Page 14 of The Shadow Wand

But soon, their concern turned to anger as Thierren spun out of control. Wandering the streets all night long. Getting hold of illegal spirits and attempting to drink them openly in their home. His parents confiscated that first bottle of spirits and destroyed it, but Thierren found more, the spirits able to dampen the ghastly scene clinging to him like a sickness.

He couldn’t get the face of the young Dryad woman out of his mind.

The baby.

His parents consulted a multitude of priests and healers, his mother’s face tight with humiliation, her eyes teary as she wrung her hands and recounted her son’s moral weakness. How one encounter with the Evil Ones had broken him and turned him into this sinisterthingwith increasingly disturbing behavior—cutting up his Gardnerian military uniform. Setting fire to the Gardnerian flag.

Thierren drank as many spirits as he could. Bought nilantyr from a Keltish farmer and started to chew on the bitter berries, sinking into their dark oblivion. Soon it was the only thing that could even slightly alleviate the constant nightmare that was now his world.

Elisen, his fastmate, came to see him once and left hysterical, refusing to come near him ever again, her family desperate for a way to break the fasting. Thierren didn’t care. All he could think about was the young Fae woman and the children. And the sound of their screams.

He started hanging white birds everywhere. Cutting them out of paper, attaching them to strings, and nailing the strings to the rafters. At first this seemed encouraging to his mother and the visiting priests. A sign that perhaps he was being led back to the Ancient One’s path.

But then, perhaps worse than anything that had come before, they caught Thierren in his room surrounded by pages ripped out ofTheBook of the Ancientsas he tore the page in his hands into small, curling ribbons.

That was when his parents started to talk seriously about sending Thierren to the Valgard Sanitorium.

Thierren considers all this impassively as he stands before Commander Sylus Bane and the other soldiers, looking them over as if he’s watching scenery go by from inside a carriage. He doesn’t care about any of this anymore. But he’s not going to play along. He’s not going to let them believe their own lies.

“There werechildren,” Thierren says unforgivingly, his gaze fixed on Sylus Bane.

Sylus spits out a sound of derision, his mouth curling into a nasty half smile. “No, Thierren, there wereheathen spawn. You forget who you are.”

Thierren is unmoved. “There werebabies.”

Sylus’s half grin disappears, his eyes narrowing to slits. “There wereFae spawn.”

Anger wakes in Thierren, bracing as an ice storm. When it comes, these days, it’s savage. Cyclonic.

Clearly Sylus Bane can sense this. He, too, knows Thierren has become some other thing. A non-Gardnerian thing. And he wants to cut him down right there. But, unfortunately, protocol is protocol.

“You’re lucky you have such influential parents,” Sylus says, his tone thick with disgust. “They relentlessly pled your case, and they found the only commander in the Guard willing to take you on, stripped of all rank.” Sylus’s mouth turns up in a sly smile, his eyes conspiratorial. “But, trust me, you’d be better placed with a swarm of kraken spawn. Because your magery is child’s play compared to your new commander’s. And he has a reputation for...disciplining the disloyal.”

Who?Thierren wonders blankly. “Who is he?”

Sylus Bane’s grin widens. “Mage Lukas Grey.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ESCAPE

SPARROW TRILLIUM

FifthMonth

Southeastern Fae Island

Sparrow stands on the eastern shore of the Southeastern Fae Island and looks over the turbulent Voltic Sea toward the Western Realm continent.

Storm clouds are gathering overhead. Veins of lightning flash fitfully, illuminating the waves. The boiling clouds move across the vast, wind-tossed sky, making Sparrow feel very small in the face of the threatening seascape before her.

It’s unusually cold this eve. A stiff breeze buffets her thin, gray labor garments, and Sparrow wraps her arms around herself as she shivers. The salty wind tangles her violet hair against her pale, lavender face as she peers across the choppy waters at the dark, hulking landmass just beyond.

The westernmost tip of continental Gardneria.

Sparrow’s brow tenses, her apprehension mounting as she takes in the glowing deep-green line that’s working its way along the edge of the distant coast like a luminescent snake.

Gardneria’s new runic border. Created with the Mages’ mysteriously ramped-up runic magic and fashioned from thousands upon thousands of Gardnerian runes that are being thrown up at astonishing speed.

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