Page 158 of The Shadow Wand

My brow lifts in surprise as a line of incandescent runes whoosh into existence, trailing her stylus’s motion, the shape of a doorway made entirely of rotating sapphire runes taking form.

The portal’s frame is similar to the Noi portals I was led through during my journey from Verpacia to the Eastern Desert and back again.

“It will take about an hour’s time for the portal to charge,” Chi Nam says to Lukas over her shoulder, then resumes tapping her stylus along the portal’s frame, the action bringing smaller runes to glowing life.

“Who else knows about this portal?” Lukas asks her as he strides up beside me, an edge to his tone that sets the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

“Only me,” she assures him.

“Where does it lead?” I ask.

Chi Nam smiles cryptically. “Somewhere Vogel will have a hard time locating and an even harder time getting to.”

Valasca strides back into our blue-lit clearing with an air of purpose, a black leather sack slung over one muscular shoulder. She walks to me.

“Take off your cloak and tunic,” she orders.

Confusion lights. “Why?”

“I’m going to glamour you.”

My eyes widen, but I comply, shrugging out of both my cloak and my loose woolen tunic, dressed only in my thin forest green camisole, riding skirt, and underthings now.

Valasca reaches into the sack and withdraws a fist that’s now bunched around several long, slim golden chains. The chains reflect pricks of blue light from Chi Nam’s runic sorcery as Valasca sets to work unraveling them. There are tiny, bright green, circular runes attached all along the chains at repeating intervals.

“Are those Smaragdalfar runes?” I ask.

Valasca doesn’t look up from her work of untangling. “Yep.”

My brow lifts at this. Subland Elf runes.

I remember Professor Fyon Hawkkyn, my Smaragdalfar metallurgy professor, driven out of the university and now covertly active in the Resistance. And the Smaragdalfar refugees I’ve seen, most of them on the run from the Alfsigr Elves. Many of them children and all of them headed East. Just like us.

Valasca flicks her finger at my camisole. “That needs to come off too.”

Heat blooms on my cheeks. “You want me to undress...right here?”

I look at Lukas, who cocks an eyebrow, as if amused that I would care if he saw me without my camisole, considering how wantonly we were wrapped around each other last night, our clothing quite absent.

“Elloren,” Valasca insists as she holds up the now untangled chains that are draped over her palm and dangling down from her hand. “This is no time for modesty. We’ve got to protect you, andfast.”

My flush deepening, I reach down and unbutton my camisole, then let it fall off my shoulders, my exposed chest cooled by the night air, a prickle of gooseflesh rising.

Valasca eyes the runes on my abdomen and forearm with a nod of approval. “Sage Gaffney does nice work,” she says conversationally, which strikes me as bizarre. As if I’m supposed to have a casual conversation about demon-sensing and shield-passage runes while I’m half-naked.

I nod, so mortified I’m unable to form a coherent sentence.

Valasca carefully places one of the chains over my head, a look of intense concentration on her face, the necklace draping outrageously around one of my breasts. Then she pulls her rune stylus out and taps it to one of the runes as she sounds a spell. All of the runes on the necklace whir to life and take on a more luminescent emerald glow.

My skin’s natural deep-green shimmer blinks out of sight, and I gasp.

Valasca drapes another one of the necklaces over me and touches her stylus to it. The runes spring to glowing life as my skin tone morphs to a pale storm-cloud gray.

“Are you glamouring me to look like I’m Elfhollen?” I ask her, so astonished I almost forget about my bare-chested state.

Valasca nods. “I am. Because there’s quite a bit of sympathy for the Elfhollen in Noi lands. And they’re allowed safe passage through the desert.” She places another chain over me and activates it with her stylus.

A prickle swarms over my scalp. I grab some of my hair and stare at it, stunned to find it’s turned a pale gray hue.

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