transported by the lanterns’ ethereal beauty. Absentmindedly, I lean into the ice sculpture behind me, and most of the Icaral’s icy wing breaks under the weight of my hand. Aghast, I try to grab hold of it, but the wing slips through my fingers and shatters into glittering pieces at my feet. I watch, bereft, as snow gently dots the crystalline shards.
“Come,” Lukas says, his gaze steady. “Come inside and dance with me.”
Blue sparks of lantern light reflect in his eyes. There’s nothing kind about his face—all hard lines and sharp angles. Like my own. But there’s dark understanding in his eyes, and I’m drawn in by it.
I brush the melting ice off my hand and look up at him. “I haven’t shown you my dress yet.”
Lukas steps back expectantly, watching as I unpin my cloak and slide it off in one smooth movement.
Lukas stills, as if captivated.
Snow falls in sparse, glittering flakes all around me as the dress’s embroidered Ironflowers and sapphires pick up the shimmering blue lantern light.
Lukas’s gaze does a slow slide over my body as his eyes take on a sultry heat. “That dress is deliciously scandalous.” His eyes meet mine. “You’re stunning, Elloren.” The sudden roughness in his voice belies an undercurrent of emotion that I’ve rarely seen in him, and it sets off an unsettled ache deep inside me.
“After tonight,” he says, an ardent fire in his eyes, “they won’t be calling Galliana the Iron Flower. They’ll grant that title to you.”
The snow begins to fall more quickly, and I glance up at the swirl of white against the velvet sky.
“Let’s go make an entrance,” I tell Lukas, suddenly decided. Even if I won’t wandfast to him, I can at least give him this night.
Lukas’s mouth moves into a slow smile. He holds out his arm, and I thread mine through his, my pulse quickening.
“Are you ready?” he asks, his usual feral grin returning.
I nod, and together we make our way into the White Hall.
* * *
I match Lukas’s long, confident stride through the hall.
We leave a trail of gasping Gardnerians in our wake as all eyes fall on my resplendent, glowing dress. Mages give Lukas deferential bows as he passes, the soldiers and military apprentices bringing fists to their chests in formal salute.
Lukas acknowledges exactly none of it.
The crowd parts for us, and we walk, unimpeded, toward the dance floor, the music quieting. When we reach the floor, Lukas’s hand slips down my arm, his fingers twining around mine as he leads me to its center.
As my heart trips against my chest, Lukas smoothly takes me into his arms. The orchestral music swells back to life as his hand tightens around my waist and he glides us both into motion with sinuous grace. We twirl across the floor as one, and a giddy thrill sings through me. Delighted sounds rise up, along with scattered applause, other couples moving forward to fill in the dance floor.
It’s pure joy, dancing with Lukas Grey, his movements fluid, his lead strong and assured. I can’t help but be a bit transported by the pleasure of moving so effortlessly in time with him. The surrounding lantern light streaks Lukas’s hair with blue, his eyes steady on me.
“I hear things were quite dramatic here earlier,” Lukas says as he deftly twirls me around, my hand loosely in his. “I seem to have missed it all.”
I catch a glimpse of Paige Snowden staring at Lukas and me, her eyes saucer-wide. Sylus Bane stands beside her on the periphery of the dance floor, a glass of punch in his hand. His lips curve into a cruel smile as he raises his glass in a mock toast, and a flood of worry washes over me. Gesine Bane is with the
m, her black velvet dress splashed with diamonds, her gaze on me frigid.
“She’s going to kill me,” I tell Lukas as he glides us around with assured grace.
“Who is?” he calmly inquires.
“Fallon Bane. When she gets back on her feet. She’s going to encase me in a tomb of ice. And her brothers and cousin are likely to help.”
Lukas eyes me, amused. “Fallon’s under heavy military guard. There was an additional attempt on her life.”
I blink at him in surprise. “There was?”
“Hmm. Another band of Ishkartan merceneries. Ten of them this time.”
“Holy Ancient One.”
Lukas spits out a jaded sound. “Elloren, she’s thought to be the next Black Witch. That’s going to draw a certain level of attention, and up until now, she’s stubbornly refused to respect that fact.”
“Lukas,” I say, a thread of apprehension winding through me, “she can’t be the Black Witch. She just can’t. I think I’m her biggest enemy.”
“Relax, Elloren,” he says dismissively. “Fallon’s not the Black Witch.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She’s powerful, but Fallon has nowhere near the range of magic your grandmother had. Though she does have some truly impressive ice spells, I’ll give her that.”
“Yes, well, when she hears I came here with you, she’ll freeze my blood.”
Lukas smirks at this. “She won’t freeze your blood. She’ll just torment you a little.” He leans in close. “Or a lot.” He twirls me around dramatically and shoots me a wicked grin. “But it’s worth it, don’t you think?”
I scowl at him, but he ignores my displeasure. “Your friend Aislinn looks miserable. I passed her walking with Randall Greyson on the way here.”
“She doesn’t want to fast to Randall.”
“I don’t blame her. Randall’s an idiot.”
I furrow my brow at him. “I’m surprised to hear you talk that way about a fellow soldier.”
“He’s a talentless coward who should never have been allowed in the Mage Guard.” Lukas’s lips tighten with disapproval as he looks past me, surveying the scene around us. “What the Gardnerians are in dire need of is a worthy foe. One who would immediately pick off soldiers like Randall.”
The Iron Flower Page 6