Page 33 of The Shadow Wand

Vothe looks back at the incoming ship, his lethal determination doubling as the ship touches down, its sapphire, dragon-marked sails collapsing inward as its stairs are lowered.

Wyvernguard Commander Ung Li disembarks first, coming in like a storm.

Their tall, elegant-featured leader’s face is a mask of barely concealed outrage, her steps angrily brisk as she strides down onto the landing platform, not meeting anyone’s eyes, as if still caught up in a fiery argument.

Vothendrile’s shifter focus homes in tight on the young man stepping off the ship behind her and into a gauntlet of simmering hostility that echoes Vothe’s own.

Trystan Gardner.

The grandson of the Vuulnor—the Black Witch.

Vothendrile notices two things about Trystan Gardner as he draws near.

First, the Gardnerian is startlingly handsome. A thread of lightning sparks through Vothe in response to Trystan Gardner’s striking looks, and Vothe quickly suppresses it, unnerved by his reflexive attraction to a Mage.

He’s tall and slender, this Gardnerian, with dark green eyes and angular features. And hisskin. It glimmers like it’s dusted with deep-green gems, its verdant gleam undimmed by the flickering blue torchlight. Even his worn indigo Noi garb is unable to dispel how handsome he is.

The second thing Vothe notices about Trystan Gardner is that he seems outrageously unintimidated by the situation.

The Gardnerian’s stride is strong and determined, his face expressionless, but hiseyes—they’re as fierce as white fire as he takes in the looks of pure loathing on every single Vu Trin apprentice and Vu Trin soldier lining the platform’s central path.

Vothendrile wonders, with some grim, anticipatory relish, what it would be like to stare down this Mage’s fervid gaze. He can’t smell even a trace of fear on him.

Briefly closing his eyes, Vothe pulls in a deeper breath to read the magic simmering on the air. He gives a start as Trystan Gardner’s magical aura connects with his own.

Vothe’s black eyes fly open and spark with lightning.

He’s got fire, this Mage. And water. Practically a whole tumultuous ocean of it—a veritable storm locked inside this Level Five grandson of the Black Witch, threatening to come unleashed.

Vothe falls into step behind Trystan Gardner, his resolve solidifying as he catches the incensed looks of his fellow military apprentices lined up on either side of the path. He sends them back a reassuringly savage look of his own.

He’s as dangerous as he is beautiful, this Trystan Gardner.

And Vothendrile is determined to drive him out of the Wyvernguard.

Trystan Gardner meets Ung Li’s gaze unflinchingly as she stares him down in her circular command chamber, her hands splayed on the obsidian desk before her, Trystan’s subversive will to be here as entrenched as her will to see him gone.

Go ahead, Trystan silently conveys to her, his gaze unyielding.Do your best to get rid of me. I’m staying, and I’m fighting with you.

Slim onyx carvings of dragons bracket the huge windows at Ung Li’s back. The arching glass offers a panoramic view of the broad Vo River, the glittering city of Voloi visible to the northeast and the dark Vo Mountain Range hulking against the river’s western bank. Everything in the room is fashioned in the Wyvernguard’s signature colors—sapphire, onyx, and bone.

“A guard will accompany you wherever you go,” Ung Li informs Trystan as her dark gaze bores into him. Four black-clad Vu Trin soldiers bracket Ung Li and carefully study Trystan with hard-edged glares that mirror Ung Li’s own.

A few additional Vu Trin apprentices have fanned out behind Trystan. He can sense their incendiary glares burning into him.

“Am I under arrest?” Trystan calmly asks Ung Li, unable to keep a trace of sarcasm from his tone. Bordering dangerously on insubordination.

Trystan immediately regrets the slip as Ung Li’s eyes sharpen on him, as if she’s sizing him up more closely only to find her worst suspicions confirmed.

Trystan holds her intimidating stare. It’s clear that the Wyvernguard hierarchy and the Vu Trin apprentices don’t want him here. Clear that he’s here only because Vang Troi, the Vu Trin’s brilliant and unpredictable High Commander, has ordered that he be allowed admittance into the Wyvernguard and given a chance to prove himself.

“You’re a Level Five Mage,” Ung Li answers, her tone low and simmering with animosity, her dark gaze unblinking. “You’re also the grandson of the Vuulnor. And the threat of war between our people is in the air. If you wish to be a Vu Trin, Trystan Gardner, you will have a guard everywhere you go.” Her gaze turns combative as she thrusts out her palm. “Hand over your wand.”

Trystan’s whole body goes taut, his water power caught up in a roiling current as Ung Li keeps her hand doggedly extended.

Invisible lightning spits through his lines as Trystan reaches down, unsheathes his wand, and surrenders it to the commander, feeling the lack of it acutely the moment the wand leaves his hand.

Suddenly, he’s feeling the absence of Tierney Calix even more intensely than the loss of his wand, and wishing she were assigned to be here with him on the North Twin Island. He’s grown close to Elloren’s cynical Asrai-Fae friend these past few weeks as they traveled east together. But Tierney’s been assigned to the Wyvernguard’s South Twin Island, the two of them cast into confusion by their abrupt separation this evening.

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