Page 124 of The Shadow Wand

“Elloren,” Lukas whispers, his gaze locked on mine with unmistakable urgency, as if prompting me to remember the danger we face.

I glance back at the tree’s ashes, a heightened awareness flooding into me of what’s at stake. I can’t fall apart over the killing of this tree.

Tears obscure my vision as I let Lukas guide me back to the altar, his hands reaching out to grasp tight hold of mine once more, his fire and earth magic flowing into me and threading through my lines in what I know is an attempt to comfort me. But I’m beyond comfort.

Vogel raises his Shadow Wand above our hands.

“Lukas Grey and Elloren Gardner,” he intones, “I seal you with the Ancient One’s power. I seal you with the Ancient One’s glory. I seal you before the Ancient One’s Holy Magedom.”

His lips lift in an infinitesimal smile as he presses the tip of his Wand to our clasped hands.

As soon as Vogel’s Wand makes contact with the skin of my wand hand, a slight sting prickles through my fastlines and the torches all around us crackle and spit green flame, as if unsettled by the flare of magic in the air.

Without warning, Vogel’s Shadow tree punches through my lines and all the breath is wrenched from my lungs. Lukas’s hands tremble around mine as the rune on my abdomen begins to sting.

The world bends, my mind overtaken by a warping sensation as Shadow roils in from all sides and annihilates the light, only the image of a huge dark tree remaining.

The tree abruptly enlarges, and I’ve the sudden, strong sense of being lifted clear into the air, suspended from its limbs like a marionette, dangling and terrified as tendrils of Shadow twist around me.

I hang there in the darkness, with no control over my body, held completely in Vogel’s thrall. I want to scream, but I can’t breathe, the scream forcibly arrested in my throat.

And then...something slithers into me.

Another Shadow, like a snake twining out from Vogel’s Wand and into my earth affinity lines as I’m filled with the petrifying sense of Vogel’s disembodied pale green eyes set on me along with multiple pale gray eyes lurking in the dark tree’s hollows.

Watching me.

I sense, with staggering horror, that it’s not just Vogel in my lines, but an entire army of slithering, many-eyed Shadow things riding alongside Vogel’s power.

All of it coming from the dark gray Wand in Vogel’s hand.

The Shadow things slither along my affinity lines, testing, plucking. Then sharpening, like the slicing edge of countless knives cutting into my lines.

I gasp from the pain, desperate to cry out, but Vogel’s Shadow wraps around my throat and pulls taut.

And then, as abruptly as the invasion came, it falls away in one world-tilting swoop as the Shadow Wand pulls away from my wand hand, Vogel’s invisible grip on my throat releases, and the Shadow tree vanishes, everything around me blinking back into sight.

My hand flies to my throat as I gulp for air and Lukas does the same, one of his hands braced on the altar he’s now slumped into, his breath rasping and uneven.

Lukas’s gaze meets mine in stunned horror as he reaches out to grab desperate, protective hold of me. But my focus is ripped away from him as all of the affinity power in the room suddenly blasts toward me and I’m whipped up in it, instantly consumed.

I’m like a boat caught in a storming whirl of magic. Whereas I used to only be able to sense some of Lukas’s power because of our matching lines and had a growing sense of Yvan’s fire, I’m suddenly hyperaware of every line of elemental power in every Mage around me, save Vogel. My eyes cast about in a wild, unfocused panic as the elemental magic of so many high-level Mages assaults me, wind magic roaring in my ears.

There are four Level Five Mage soldiers bracketing Vogel, and I’ve a clear sense of their wind, fire, earth, and water power being tethered to him, their affinity lines streaming from their bodies and into Vogel’s Wand like a fast-moving current sucked into a dark abyss.

Straight toward those many-eyed things.

I look to Lukas, disoriented from the battering onslaught of affinities. Tears burn in my eyes as I cling to Lukas and struggle to convey to him with my gaze alone that Vogel has truly become a monster.

The skin of my hands prickles, and I look down as both my fastlines and Lukas’s begin to branch out, curling and looping, the lines gradually thickening but stopping just short of our wrists. I release one of Lukas’s hands and look dazedly at my Sealing-magicked palm, and then Lukas and I exchange a dire glance as the power in the room carves hurricane paths through my lines, my balance unsteady.

I throw my palm back down on the altar to brace myself and startle as Vogel abruptly brings his own hand down on mine and Lukas’s fire explodes outward to whip protectively around me.

I flinch back from Vogel’s touch, but he smiles and holds on, seeming pleased by my reaction and wanting to draw me into a confrontation. His long fingers dig into my skin, his eyes bright as his lurid, dark Shadow rushes into me once more, pushing back all the magic in the room.

“So much power,” Vogel croons. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, his magic pulling on my affinity lines, and I’ve the horrible sense that, although he’s holding back, he could easily pull my lines clear out of me and into his possession, like the tethered Mages behind him.

“It’s all there,” he tells me, and it’s as if we’re suddenly the only Mages in the room, his merciless gaze locked on to mine, everything around us blurring. “Carnissa’s power is in you. Andmore. Your fire. It rivals hers.”

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