Gwynn looks around, stunned and cold, but filled with a strange elation. Mages are silently pulling themselves up from the ground, shock and fear stark on their ice-dusted faces.
“Pray with me, Mages,” Vogel says, bowing his head as Fallon is slowly led away. “Oh, most holy Ancient One,” Vogel intones. “You delivered us in primordial times from the jaws of demonic forces. You prophesized the Reaping Times to come.”
Vogel looks up from his prayer, a righteous fury pulsing out from him that Gwynn can sense straight through her affinity lines. “Mages, it is time to reap the unholy ones.” The High Mage’s voice pitches low with savage resolve. “We will flush them out of our cities. We will flush them out of the wilds. We will flush them out of this Realm and the next. We will flush them out with the full power of the Ancient One behind us.”
Vogel throws his wand up, and bloodred fire explodes from its tip, slashing over the crowd like a giant, flaming whip. The fiery blessing stars blaze back to life with red fire, and a grateful moan escapes from Gwynn, echoed by the crowd as warmth rushes back over the plaza. Then Vogel directs his fire into the sky, like a giant crimson torch, up and up and up until the flame rises clear above the Valgard Cathedral.
“Bring the Reaping Times, Mages!” he cries out.
The crowd’s thunderous response consolidates into one, singular chant.
“Vogel! Vogel! Vogel! Vogel!”
Tears of pure joy stream down Gwynn’s cheeks as she cries out the High Mage’s name. But her cheer is abruptly strangled out as a dark, twisted tree shudders to life in the back of her mind.
Stunned by the sudden vision, Gwynn grows silent amid the frenzied crowd. Her eyes light on the dark wand in Vogel’s hand. She has an unsettling sense of its power from clear across the plaza, as if it’s brushing against her affinity lines, lightly strumming them with skeletal fingers.
Then there’s a sharp pull on her affinity lines from the opposite direction, holding her back from the draw of Vogel’s wand. Another image forces its way into Gwynn’s mind—a tree made of starlight, ivory birds nesting in its branches. The starlight tree’s incandescent light winds around the dark tree, quickly rendering it to fading smoke and shadow.
A flash of remembrance fills Gwynn’s mind, and suddenly she’s thirteen years old again, handing the stolen White Wand over to Sage Gaffney. Helping Sage escape to isolated Halfix with the Wand in tow, the Wand now hidden and safe in the hands of the young Light Mage.
Gwynn had long ago discarded the idea that the wand she stole was the actual White Wand of myth. Over time, she had dismissed it as a foolish, childhood imagining.
But now, that childlike belief rushes back. The fierce bond of the White Wand. The comfort of the living, starlight tree. The Watchers, so like the birds pictured all around...
Wildly confused, Gwynn looks toward Vogel, and a scream threatens to tear from her throat.
The four envoys surrounding him have horns of shadowy smoke curling up from their heads.
Terror brands Gwynn like a hot iron, but everyone around her is joyful and crying and cheering, their beatific faces set on Vogel.
They can’t see the horns.
The air is torn from Gwynn’s lungs as she remembers it all. The two envoys who came to her home so many years ago. Glamoured demons searching for the wand.
None of it was a child’s game. None of it imagined.
Gwynn’s mind struggles for purchase, for some way out of this dawning nightmare.
If her childhood imaginings were real. If those envoys from so many years ago were truly demons...
Then Sage Gaffney has the true White Wand of power.
Terrified, Gwynn looks to Geoffrey. Her fastmate catches her eye and smiles at her sunnily.
High Mage Vogel needs to be warned, Gwynn realizes desperately. He needs to be saved from the demonic things surrounding him.
Gwynn’s frantic gaze darts toward the High Mage, latching on to the wand in Vogel’s hand. Shadowy smoke tendrils up from the wand’s tip, and the sight of it sends her reeling back.
Sweet Ancient One, what is it? What is that thing in his hands?
