What he’s saying smashes through me in a terrible wave. I attempt to twist out of his grip, shaking my head vehemently, panic building. “No. I won’t go without you!”
“Elloren.” Lukas’s voice is hard, his grasp on my arms relentless as Valasca begins attaching additional blades to me. “You will.”
Valasca stuffs a money purse into my tunic’s pocket, then straightens and grabs hold of my arm as well, her expression both desperate and ironhard. “Find Ni,” she says with great urgency, a beseeching edge to her tone. “Promise me you’ll find Ni and tell her what Vogel can do. Warn her. And...” Her expression momentarily shatters, her voice breaking. “Tell her I love her. Promise me, Elloren. Promise me you’ll tell her.”
They’re sacrificing their lives for me.
Tears blur my vision as I shake my head, desperation overtaking me. “No. Please. No.”
The dragons stop circling and fly in to land on the flat expanse of desert in front of the Vonor mountain.
Lukas’s tone gains an impassioned edge. “Elloren, you are not weak. You’re a warrior. I have always known that you’re powerful. But now, you have to believe it. You need to survive. You need to fight Vogel. And you need to win.”
Tears sheen my eyes as I glance toward the dragons, their seven riders now striding toward us, dark and small from this distance.
I look back at Lukas, both terrified and devastated. “I love you,” I tell him.
Lukas’s expression tightens, almost a flinch followed by a look of excruciating pain. We can’t lie to each other, so he knows that what I’ve just said is true. I loved Yvan. That will never change. But I’ve grown to love Lukas too.
My fastmate. My lover. My friend.
When it comes, Lukas’s voice is thick with emotion, his voice on the edge of breaking. “There are no words for what I feel for you. There never have been.” He glances toward the incoming Mages, releases my arms, then turns and draws his wand, his demeanor turning deadly.
I can feel his magic consolidating into a honed, lethal spear.
He steps away from me and follows Chi Nam as she moves toward the end of the stony ledge and slams her staff down onto stone. Another runic shield flies up and over us that pulses with blue light and a denser constellation of runes.
Lukas positions himself just behind her, wand readied. Valasca moves to his side with two blades clenched in her fists.
Heart pounding, I ready my own blades as Vogel comes into sharper view as he strides toward us, the white bird emblazoned on his priestly tunic, his Shadow Wand in hand.
Four Level Five Mage soldiers flank him along with his two envoys, but the envoys are terrifyingly altered. Shadow horns have begun a slow curl up from their heads, their eyes simmering red as coals, the rune on my abdomen heating up to a scald.
They’re demons, I realize, terror spiking.
Without warning, Vogel’s dark tree blasts into me like an affinity fist, my hands and wrists shot through with pain as if stabbed with countless needles. Both his power and the pain drive me back a step, cinching the air from my lungs as Vogel’s Shadow branches lash themselves around my lines, bearing down, rooting me to the spot, and tying me there as I struggle against his invisible bindings, a vengeful cry of protest rising in my throat.
I wrestle against Vogel’s power, tensing my lines in an effort to throw off his thrall, but his hold is too strong.
Multiple many-eyed wraith bats alight in the nearby trees and on the arcing stone formations all around us, and my desperation spikes as my green Wand begins to hum with frantic energy against my side.
I want to lash out and fight Vogel but I can’t move. He’s taken complete hold of my knotted lines.
I’ve a sudden, internal sense of shimmering green branches curling up from my Wand around the dark tree in my mind.
The Shadow around my lines rears back in an explosion of what feels like furious surprise. Hissing from the contact, it surges in to take an even more vicious hold of my lines.
I rage against Vogel’s hold on me, but it’s no use. My bound-up magic and my Wand and all of my allies are no match for Vogel and his Shadow Wand—it’s too strong.
Vogel is too strong.
Vogel and his Mages stride right up to Chi Nam’s shield and come to a stop before it.
