Page 52 of The Shadow Wand

Shot through with fierce resolve, Tierney pushes off from the bed of the Vo and makes for the surface.

CHAPTER SIX

REBELLION

THIERREN STONE

Sixth Month

Valgard, Gardneria

Thierren stands before Lukas Grey in the command room of the Valgard military outpost as an almost irrepressible rebellion lashes through him.

Because he’s no longer on the side of the Gardnerians.

Get hold of yourself, Thierren cautions as he holds himself military stiff.You need to hide the fact that you’ve turned against the Magedom. Lukas Grey is dangerous. He’ll sniff out your true feelings if you’re not careful.

Amber light gutters over the room, blazing from Verpacian Elm torches set into iron holsters that are bolted into the command room’s dark Ironwood walls. Sanded Ironwood trees emerge from the walls to branch out over the ceiling, giving the room the typical Gardnerian illusion of a deep forest.

Lukas Grey is a formidable presence, Thierren considers. Lukas’s aura of power mixed with his keen intellect is nothing short of intimidating. But Thierren isn’t cowed. Not after witnessing the Gardnerian massacre of the Dryads. Not after meeting Sparrow.

Brave, determined Sparrow.

The young woman who is the sole reason that Thierren hasn’t self-destructed, drawn his wand, and hurled an ice bolt straight through Lukas Grey and every other Gardnerian soldier on this evil base.

She brought him back from the brink of the abyss and challenged him to reformulate how he viewed a world turned on its head, everything he believed about his own people and himself wrong. Cruelly, disastrously, and heart-destroyinglywrong.

Now he’s alive for one sole purpose—to atone for ever being part of this, and to fight against it.

And to help Sparrow and Effrey get to the Eastern Realm.

Thierren spent the past few days obtaining fraudulent work papers for Sparrow and Effrey, emptying much of his savings to do so. Both he and Sparrow have stayed up late every night for weeks now, huddled in secrecy and talking almost until dawn in the deserted stables as they’ve fallen into an uneasy and dauntingly complicated alliance.

It’s a bond they’re loath to acknowledge, and Thierren was increasingly clear on why.

“The Mages preyed on us constantly,” Sparrow told him a few days back, the weighted look in her eyes speaking volumes.

They held each other’s gazes for a protracted moment.

And then Thierren reached down and silently handed Sparrow his wand, giving her a look blazing with contrition, disarming himself while she remained armed with her blade. The action was a flimsy gesture, he knew, but it was all he could think of to acknowledge that he was listening to what she said as well as to what she left unsaid.

Giving her the power of being the only one armed didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what she’s up against, the power imbalance the world has thrust them into a poison that can’t be surmounted. Because the power of the entire oppressive system lies on the side of the Mages.

On Thierren’s side.

At first, Sparrow simply looked at the wand in Thierren’s outstretched palm then back up at him in a blaze of incredulity. But then her amethyst eyes lit with a more open, searching look as she accepted the wand and sheathed it alongside the blade at her hip.

And so they began every covert encounter from there on with Thierren silently offering up his wand and Sparrow silently taking it. A symbol, more than anything, that Thierren was ready to listen. Really listen. It did nothing to shift the oppressive dynamic between their cultures, but it was a start, fueling the fragile spark of friendship that had unexpectedly lit. A friendship that they’re both careful to edge back from, Thierren, out of respect for Sparrow’s traumatic situation, Sparrow for blaringly obvious reasons.

But still, Thierren’s heart twisted with surprising force when he brought both Sparrow and Effrey, camouflaged as state-sanctioned Urisk workers, to the Indentured Labor Guild Office, their small dragon, Raz’zor, hidden with Thierren while his wing healed. As Thierren held Sparrow’s gaze, he was surprised to find that she seemed loath to part from him as well, her normally guarded expression briefly igniting with fierce emotion as they bid each other a terse goodbye. As he watched them go, Thierren fought the ferocious desire to draw his wand, cut down every Mage in the room, and flee East with Sparrow and Effrey.

But he couldn’t protect them, not with a Mage Guard runic brand on his neck—a brand that made it possible for the Mage Guard to kill him in an instant, even from a distance.

Instead, he kept his power in check as Sparrow and Effrey were whisked away, both of them quickly lost in a sea of Urisk being processed for labor assignments by pinch-faced Mages. Thierren stared after them for a long moment, his heart constricting in his chest, his wind and water magery whipping up into a tempest inside him as a ferocious resolve gained ground.

Yes, he’d endure whatever punishments Lukas Grey doled out and play the faithful soldier until he could get the vile mark stripped off his flesh.

Then he’d help Sparrow and Effrey get East safely. And then, he would come back West.

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