The answer comes to her in a sweeping rush of certainty as her mind spins and her world falls completely apart. It’s the evil tool spoken of in The Book of the Ancients. The counterforce to the White Wand.
The Branch of Darkness. The Cursed Shard.
Marcus Vogel has the Shadow Wand.
Mage Council
Motion
Mage Vyvian Damon moves to propose that all Selkies coming to shore in the Western Realm be immediately executed, and that aiding or abetting Selkies shall be grounds for imprisonment.
CHAPTER ONE
KELTANIA
Ice pelts our North Tower window, the rhythmic tapping nearly drowning out the quiet knock at the door. Startled that someone is visiting at this late hour, I pull myself away from the pile of Apothecary, Chemistrie and Mathematics texts on my desk to go answer it.
“Who’s there?” I ask cautiously.
“Yvan,” comes the tentative reply.
A wave of surprise washes through me. Yvan hardly ever comes here, and things between us have been awkward ever since we latched hold of each other’s fire so wantonly back at Naga’s cave.
I open the door, my heartbeat kicking up a notch. The golden glow from the hallway lantern flickers over the hard planes of Yvan’s handsome face. He swallows, and I can sense his fire give a sudden flare, as if my very presence unnerves him.
“May I speak with you privately?” he asks with a measured politeness that’s at odds with his chaotic fire.
“We could speak here in the hall,” I offer, struggling to tamp down the heat that’s suddenly kindling along my own lines. I step out of my lodging and shut the door behind me.
Flustered, I sit down on the stone bench, and he takes a seat beside me as I futilely try to ignore the effect his proximity has on me.
“I know someone who can help Marina and the other Selkies,” he says, meeting my gaze.
“Who?” I ask, surprise breaking through my unsettling haze of attraction toward him. “That would involve an armed militia, and Jules told me that only the Keltic Resistance has an organized force...”
Yvan smiles wryly. “Have you forgotten where I’m from?”
I blush and return his smile. Of course. If anyone in our small group has a connection to the Keltic Resistance, it would be Yvan.
“A friend of my mother’s is one of the Resistance leaders,” he tells me. “I’ve known him since I was a boy. The Keltic Resistance was willing to help both the Fae and the Urisk during the Realm War. Perhaps they’ll help the Selkies, too, once they know how horribly they’re being treated. And...how they’re running out of time.”
“Can we send word to him?”
Yvan shakes his head. “We can’t send a rune-hawk. It’s too risky. They’re intercepted regularly. We need to speak with him in person. He lives in Lyndon, my home village.”
I’m thrown by this. “What do you mean, ‘we’? You think I should come with you?”
Yvan’s answering smile sends a tremor of heat shivering through me. “I don’t think he’ll believe the story if you don’t come with me. And—” his green eyes glint with humor “—you’re persuasive.”
I laugh at this and eye him teasingly. “Am I? Perhaps that’s my secret power.”
“I think it might be,” Yvan says, his tone unexpectedly flirtatious. His gaze lingers on mine, and I have to fight a sudden, restless urge to move closer to him.
“Marina would be the best person for him to talk to,” I say, flustered.
Yvan shakes his head. “The trip is taxing, and Marina’s not well enough to make it in the form she’s in. And it would be nearly impossible to disguise her.”
I lean back against the cold st
one, silently contemplating. Traveling to Keltania. With Yvan. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea of it.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I ask.
“Clive Soren. He’s a surgeon. He used to work with my father, years back. I apprentice with him during the summers.”
“I could get someone to cover for me in the kitchens,” I consider, my mind awhirl with the bold idea. “And we have a few days off from classes for the winter break.”
A troubled thought occurs to me. “Yvan, I can’t leave Verpacia. There’s an Icaral who attacked me back in Valgard before I came to University, and if I travel over the border—”
“I’ll protect you.”
His statement is so unwaveringly firm, it stops me short.
