Page 164 of The Shadow Wand

“Then get hold of yourself,” he commands.

I look to the huge, headless monster, another wave of gut-wrenching horror slashing through me.

“Vogel’s going to enslave my magic,” I rasp, my voice and body trembling, lost to a panic that’s quickly edging into hysteria. Vogel ishere. I can feel his dark power still clinging to my lines, slithering through me. “He’s going to take over my lines and kill all of you...”

“Stop it, Elloren,” Lukas snarls as he takes a step toward me. “This is along fight. And it just ramped up. You need to be tougher.Right now.”

“He’s in mylines,” I cry, the panic overtaking me, Vogel’s Shadow tree still reverberating in my mind. “Don’t you understand? He’s going to take over my power...”

“He’s not here,” Lukas growls. “You’re feeling a thrall. Throw it off.”

“It’s not a thrall! It’sreal!”

Lukas’s expression turns vicious as he whips his wand out and I’m hit with a blast of Lukas’s affinity power that’s so strong, it’s like being slammed into by a gale-force wind. I recoil against the stone wall, gasping as Lukas’s invisible affinity fire rages through my lines, burning to a scald, overtaking the Shadow tree and singeing it away, his earth magery pummeling in, wresting hold of my branches, pinning me against the stone where I’m crumpled in a trembling mass.

Shock spirals through me as he keeps hurling magic at me, only strengthening its force, even after he’s burned Vogel’s power from my lines.

“Fight back!” Lukas growls out. “Fight back against my thrall!”

My shock intensifies over Lukas’s unexpected magical attack. I look to Valasca for help, imploring. But Valasca’s gaze has gone as hard as Lukas’s. She pulls her rune stylus and levels the tip in my direction, a scarlet Amaz rune springing to life above its tip that she throws toward me, the rune blasting into my chest in a shower of red sparks, forcing my magery back even further.

Desperate, I turn to Chi Nam, who clamps her fists around her rune staff and jabs it in my direction, a brilliant ray of blue scything from it and into my lines, flattening them until I can barely breathe.

I gasp for air as their cruel, combined attack relentlessly assaults my lines.

But then my fear and anguish start a rapid slide into a rage that builds and builds as my fear is burned away by the force of my mounting anger. I draw in a constricted breath, my eyes tight on them, as I pull up power from the earth, from the roots snaking through the ground.

Forcing power to flow straight into me from the cursed trees as I rise.

The power grows and grows inside me, just under Lukas and Valasca and Chi Nam’s combined power, until I’m trembling from the force of it, my hands balling into fists, my nails digging into my skin as I tense my whole body. And then I blow out a hard breath that turns into a guttural cry of rage as I force all of my power out toward them in one overwhelming rush.

Lukas stumbles back, nearly falling over as his fire-and earthlines contract and all of the runes on Chi Nam’s rune staff and Valasca’s rune blades blink out of sight.

I stalk toward them all, power whipping through me along with my overpowering rage as I close in on them, my anger over being attacked seeming to have taken on a life of its own.

“Get back!” I cry at them, furious over their cruelty, my words the lash of a whip. “Keep your magic away from me!” My face twists into a grimace, magic slashing through my lines as I stalk to Lukas, furious.

Lukas is flushed, a sheen of sweat on his skin, his eyes fierce. He leans closer to me, his lips twisting into a feral smile. “Ah, finally.Finally.The Black Witch is here! I wondered when she’d finally show herself!”

Another flash of rage overtakes me in a blinding rush. I pull my Wand, rip the cloth off it, and jab it to Lukas’s throat, my magic rushing to it. “Don’t ever attack me again,” I snarl as power courses through me with lethal force. “I could cut you down right here, if I wanted to.”

Lukas moves closer, ignoring the Wand pressed into his neck. “Yes, Elloren,” he hisses back. “Youcould. Which is why you need to stop acting like you’re weak and start acting like a warrior, no matter what monstrous thing comes at you!”

A sudden reckoning bears down on me, my anger imploding under the sheer weight of its immensity.

I pull the Wand away from Lukas’s neck and take a faltering step back, thrown into turmoil over being faced with my first military attack.

I’m on a collision course with Vogel and the entire Gardnerian military and probably the whole of Alfsigroth and Noilaan and Ishkartaan—and they’re going to send every nightmare thing they can think of out to subdue me.

I’m disastrously ill prepared to face even a small fraction of this fate.

How can I be the Black Witch with even my allies set against me?I rage as my emotions circle down toward the rapid loss of faith.

A face suddenly lights in my mind, halting the descent.

Fernyllia’s granddaughter—little Fern.

An image of the child fills my thoughts, her small hand clutching my skirts as she sobbed and protectively hugged her cloth doll,Mee’na. That terrible night when the Gardnerian mobs were attacking Urisk and cutting off the tips of their ears.

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