He smiles at Chi Nam, slow and merciless. “You have something that belongs to me, Chilon. Give me my Black Witch.”
Chi Nam raises her chin as she stares Vogel down. “You can’t have her, you fiend.” She slams her staff down onto stone once more, blue light raying out from both her staff and the shield around us.
Vogel scrutinizes Chi Nam without a trace of emotion, as if she’s a particularly diverting insect, as blue rune light flickers over the elegant planes of his face.
All of a sudden, everything is washed in an eruption of golden light that’s burst to life behind me.
Valasca’s head whips back, her eyes widening as she peers just past me. “It’s charged for one,” she rasps out, a new defiance lighting her eyes as her gaze flicks to mine.
It all happens in a split second.
Vogel’s whole demeanor turns vicious as the wraith bats launch themselves from the trees with a collective shriek and all Vogel’s Shadow Mages lift their wands in unison.
Shadow fire bursts from their wands.
Lukas turns and hurls himself toward me just as the Shadow Mages’ wall of flame blazes into Chi Nam’s shield, exploding it in a flash of blue as it ignites Chi Nam’s form and races toward us.
Lukas picks me up and throws me, and then Valasca, into the portal, Valasca rapidly whisked off to the side as I’m pulled straight backward into the portal’s shimmering golden depths.
Lukas’s eyes meet mine as the black fire hits his back, his mouth forming one word that’s snuffed out by the roar of the fire.
Elloren.
A wave of shimmering gold cuts him from sight and swallows the sound as I scream his name.
CHAPTER THREE
CONFLAGRATION
ELLOREN GREY
Seventh Month
Dyoi Forest, Eastern Realm
I fall through the portal’s glimmering gold center headfirst and hit the ground hard as I’m thrust into a dense purple forest under stormy daylit skies.
Wildly disoriented, I push myself up, palms to the mossy ground, and whip my head around.
Behind me, the portal stands suspended in the air. Its golden haze is fog-like and insubstantial, the runes of the portal’s frame dissipating to transparency and wavering like water.
My heart slams against my chest, panic cresting as I lurch toward the portal even as it fades to a vaporous echo.
“Lukas!” I cry into the rapidly erasing portal. “Chi Nam! Valasca!”
Shaking, I thrust my arm toward it, but my arm passes straight through. “Lukas!” I scream, desperate for sound to carry to them all.
Ancient One, no. No. He gave his life for me. And Chi Nam...
The image of powerful Chi Nam being instantly consumed by Vogel’s Shadow fire, of the fire hitting Lukas’s back just before I was whisked away from them over an impossible distance, is like a knife straight through my heart.
“Lukas!” I cry out at the portal. “Chi! Valasca!” Where is Valasca? Did she get whisked leagues away from me? Or could she be somewhere in this forest?
Devastated, I look up and all around me through tear-streaked eyes and take in the shocking sight of the largest trees I’ve ever seen, rising to mammoth proportions all around me.
All of them purple.
The massive trunks are a blackened nightshade hue, their teardrop leaves a vivid violet. The forest floor is covered with curling ferns colored a muted amethyst. A small lizard with an intricate purple geometric pattern on its back scurries up the broad trunk beside me.
A silent
vein of bright white lightning forks through the sky. The sudden, hard crack of thunder makes me flinch as if struck, my heart wrenching anew.
I frantically look toward the portal, its internal golden fog now gone, the surrounding arc a faint, ghostly echo of blue rune light.
“Lukas!” I cry again, choking on tears. Unfamiliar birdsong sounds out, low and whooping, as a silver crane with a curling tail soars through the canopy.
I’m in Noi lands, I realize. In the Dyoi Forest. Leagues and leagues and leagues away from them.
Leagues away from Lukas.
“Valasca!” I cry into the forest, distraught. I scan the trees for some sight of her, calling out her name again and again with desperate force in every direction.
No answer.
Just the chirring of insects and unfamiliar birdsong and the rustling of violet leaves.