“The border crossing will be a problem,” I remind him. “The Verpacian Guard is allied too closely with the Gardnerians. They’ll want my aunt’s permission before they’ll let me through, and she’ll certainly never give it.”
“We won’t be going through the border crossing.”
I cough out a laugh. “Yvan, we’d have to. The only other way into Keltania is straight over the Southern Spine.”
His lip lifts, as if he’s amused that I actually think this could be an obstacle. “We can get over it.”
I eye him with wry disbelief. “Are you telling me you can fly? Without wings? Or do you magically sprout them at will?”
Yvan’s face tenses, his smile disappearing. “I can climb it.”
“The Verpacian Spine?” I sputter, confused by the sudden change in his demeanor.
“It’s not unheard of. Some Amaz can climb it, as well.”
I regard him speculatively, remembering the immense tree he scaled the night we rescued Naga. “So, you have advanced climbing abilities, among your many other supernatural talents. I’ll have to go back to my books about the Fae and find out which type can climb vertical cliff faces.”
He rolls his eyes at me, amusement quirking the corners of his mouth. The sensual curve of his upper lip snags my attention for a moment, sending a warm flush prickling over my neck.
“Maybe you can climb it, Yvan,” I point out, struggling to ignore his ridiculous beauty, “but I can’t.”
“I’ll help you. Really, Elloren, it will be easy. I never travel home through the border crossing. I always go over the Spine.”
“So, you’ll carry me clear over the Spine.”
He nods slowly, a slight smirk on his lips.
I eye him warily. “I’m not fond of heights.”
Yvan looks at me patiently, as if waiting for me to finish protesting, probably knowing that my concern for Marina and the other Selkies will win out over my fear. And there’s something else I think he knows—that beneath all the tumultuous feelings and fiery tension between us, I trust him.
“How long is the trip?” I ask, relenting.
“After we get over the Spine, a few hours on horseback. Andras is showing four mares at the Keltanian winter horse market, so we could meet him there and get a horse. Then we can travel to Lyndon, meet with Clive and spend the night at my home. We’ll come back the next day.”
I eye him skeptically. “Your mother approves of having me stay over?”
He gives me a sidelong, cagey look. “She doesn’t exactly know about it.”
I laugh bitterly. “Oh, I can just imagine the welcome she’ll give me.”
“She’s fair, my mother. She’ll give you a chance.”
“I’ve never traveled outside of Gardneria before,” I tell him, both nervous and excited by the prospect. “Except to come here, that is.”
“Well,” he says, cocking his head to one side, “here’s your chance.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “To be surrounded by a whole country of people hostile to me.”
He smirks a bit at this and gestures toward my tunic. “You’ll need to disguise yourself a bit, but you already dress like a Kelt much of the time.”
I glance down at the very un-Gardnerian brown woolen tunic and skirt I usually wear when I’m here in the evening or working in the kitchens. “I guess I do.” I hold out my hand, sliding my tunic sleeve up to my elbow. “But what do we do about this?”
My skin shimmers emerald in the hallway’s shadowy light. Yvan brushes a finger over my glittering hand, sending a shiver up my spine and a pulse of his fire through my lines. He pulls his hand back abruptly and looks away, clearing his throat. After a moment he turns back to me, eyeing me sidelong and keeping a careful distance. “You’re an apothecary, Elloren,” he says softly. “I’m sure you can find a way to disguise your shimmer.”
I blush and pull my sleeve back down, wondering how I’m supposed to go anywhere with him and keep my wits about me. But we have to find a way to help Marina and the other Selkies. That’s all that matters right now.
“When do you want to leave?” I ask.
“At week’s end, when the winter break begins.”
“All right,” I tell him, drawing back from my intense attraction to him. “I’ll go with you.”
* * *
A few days later, Yvan and I set out for Keltania before dawn. We take a transit carriage toward the southwestern Spine, then disembark at an isolated stop and hike into the Verpacian wilds while the sun creeps over the horizon.
