Page 48 of The Shadow Wand

Her frown deepens.

Will it be enough to keep Vogel out?

The skin prickles on the back of Tierney’s neck, a disturbance rippling through her water magic as the uneasy sense of someone’s attention on her rises.

She turns and scans the dimly lit terrace, its obsidian stone washed a faint blue by a few rune lanterns set into the mountain’s stone walls. Vu Trin military apprentices are strolling over the riverside terrace’s broad curving surface, some alone and some in groups or pairs, taking advantage of the spectacular views and the pure joy of being so close to this most majestic of all rivers, no doubt.

None of them take much notice of the Water Fae standing by the terrace edge, enfolded in the night’s shadows.

Still, Tierney can’t shake the feeling of being the object of someone’s unwavering focus. Her water magic whirs inside her as the sensation becomes directional, like a slight, magnetic pull.

She looks up the Wyvernguard’s stone wall toward the sensation’s origin, her gaze quickly zeroing in on a dark figure sitting on the leg of the huge, ivory-stone dragon sculpture that’s wrapped around the base of the island and cut into the obsidian stone.

A flash of reckless interest sizzles through her as her water magic winds apprehensively tighter.

Viger Maul.

He looks deceptively normal, except for the fact that he’s defying gravity slightly, like an elegant spider adhering to the mammoth bas-relief sculpture. His spiraling half-moon horns are absent from his short, spiked hair.

She tenses, her heartbeat quickening as she waits for Viger’s mind assault of her own fears and his otherworldly, bitter voice to sound in the back of her head, but...

...nothing.

She holds Viger’s intent stare, confusion and curiosity piquing inside her as she wonders whether what some of the other military apprentices told her over dinner is true.

Do Death Fae really stalk you once you draw their interest? Will they take you down by nature’s most horrible means? And when you attract their attention, are you attracting Death itself?

She doesn’t want to believe any of this, but here he is, staring at her.

She waits for Viger’s dark thrall to descend, but it’s as if he’s politely, carefully holding his strange powers back. And then, never taking his eyes off her, his form turns to black smoke and twines up to be camouflaged from her sight by the obsidian stone above the dragon carving’s massive form.

An inarticulate melancholy fills Tierney, overshadowing her surprise at his ability to morph into smoke.

She coughs out a sardonic laugh.Do you truly want him to come back?She’s taken aback by her own bizarre draw toward this Fae who purposefully terrified her.

But what did he do, really? He simply showed you your own fears.

She stares after him for a long moment, wondering if he’ll rematerialize, both intimidated by the feelings he unearthed in her as well as filled with a surprising desire to approach him again.

And not run this time.

A slight disturbance in her water magic coming from the other direction has Tierney stiffening even as she lets out a small sigh over the fulsome sensation of another Water Fae’s power rippling against her own in a decadent attraction.

“Are you going to take the Death Fae as your lover?” a deep, chiding voice inquires in the Asrai tongue.

Ire churns through Tierney over the intrusion into her private space.

And because she recognizes that voice.

She wheels around to find Fyordin Lir standing there in all his Asrai Fae glory, tall and shockingly handsome, his Asrai skin mirroring the nighttime hues of the Vo River. Tierney glances down at her own hand, resting on the gleaming onyx stone.

Surprise ignites when she finds that her skin has become a reflection of the Vo as well, a changeable dark current eddying over it.

A bit overcome, she glances back up at Fyordin. He’s idly balancing a roiling globe of water above his palm as he leans on the terrace railing, his expression arrogant. His dark lips twist as he gives her a poignant look and bobs his head at something behind her, as if inviting her to see.

Tierney follows his line of vision and surprise flashes again, a deeper disturbance shivering through her water magic.

Viger has rematerialized at the far edge of the terrace, his long, lean figure now perched on its stone railing, his focus unmistakably on her.

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