Page 168 of The Shadow Wand

“We need alluriemto stop the bleeding,” I implore Chi Nam, invoking my apothecary training as I tear open Lukas’s shredded tunic to better view his injury. My gut tightens as I take in the depth of the wound slashed across his chest and shoulder, his chest slick with blood. So much blood...

“Support his back,” Chi Nam orders, her face a mask of determination as she lowers herself before Lukas, blue rune stylus in hand, and I recall how she healed my scalp after it was slashed by a killing star.

I throw one arm around Lukas, his out-of-control fire power whipping out of him and rapidly depleting, like a great star burning out. Lukas is panting, every muscle tensed, his expression agonized.

His vastly weakened magic seizes mine like he’s a drowning man as Chi Nam draws a blue rune in the air just over Lukas’s chest and shoulder, then swiftly pierces the rune with her rune stylus’s tip and drags the stylus down the entire length of Lukas’s bloody gash, trailing a golden wavering glow that sizzles with heat.

Lukas groans, his back arching against my arm as he throws back his head, his whole body seeming strained to the breaking point as his remaining magic scrabbles to keep hold of mine, power draining out of him.

“No!”I snarl, ready to rip through Erthia itself to save his life.

I grab hold of both sides of Lukas’s head and turn it toward me.“Kiss me,”I growl ferociously.

Teeth gritted and eyes glazed with pain, Lukas angles his mouth toward mine.

I capture his mouth and bear down, boring power into his lines in a shuddering bolt. A burn races along my skin and into him as Lukas’s hand grasps the back of my tunic and his depleted lines connect with my power. Chi Nam’s sizzling magic courses over us both as I hold tight to him, feeding and feeding the power into him.

After a long moment, my flood of magic starts to meet some resistance from his lines. I pull back, sweat lining my brow and his. His color has deepened to a darker green, and his fireline now pulses with the same heat that’s scorching through my lines as Chi Nam swiftly marks a line of blue runes on either side of his gold-glowing wound.

I can feel it clearly—Lukas’s magic is stronger but still too depleted to fully stand on its own.

“Iwillkiss you again if I need to,” I tell him, my voice a riot of fear.

Flame sparks in Lukas’s eyes as he reaches up to take hold of the back of my head and pulls me into another feverish kiss. I twine my tongue around his and force blast after blast of fire into his lines, his rapidly thickening earthlines spiraling over mine with clenching intensity.

“Stop,” Chi Nam says when I draw back once more, my fire whipping around Lukas’s burgeoning flame and solidifying earthlines. “Any more and you’ll make him Magedrunk. Just keep hold of his hand and let his power restore itself.”

I grasp Lukas’s hand, my heart thudding with passionate concern as Chi Nam connects the pairs of runes that span Lukas’s entire wound with lines of blue sorcery. The wound is now a streak of glowing gold, his skin charred but no longer gushing blood, and I realize she’s magically cauterized it.

Chi Nam taps the top pair of runes, and the lines of blue sorcery abruptly stitch tight.

Lukas lets out a hard, short cry, and I wince at his obvious pain even as the joyous realization circles through me that he’s going to live. I can’t swallow past the staggering relief that’s balling up in my throat.

“Stay still and let that set,” Chi Nam says as she rises. “That wound should be mostly healed in a few hours.” She moves to tend to Valasca, her sorcery still flowing over Lukas’s wound in a blue aqueous current.

Lukas’s eyes flash toward mine. “Did you force off his thrall?” he grits out through clenched teeth.

I realize he means Vogel. During the scorpio attack.

“Yes,” I say, tears pooling in my eyes to hear Lukas’s ragged voice, to feel his magic gaining ground.

He gives me a quick wolfish smile through his obvious haze of pain.

“One of the scorpios,” I tell him, as tears of relief streak down my face, “it was marked with Vogel’s eye.”

Lukas’s expression shutters as he maintains his tight grip on me and draws on my power in fits and starts.

Valasca lets out a partly stifled cry, and I turn to her. She’s slumped down, her leg splayed on the stony ground, her pant leg shredded to expose a long slash on the side of her thigh. Her face is tight with misery as Chi Nam expeditiously sends luminous blue sorcery over the bloody cut and stitches it up tight.

Concern fills me as I take in her tear-slicked cheeks. “Valasca...”

Valasca’s distressed eyes meet mine, and she shakes her head, as if refuting my fears. “My wound isn’t deep. It’s not that. It’s...” She closes her eyes tightly, her chest heaving as she begins to sob. “Thehorses. Vogel didn’t kill them. Hetookthem.”

A chill ruffles through me.

I think of the beautiful horses we escaped on and remember Valasca’s ability to read horses’ minds. Which means she sensed their terror as they were attacked by those...things.

If Vogel took them...what horrific creatures will he turn them into? Some elongated, multi-eyed, and soulless version of themselves?

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