Page 110 of The Shadow Wand

Our eyes meet in the mirror, the tension in the air growing suddenly taut.

“We’re coming with you tomorrow morn,” she whispers, her tone equal parts girded hope and trepidation.

My heart picks up speed in response to her forthright approach and I nod, abruptly thrown into a close alliance with this young woman.

Sparrow holds my stare, her servile look vanished, her mouth now set in a tenacious line. It’s a relief to not be staring at the wall she so expertly puts up, but at the real Sparrow—a young woman brimming with rock-hard defiance in the face of the Gardnerian nightmare.

“He said you have power,” she whispers.

I can feel the sweep of blood draining from my face. It’s an enormous shift, to have this explosive fact voiced by her, the two of us suddenly stripped of all artifice.

I nod.

A spark of rebellion lights her amethyst eyes. She lowers her voice to a barely there murmur. “Lukas says you’re more powerful than Fallon Bane.”

I can read a desire for vengeance in her tone, and I’m certain, in that moment, that there’s something raw festering inside Sparrow when it comes to Fallon.

“I am,” I tentatively whisper back.But I’ve no control over my power,I want to caution her. I’m not the boon you might think I am.I almost say it, but wonder if it would be confiding too much.

We stare at each other in the reflection, the elaborate Ironwood clock on the shelf behind us ticking out the seconds, delicate Ironflowers carved onto its gleaming, lacquered surface. It’s all so Gardnerian-perfect in here, in glaring contrast to the chaotic fire that’s whipping through my lines.

“If you tell anyone what I am,” I say to Sparrow in a hoarse whisper, “they will either kill me or turn me over to Vogel.”

Her unblinking stare doesn’t waver. “The Eastern forces are going to need every weapon they can get hold of to fight the Mages,” she states with emphatic certainty. “I won’t tell anyone.” Raising the brush, she resumes its strokes down my long black tresses. She flashes me a slight, mirthless smile of solidarity, and the unyielding look in her eyes eases a trace of my apprehension.

Sparrow begins to artfully weave elaborate braids through the sides of my hair, pausing every so often to place sparkling emerald leaves affixed to slim silver hairpins into the braids. I watch, trying to tamp down my anxiety and my simmering fire magic, as my hair begins to take on a resplendent, verdant glimmer.

I glance toward the bedroom’s closed Ironwood door, aware of Level Five Mage Thierren Stone stationed on its other side.

“Thierren is aligned with Lukas, isn’t he,” I say. The young guard’s demeanor around Lukas suggests some type of deep alliance.

A wary expression crosses her face. “Yes,” she says, clearly unsettled, and I wonder at this.

Thierren’s deep, muffled voice sounds through the door, and Sparrow’s fingers halt in their motion on my hair. We both turn toward the sound as my bedroom’s door abruptly swings open.

Surprise rams through me as Aunt Vyvian strides into the room, her gaze fixating on me.

Sparrow’s hands fall away from my hair, and my lungs constrict so hard that for a moment I can’t breathe.

Aunt Vyvian’s expression is polished, but her eyes are full of resolute, unforgiving purpose. She’s as severely stunning as ever, her black velvet tunic and long-skirt embroidered with curling fiddlehead ferns, the necklace and earrings that grace her elegant ears and slender neck fashioned from tiny lacquered real-life ferns.

“Leave us,” she directs Sparrow as she removes her black calfskin gloves and motions to the side doorway to the servants’ quarters with a quick tilt of her head.

Sparrow’s usual blank look is firmly back in place. She gives my aunt a deferential nod, eyes looking to the floor, gracefully sets down the brush, and leaves.

I’m frozen as Aunt Vyvian walks up behind me, picks up the brush, and starts to work on the unbraided back of my hair, sending me a chilling smile in the mirror.

The memory of Uncle Edwin, beaten and slumped on the floor, cyclones through my mind and whips up a wrathful anger that’s so fierce, a wave of magic surges through my feet and races to my wand hand. The rush of power is so consuming that I’m scared it will jump from my wand hand to all the wood in the room without any need for a spell.

My wand hand flexes as every piece of wood in the room brightens in my mind, including the brush in Aunt Vyvian’s hand.

“You’ve been gone for some time, Elloren,” Aunt Vyvian says with icy pleasantry. She pulls the brush through my hair with such force that my head jerks back, a flash of pain stinging along my scalp. My heart speeds up, defiance rising as I meet her menacing gaze in the mirror.

You think you have me in a trap, you witch,I seethe,but you don’t know what you’re dealing with.

“You fasted me against my will,” I return, just as icy, barely able to resist the urge to grab the brush from her hands, level it at her, and envelop her in a churning ball of fire.

She relaxes the brush, and I jerk my head forward, glaring at her. But then she takes hold of my hair in her fist and yanks my head back once more.

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