The image of Lukas being hit by Vogel’s black fire plays again in my mind, along with the heart-shattering realization.
He’s dead.
And if, by some miracle, the fire didn’t kill him, Vogel and his soldiers have surely murdered him by now.
My head falls into my hands as a rush of fresh tears glaze my eyes and I struggle to breathe.
I replay it again and again in my mind. My last glimpse of Lukas. That blazing look in his eyes. How he called out my name just before I was whisked away from him.
He saved me. He saved my life. They all did.
I glance up to find the last of the portal vanishing from sight.
“Lukas!” I sob into the empty air. “Valasca. Chi...” My voice trails into nothing, choked off by grief, a nauseated heartbreak taking hold.
Another bolt of lightning scythes through the sky with an earsplitting crack, my face twisting with misery as a palpable ripple of awareness comes to life in the snaking root beneath my palm. It’s quickly followed by a wave of amorphous hostility rushing in from the forest all around me, along with a sharp tug on my tangled affinity lines, pulling them in every direction.
Tethering them anew.
They know.
Even here in the Eastern Realm, the trees know what I am.
I imagine their leagues-long network of roots, leading from the Western Realm’s forests and over the desert’s expanse to the East, sending their message from root to root.
Black Witch.
Outrage kindles deep in my core with surprising force. I draw my palm away from the root and push myself to my feet.
“So, you know,” I quietly seethe at the forest, my lips turning down into a trembling grimace as I face down the trees. “You all know what I am.”
A wave of panic suddenly overtakes my outrage.
I’m alone. In a hostile forest. In a land where the military wants to kill me. And I have no idea how to get out of here.
And Vogel is going to come for both me and this entire Realm.
The ground seems to shift beneath my feet, and I lean down and brace my hands on my thighs as I force even breaths and battle back the fear.
Lukas’s words come to me, filling my mind.
You’re a warrior. I have always known that you’re powerful. But now, you have to believe it.
Fresh tears sting my eyes at the remembrance of Lukas’s deep, bolstering voice. And Lukas’s, Valasca’s, and Chi Nam’s unwavering conviction that I could be strong.
They all believed you could be a warrior, I rage as the anguished grief sweeps through me. And they gave up everything to help you escape.
You have to be strong.
I glance down at the crushed ferns where I was crumpled up a moment ago, my rune blades lying on the ground, as an even starker realization grips hold.
Vogel can destroy the Noi military’s runes. He can march up to the most powerful sorceress in Noilaan and effortlessly cut her down. Which means he’s going to be able to march right into the Eastern Realm and destroy everything and everyone in it.
Determination bolts through me.
You have to get to the Wyvernguard and warn the Vu Trin.
I press the runes on my palms, my rune blades flying up from the forest floor and into my hands.
Then I close my fists around their hilts.
No more falling apart, I order myself, grasping the blades tight. You’re on your own now.
Grief burning in my chest, I sheathe my blades, wipe away my tears, and feel for my other weapons, the knives strapped to my arms and just under my pant legs’ hems, the Wand sheathed at my side.
All there.
Lightning flashes, the air charged with the incoming storm’s energy as urgency rises, sparking an answering flush of energy through my tangled lines. I need to get to the Noi city of Voloi, home of the Wyvernguard. And I need to get there fast.
Because Vogel is coming for the Eastern Realm.
The Shadow Wand is rising.
I tense my brow at the purple forest surrounding me, picturing Chi Nam’s map of the East. If this is truly the Dyoi Forest, then I need to travel east and get past both the Zonor River and the Vo Mountain Range. And beyond that, over the Vo River to reach Voloi.
But I’ve no compass...
A child’s scream splits the air, the sound piercing my thoughts as my whole body tenses.
Another scream in the same direction. And then an insectile screech that ends on a chittering note.
I pale as I remember that sound.
Scorpios.
Terror blasts through me, momentarily rooting me to the spot.
And then another heart-wrenching scream sounds out. A woman crying out in distress in Uriskal.
