Page 216 of The Shadow Wand

“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, hardcrackof 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.

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