Page 31 of The Shadow Wand

Her hand tightens around the hilt of her sword. “Bringing you back into Gardneria...” Her lips tighten as she gives a stiff shake of her head. “It’s potentially throwing you right into Vogel’s hands. I question Chi Nam and my sister’s plan.”

We’re quiet for an unbearably tense moment.

“I know,” I finally say, my voice ragged. “I question this plan too. But if my power is needed to take Vogel down, then I need to stay alive.” I reach into my boot, grab the Wand of Myth from it, pull the cloth away, and hold it up, the Wand seeming to possess its own phosphorescent light. “And the Zhilin...even though I’m the Black Witch...it choseme.”

Ni’s eyes widen as they fix on the Wand, and she swallows, her slender throat bobbing.

I meet her dark stare as the power in my lines strains with disturbing intensity toward my wand hand. “Itisa risk to keep me alive,” I admit. “I know this. But my death could extinguish all hope of defeating Vogel.”

I wait on a knife blade’s edge while she deliberates, her brow now knotted, her hand still clenched around the hilt of her sword.

After a long, breathless moment, Ni Vin removes her hand from the hilt.

Air flows back into my lungs as she reaches into her pocket and hands me her rune-marked dhantustone. I take it from her, already versed in the Noi words that will bring forth its sapphire light.

“Go, Elloren Gardner,” she says, motioning toward the tunnel with her chin. “Take great care. And don’t let the Gardnerians know what you are.”

I nod in reply as her face darkens.

“If they find out and turn you,” she says, her voice heavy with import, “I will have no choice but to come for you.”

To kill me, she means.

I nod again. Then I wrap the Wand in its sheltering cloth and slide it into my travel sack, slipping it through a small tear in the seam of the layered fabric, effectively hidden and less likely to be spotted. Hoisting the sack, I set my eyes on Ni’s scarred face, and we exchange one last grim look of solidarity.

Then I turn and descend into the darkness.

I travel through the damp tunnels for what feels like a long time, my surroundings made eerie by the blue light of the dhantu stone, and I do my best to tamp down my fear of the claustrophobic silence and scuttling insects.

When I reach the tunnel’s end, a rush of relief courses through me at the sight of afternoon daylight streaming in, and I eagerly climb out of the tunnel to meet the next stretch of wilderness. I leave the dhantustone inside the tunnel, as Ni Vin instructed, the runic symbols rimming the exit quickly vanishing as the doorway is swallowed up by Spine-stone.

Traveling for hours on foot and following the map Ni Vin gave me, I eventually reach the same horse market in what used to be Northeastern Keltania that I visited so many months ago with Yvan and Andras. I pause inside a sheltering tree line as I warily take in the late-afternoon scene, the market’s convivial atmosphere disturbingly altered. There are only Gardnerian military horses in the penned fields now, black banners emblazoned with white birds hanging from their sides. They’re being cared for by a few scraggly old Kelts. The younger Keltish men this market usually teems with are conspicuously absent.

Two Gardnerian soldiers lean against a fence in their smart uniforms, chortling over some joke as a white-haired, bitter-looking Kelt hands them something in a bag. As he walks off, the two men’s gazes dart around before they slide the tip of a green bottle out of the bag and hastily pour its contents into the water flasks that hang from their necks.

Spirits. Forbidden by the Mage Council.

Heart pounding as I draw on my courage, I choose that moment to stride out to meet them.

Feeling as if I’m embarking on an irrevocable course, I emerge from the edge of the woods in my formal Gardnerian attire, the spitting image of my powerful grandmother. The men’s mouths drop open in shock.

I glance pointedly at the flasks in their hands before pinning my gaze back on the two of them. “Take me to Commander Lukas Grey,” I order. “I’m Elloren Gardner. His fasted partner.”

Moments later, I’m in a carriage finer than my aunt Vyvian’s, four Level Five Mage soldiers flanking my vehicle. I feel oddly disconnected from my surroundings, the ride so smooth, it’s as if there’s not a stone in the road.

Soon, the woods open up and Keltania’s Central Crossroad comes into view. My eyes widen.

The broad crossroad is jammed, absolutely jammed, with Kelts all moving in one direction—toward the northeast.

Refugees, all of them, I realize, stunned by the vast number of people traveling to get out of a Keltania that’s just become a province of Gardneria.

My carriage quickly traverses the distance separating us from the main road.

“Make way! Make way!” My guards call out brusque orders, and the road traffic parts before us as we travel southwest against the flow, the Kelts pulling away from us with haste, fear etched on their faces.

And hatred, carefully hidden, but it’s there at the edges of everyone’s eyes.

The carriage slows, and I lock eyes with a little Keltish girl who’s clutching her bedraggled mother’s hand. She’s hugging a worn cloth doll with flaxen braids to match her own. A lump forms in my throat. She’s around the age of Fernyllia’s granddaughter, and there’s a traumatized look on her round-cheeked face as her blue eyes stare fearfully back at me.

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