Page 210 of The Shadow Wand

All this time, Lukas remains aloof and closed off, and my emotions become increasingly tumultuous in response to the jarring withdrawal of his ardent attentions and bolstering fire, even though I understand with my rational mind why he’s doing it.

Both he and Valasca have tersely laid out that I have to adjust to forcing my emotions aside. To stand firm in the face of loneliness and isolation and exhaustion and even terror. But it’s becoming near impossible. I’m like a frayed rope, dangerously close to snapping, and my pained resentment builds and builds in me until I want to hurl every weapon I’m wielding straight at Lukas to assuage the hurt that’s rising.

On our twentieth night here, Valasca goes out to hunt and scout the periphery of our location, and I’m alone with Lukas for the first time since we were last intimate.

A late-night chill has fallen over the stone ledge outside the Vonor, a sliver of the crimson-hued moon rising above the mesquite treetops.

My exhaustion is so acute that I can barely function.

They woke me hours before dawn, and every part of me hurts. I might be growing stronger and more adept at using rune weaponry, but Lukas and Valasca add drill after drill, never letting up.

I throw the last blade, the wooden target before me riddled with knives and stars, all perfectly lined up from the perfect aim the Wand has conferred to me, my speed and agility vastly improving. My anger over their relentless, overly harsh training mounts with each blade I throw, pain knifing up and down my arm. I throw the last star and turn to Lukas, my eyes blazing with refusal to do more.

He looks at me coldly. “Again,” he says.

Anger ignites.

I hold out my palms and use the retrieval runes to draw star after star out of the target hung from the tree before me, the weapons flying through the air and hitting my rune-marked palms with painful force, one after another, as I grasp hold of them each in turn and fasten them to the diagonal sheath across my chest. Then I draw two of the knives back into my palms, angry tears welling. Suddenly, my anger and hurt and exhaustion are like a vicious tide that I can’t beat down. I throw the knives to the ground with a growl and yank the star sheath off and hurl that to the ground as well, then round on Lukas and throw as much angry affinity fire toward him as I can. As my invisible fire power batters into him, he stands firm and glares at me, unmoved by my magical protest.

“Where are you, Lukas?” I cry, feeling like a shattered fragment of myself. “Igavemyself to you the last time we were together. And now...it’s like I’mnothingto you. You say it’s to train me, but it’s like I’m a weapon now and that’sit.” Pain strafes through me as my fire chaotically knifes out at him then falls apart into a frenzy of unfocused heat, my voice cracking. “I need you, Lukas. And I want to be more than just a weapon to you!” And suddenly, I’m on the brink of emotional and physical collapse, tears stinging at my eyes as it all rushes over me. What we’re up against. How he’s broken our connection just when I need him the most.

For a moment, we’re locked in a silent battle, Lukas’s gaze on me so severe that it’s almost violent in its intensity.

And then he strides toward me, his expression fierce as he comes at me at the same time as his fire roars into me. His lips come down on mine as his body makes contact, pressing me against the stone wall behind me as he grasps hold of me and drives all of his fire and all of his earth affinity branches straight into me in an overpowering rush.

Lit up by the force of his magic, my desperate want for him breaks free and I throw my own fire, my own branches into him, our magery grasping for each other and taking fierce hold as I kiss him back just as intensely, his tongue in my mouth, my tongue around his as our power merges and builds into a fiery cyclone.

Lukas draws back, both of us breathing heavily as he holds tight to me, his eyes wild.

“Iloveyou, Elloren. Is that what you want to hear?”

Stunned, I can’t speak.

“Is that it?” he demands, his voice rough. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I rasp as his hands hold tight to my arms, ferocity in his fire. I swallow, overcome.

“Iloveyou,” he says again, lashing the words out with a vehemence that takes my breath away. “But you’re theBlack Witch. And if you’re going to survive Vogel, wecannotcoddle you. And I want you to survive him! But it’s going to be nearlyimpossibleto survive him! Do you understand?”

I swallow again and nod stiffly, barely able to take a breath. So shocked by his fierce declaration.

Lukas steps back and pulls in his fire, but I can still feel it, whipping out at the edges.

He collects himself, hands on his hips, his breathing forced into a more even cadence. When he looks back at me, his face is once again remote, his fire held back. He glances at the weapons I threw down.

“Again, Elloren,” he demands.

Twelve nights later, I’m sitting around the ledge fire with Lukas, Valasca, and Chi Nam, every muscle hurting, but I’m getting used to the constant ache as they all push me harder and harder. Every day and night.

I’m changing. I can feel it. The weapons strapped all over my body are starting to feel like an extension of myself. Like extra limbs. And I’m starting to intimately know every inch of these weapons, every rune on their hilts and what they can do, the finger arrangements of their combinations beginning to feel as natural as the finger positions on the frets of a violin.

Lukas and Valasca have sparred with me in the middle of the night, dragging me, disoriented, out of sleep more than once as they yelled and shoved me and tried to intimidate me and throw me off balance before pulling me into mock battles in which I’ve been mock slain every single time.

But I’m feeling leaner. More honed. And I’ve begun going off on my own in the few spare moments they allow me to experiment with some of my throws and runic combinations. I’m starting to effectively wield more than one weapon at a time, following the Wand’s gift of guidance, to level them at my targets, even when driven to complete mental and physical and emotional exhaustion.

I may not be a warrior yet, but I feel like a true soldier apprentice. I’ve also settled more fully into my Elfhollen glamour, getting used to the gray as I fall into my new, manufactured identity.

No longer Elloren Gardner but Ny’laea Shizoryn.

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