Page 54 of The Shadow Wand

Sixth Month

Oonlon Military Base

Noilaan, Eastern Realm

Yvan Guryev stares over the great Oonlon plain, the vast, dry carpet of russet shrubland giving way to the distant peaks of the Icelandic Mountains that top the entire continent.

His fire gives a heated flare of longing as his thoughts turn to Elloren, the remembrance of how she conjured an inferno with just a small branch filling his mind.

Their separation is too much to bear at times, often keeping him up tossing late into the night, his skin feverish as his fire lashes out, searching and searching for Elloren’s fire to no avail, desperate to find his Wyvernfire-bonded love.

But wherever she is, she’s too far away for his fire power to contact and sometimes it makes him feel like both his Wyvernfire and his heart have come untethered.

Where are you, Elloren? Did the Vu Trin bring you somewhere isolated, as well? When will I see you again?

Forcing away the urge to take wing and find her somehow, somewhere, Yvan looks behind him at the knot of Vu Trin soldiers massed inside the northern edge of the Spikelands, the natural rock formations that look as if thousands of great stony knives have been upthrust through Erthia and toward the sky, the stone gleaming obsidian even in the pewter light of this gloom-ridden day.

Vu Trin High Commander Vang Troi meets his gaze with her piercing black eyes and nods once.

Yvan turns and sets his sights once more on the icy mountains as wind scuffs across the tundra before him and whips his fire-red hair against his temples, ruffling the hem of his black Vu Trin uniform and the feathers of his outstretched wings.

He closes his hands into fists, draws in a deep breath of the cold air, and focuses in on the tight ball of Wyvernfire that dwells in his very center—a ball of flame that he’s been strengthening for days.

He can feel himself transforming into a powerful weapon for the Resistance forces, his own desire to be a warrior for them rising along with his dragon powers.

It has been almost too much to bear, filling his center with so much fire while resisting the urge to access it. Resisting the almost irresistible desire tofeelthe fire’s release as it burns through him. Instead, he has let the fire power build and build.

Now it’s time to see just how powerful a weapon he’s become.

Yvan drops his control, loosens the golden-hot inferno in his center, and opens himself up to it in one shuddering intake of breath.

His whole body tenses with something approaching ecstasy as fire floods him, eliminating the tundra’s icy cold. His head cranes back, his mouth opening from the sheer pleasure of the burn as his vision tints gold and the whole world lights up.

And then the dragon in him breaks loose.

Fists clenching tighter, Yvan lowers his gaze toward the mountains as he exerts control over the fire and coils it into roping spirals, layer upon molten layer, through his hands, his arms, his shoulders, his whole body.

Tighter and tighter and tighter.

He snaps his wings out to their full breadth as flame crackles inside his vision, lightning hot, and Wyvern horns push up from his hair with a tight, satisfying sting. His teeth sharpen, and he bites them together with a mounting ferocity as the conflagration inside him rises, everything in him yearning for release.

A feral snarl builds in his throat as he throws his arms up and back, then violently forward, splaying his palms open.

His snarl breaks loose as fire explodes from his palms like water from a breached dam, avalanching over the tundra, filling the plains.

The horns on Yvan’s head solidify, his nails lengthening to claws as he grits his sharpened teeth and loses himself to the feel of his own hot, violent power, rushing forward from his palms and over the plain with unstoppable force.

And then he’s releasing the last bright tail of flame, sending it over plains that are now a lake of dancing fire, every particle of brush and grass alight. Alive with flame.

For a split second he’s stunned by the extent of his own power.

Is it like this for you, Elloren?he wonders, aching from that familiar longing to be with his Wyvern mate. His love. His whole heart.When you fill the world in front of you with fire?

Spent, Yvan lowers his hands and blinks in awe at the inferno he’s wrought, the flame-tint of his vision tamping down, the tension dropping from his wings and body as his horns recede and he begins to turn toward the Spikelands at his back, toward the contingent of Vu Trin behind him.

The air changes, the acrid tang of a threat suddenly on it.

Yvan freezes, midturn, nostrils flaring.

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