Page 172 of The Iron Flower

Get ahold of yourself, I harshly remind myself.You have to act like you’re Carnissa Gardner.

I straighten and force a more purposeful stride up the center of the field. As I pass, Gardnerian soldiers on one side of the aisle snap to attention, their eyes flicking over my bold dress and registering my Black Witch looks in obvious appreciation. The Vu Trin standing on the left grow rigid as I walk by, their eyes watchful and wary.

I spot Ni Vin on horseback, just behind the line of Vu Trin, and her gaze briefly lights on me, her expression carefully neutral.

A shriek splits the air.

My heart picks up speed and my eyes dart up, but I can’t make anything out in the storm-darkened twilight.

Brusque orders are shouted as both Vu Trin and Gardnerian soldiers crowd into the aisle before me, blocking my ascent.

A great hush falls over the entire field as all of the soldiers, including my guards, look to the sky.

Lightning pulses in thin lines from cloud to cloud, illuminating them with gauzy puffs of light. I squint at the intermittently storm-lit sky, trying to make out what everyone is searching for.

Another screech rends the air, and then a full-bodied roar that resonates through me. This time from the east.

Lightning flashes again, and I suddenly make out a dark, winged silhouette moving in from the east and another from the west, the incoming dragons growing larger and larger as everyone looks to the sky.

The Vu Trin dragon soars in to land, its expansive wings flapping. It flies down into the cleared circle on the Vu Trin side of the field and hits the ground with a weighty force that reverberates under my feet, the unbroken dragon gleaming sapphire, its eyes flashing silver.

The Vu Trin sorceress on the dragon’s back is outfitted in rune-marked black armor. There’s a silver circlet around her brow, two curving dragon horns rising from it. She swings off the dragon as Marcus Vogel’s opaque-eyed black dragon touches down in the middle of the Gardnerian side of the field with another ground-shaking thud.

All eyes turn to Vogel, the new decider of the Realm.

The new center of power.

Rage flashes through me, and I struggle to contain it as unsettled power kicks up in my affinity lines, burning in fits and starts.

Murderer. You vile murderer.

Vogel dismounts from his broken dragon as the horned Vu Trin sorceress crosses the central aisle and approaches him on the Gardnerian side. She’s flanked by Commander Vin, as well as a sizable Vu Trin guard outfitted in rune-marked gray.

Soldiers on the Gardnerian side part, and High Commander Lachlan Grey falls in beside Vogel along with several other high-level Mages.

And just behind them strides Lukas Grey.

Anger spasms inside of me at the sight of Lukas up there, in league with such evil.

How could you be a party to this, Lukas? How?

I struggle to conceal my burning outrage as my eyes slide back to Vogel, and the White Wand in my boot starts up a warm thrum against my calf.

Vogel stills and lifts his head, as if he’s sniffing the air. He makes a slow turn and glances out over the field in my direction.

The dark shadow tree flashes in the back of my mind, and suddenly I’m pinned by Vogel’s unfocused gaze, rendered immobile, panic swiftly overtaking me.

The White Wand hums against my skin, and I’ve a sense of silvery branches emanating from it, flowing through my affinity lines and twining around Vogel’s dark tree. The shadow tree explodes into tendriling, blackened smoke.

My body slumps in, able to move again.

Vogel abruptly turns away, as if a connection has been broken. He strides off and disappears inside his tent with the horned Vu Trin sorceress.

I pull in a haggard breath, stunned and terrified by Vogel’s palpable increase in power.

My eyes suddenly collide with Lukas’s.

He starts down the aisle at a fast clip, his focus on me like a raptor focused in on its prey, and my fire lines give a hard flare as he nears, his face a lethal storm.

---