Page 21 of The Shadow Wand

She steps toward him, clear out of options as she holds his tortured stare. “If you’re not a part of it,” she forces out in an emphatic demand, “thenhelp us.” Her stomach clenches the moment she says it, knowing full well what dangers she’s opening herself up to by asking for help from this Mage she just stopped from destroying himself. But what choice does she have?

A fraught silence catches between them and holds, the young Mage’s expression twisting into one of vast confusion. He has the elegant features of their upper class, Sparrow notes.

He looks her over, and unease prickles through her, even though she can’t detect any lust in his eyes. Then he lifts his green gaze back to hers, his severe face tensing with what seems like genuine, baffled concern. “You’re wet.”

Sparrow straightens, gripping her blade’s hilt tighter in response to him noticing her body. She keeps a threatening undercurrent to her tone even as her lip trembles.Keep your distance, Mage.“We escaped the islands,” she tells him. “By boat. To try for the East.”

His eyes widen a fraction. “You came all that way...tonight?”

Sparrow nods stiffly, unable to suppress the shivering that’s kicked up from both the cold wet of her clothes and her fear of him. Her fear of all of these cursed Mages.

“There are kraken out there,” he says, and Sparrow suddenly wants to scream at him.Yes, I know full well there are kraken out there, you blazingly stupid Crow.Effrey gives a rattly cough behind her and begins to whimper.

“Why did you do it?” the Mage suddenly implores, stepping toward her, as if the question is a lifeline. “Why did you risk dying?”

Sparrow tenses, incredulous, and spits out the truest words she’s ever spoken. “Because you Mages aremonsters.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SHADOW RISING

WYNTER EIRLLYN

SixthMonth

Amazakaraan

The birds fly down to Wynter Eirllyn in great, feathery spirals.

All types of birds.

Wynter kneels on the cool, dewy grass of the elevated pasture, the darkness of night still clinging to the Caledonian wilds at her back, the Amazakaraan city of Cyme, home to her Amaz protectors, splayed out before her.

Grief lodges deep in her heart for her beloved Ariel, a grief that is a constant companion now, a yearning that can never be assuaged or comforted.

I love you, Sweet One, Wynter sends out toward the eastern, predawn sky, as if Ariel were subsumed in it after departing this life and the words will somehow, someday find her there.

A haze shrouds the edge of the indigo sky, the damask rose color suffusing the peaks of the pale, gleaming Spine that walls the southern edge of the city. Wynter watches the beautiful color inch higher into the sky as soft brushstrokes of rustling feathers envelop her in their caress.

Wynter has been meeting with her winged friends here in this isolated spot before every dawn these past few weeks, reading their thoughts and speaking to them through her own empathic images. Sending some of them East on a hopeful quest to search for Naga, her dragon kindred.

Wynter has sent other wingeds throughout the West to see what they will see. Now the birds are flocking to her in droves.

Wynter stills, head down, as the birds crowd around her, twitchy and excitable as they press forward to make contact with her slender frame.

So many types of birds from so many lands.

Golden Maelorin cranes and blue-eared starlings. Rose finches and silver Alfsigr doves. A pair of huge desert hawks with stripes of bright saffron and vivid scarlet for camouflage against the red sands of the east.

A tiny, violet-crowned hummingbird buzzes beside Wynter’s ear, its wingbeats a blur that sends a cool breeze against Wynter’s neck before the bird alights on her shoulder and presses its whole self against her alabaster skin.

Wynter bends her head down farther to listen to all of her kindreds, her eyes closed as her hands find one bird. Then another. Then another.

A spark of amorphous dread lights in Wynter, hot and urgent, as thousands of images flood her senses from the staccato minds of the birds.

Somethingwrongis being sent into nature.

Something the birds are gleaning from the trees.

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