As we move deeper into the trees, I silently coax my fire lines into a steady, threatening blaze to keep the forest at bay and hurl the fire outward. Yvan’s back shudders before me, his head arcing back. He slows to a stop and turns around to cast me a feral look, his green eyes briefly flashing a fiery gold.
The very air feels charged, and for a moment, he seems to be on the verge of saying something. Then he looks away, and I can feel him holding back, struggling to rebuild the wall between us.
“We should keep moving,” I say, self-consciously aware that the words come out too breathlessly.
Yvan nods, and we resume our trek through the trees, both of us banking our fire power firmly down. Contained.
* * *
We reach the Southern Spine by midmorning, and my throat goes dry as I take in the sheer face of the mountain. It’s not quite as high as the Northern Spine, but it’s still impossibly steep, a mixture of long stretches of vertical rock and ice scattered with stubby pine trees and low brush.
Flying over the Northern Spine with Lukas on dragonback was terrifying enough, but I had his magic to ground me and tamp down my debilitating fear.
“Yvan,” I say, unable to control the vertigo that’s assaulting me as I look at the peaks. “I can’t do this. It’s too high.”
Yvan squints up at the imposing landform, hands on his hips. “You’ll be safe,” he says, his voice certain.
I shake my head vehemently. “I just don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry—”
“I’ll be carrying you,” he insists. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
I tense my brow at him, my heart slamming against my chest just from thinking about climbing the Spine. “Now might be a good time for you to finally explain the exact nature of your mountain-climbing abilities,” I say nervously. “It would be encouraging to know that I’m not about to plummet to my death...”
I prattle on as he patiently waits for me to finish. Eventually, I grow quiet and closer to relenting. He has such an aura of calm authority about this.
“You won’t fall?” I press.
“No, Elloren,” he replies evenly. “I won’t.”
“Okay,” I agree, glancing up at the Spine again. “I’ll do it. For Marina.”
Yvan nods in understanding.
“So, how do you want to...” I begin, my voice trailing off awkwardly.
He peers up at the mountain again, as if gauging its difficulty. “Wrap your arms...around my neck.” He gestures toward his neck, his voice becoming slightly stilted.
“From...the back?” I wonder, my face warming. The dreams I’ve had about him flash uncomfortably through my mind.
“No,” he says, “from the front.”
I hesitate, then take a deep breath and step toward him, keeping a polite distance between us. I reach my arms out and rest my hands on his broad shoulders. My cheeks grow warm, my heartbeat kicking up.
I can tell he’s flustered by this, as well. I’ve a sense of him reining his fire tightly in, but chaotic tendrils break through. “Get as close to me as you can,” he directs formally. “As flat against me as you can.”
I take another deep breath and move right up against him, wrapping my arms tightly around his shoulders, my cheeks burning.
His long, lanky body stiffens against me as he wraps his own arms firmly around my back.
I try desperately not to think about how warm his body is, how good he smells. Like a midnight fire.
“Now wrap your legs around my waist,” he says tightly.
What? This is just too much. We’re not fasted. This type of thing is completely forbidden.
“Elloren,” Yvan says with effort, “I know this is...awkward. But I can’t support you if your feet are dangling in the air. I need to be able to move freely. I know it’s...highly improper.”
“That’s an understatement,” I say, letting out a nervous laugh, but I move to do as he asks. I take a deep breath and pull at his neck and shoulders, hoisting myself up at the same time he reaches beneath me to support my weight. I wrap my legs around him, my thighs coming to rest just above his hip bones.
My heart is thudding with heated force against my chest, and I can feel his doing the same.
“Now, hold on tight and stay as still as you can,” he tells me. “And...you might want to close your eyes.”
I nod silently into his sharp shoulder and screw my eyes shut.
His grip on me tightens and his fire ripples through me, hot and strong. The skin of my back prickles with a sweeping heat that courses through my fire lines and makes me shiver.
The Iron Flower Page 20