Their cries break through my fear like a hammer shattering glass. I pull my rune blades from their sheaths and set out at a run toward the sounds, dodging trees, leaping over thick roots, crushing ferns beneath my boots.
The trees thin ahead, the dense forest giving way to a shallow, bowl-shaped valley, pale lilac grass swaying in the prestorm wind, lightning flashing from the angry clouds massing overhead.
I pause as I take in the nightmare scene before me in one sweeping glance.
A purple-hued Urisk woman and little girl are huddled against a large boulder at the edge of the field, backed against it and cowering. A skinny, fierce-looking Gardnerian girl who looks to be about thirteen stands before them, a knife raised in her trembling hand as she faces off against the three huge scorpios that are closing in on them all. One of the scorpios is taller than the others and chillingly elongated in shape, Shadow runes marked on its chitinous thorax and back, including a deflection rune.
For a moment, I remain frozen as the young child screams and the horrible things repeatedly make a play for the older girl with the knife, clicking and screeching, rearing up to make threatening jabs toward her with lethal forelimbs and poison-tipped tails.
Rage rises, freeing me as my military training takes hold. I grip my rune blades tighter and carefully move forward.
My foot skids on a loose root, my heel thumping down onto the forest floor.
The scorpios’ heads twitch toward me in one unified motion.
Alarm leaps in my chest as a sting ripples through the demon-detecting rune on my abdomen. Two of the scorpios are looking at me with depthless insect eyes. But the third, the elongated one, is not only looking at me with its bulging insect eyes, but the countless eyes scattered around these eyes. And in the center of the swarm is an eye that’s not insectile at all. It’s a pale green knowing eye.
A Vogel eye.
All hesitation breaks apart like a storm coming untethered. Rampant fury washes over me in a blinding flash as white-hot Magefire rushes through my lines.
Lukas. Chi Nam. The Lupines. Yvan. Everyone Vogel’s killed. It all strikes through me as my fire blasts into a violent conflagration.
A snarl erupts from deep inside me, quickly building t
o a roar. “Get away from them, you bastard!”
I charge into the valley, my training overtaking me as my fingers slide over the runes on the hilts of both blades and I power up the fire runes.
The smaller scorpios fall back into a protective crouch as the green Wand buzzes against my side and I raise the blades, shimmering green lines forming in my vision and tracking straight to the beasts as I slide my fingers over the runes and sound the Noi spells.
With a guttural cry I hurl both blades forward, aiming for the scorpios’ necks.
The knives find their marks, and both creatures’ heads explode into churning golden fire, the bodies flailing and gurgling as they fall to the ground twitching and the larger scorpio starts for me on huge, scuttling legs.
Fury snapping through my blood, I press the runes on my palms, and the knives fly back across the field and into my hands with hard thwacks.
“You see me?” I growl out at the Shadow-marked scorpio, fisting the blades as I stalk toward it. “Good! Go ahead, Vogel! Come at me, you bastard!”
The thing makes a sudden leap for me, flying high into the air, verdant lines forming in my vision as I throw both blades straight at the thing’s vulnerable neck.
The scorpio screeches as my blades sink right into its throat and I hurl myself to the side just as it crashes down, the taloned edge of its massive forearm barely missing my shoulder.
Black ichor explodes from its neck as it thrashes, and I roll away as its forearm crashes down toward me again and again and again. I keep rolling and rolling through the grass as the little girl screams. Then I scramble upright as the thing bucks and writhes.
Fury still ripping through me, I unsheathe another blade and approach the vile thing to find its one pale green Vogel eye open and alert as the creature gobbles and chitters, then grows completely still.
Nothing can slake my thirst for vengeance in that moment as a berserker rage overtakes me.
I stride right up to the monster and look straight into its pale green eye.
“I’m going to come for you,” I seethe at Vogel, scoured out by my fury, nothing but rage inside me now, “and I’m going to be your worst nightmare.”
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