Page 73 of The Iron Flower

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 inThe 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

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