Page 59 of The Shadow Wand

Thierren holds out a conciliatory palm. “I’ve been ordered to arrange a carriage for you. You’ll be traveling to Commander Grey’s parents’ estate in Valgard. It’s a little over a day’s journey. I believe these are your things.” He hoists my travel bag into view, and my heart leaps.

The Wand.

I’m momentarily frozen by this quick turn of events, and I fight the urge to leap forward and grab up the bag to get the hidden Wand away from him.

I meet his gaze and force neutrality into my tone. “So...you’ll show me to the carriage, then?”

“Of course,” he says, his green gaze bolted on me.

Heart racing, I force myself to straighten. “Will Lukas be joining me there?”

“Yes, Mage,” Thierren replies after a short but significant pause, a caginess to his tone that makes me feel like we’re both playing a part. “He has some things to attend to here. Then he’ll meet you in Valgard soon after you arrive.”

Foreboding snakes through me. Being separated from Lukas leaves me vulnerable to possible incoming threats. But still, if I can survive this journey, this could be a path toward Lukas’s protection.

“Will I have a guard?” I press Thierren, hoping he doesn’t question my expressed need for one.

Again, a pause and that same cagey look. “Yes, Mage,” he concurs, a glint in his green eyes that reads like a deeper understanding of the questions behind my questions. “You’ll be accompanied by myself and three other high-level Mages.”

I hold his oddly knowing stare as we regard each other searchingly.

“All right, then,” I concede. “Let’s go.”

The edge of Thierren’s lip twitches up as I summon my courage and walk toward him.

I take my proffered bag, my breath suspended as I surreptitiously feel for the Wand’s spiraling handle just under the fabric. Relief floods through me as I locate it there, straight and true, and I have to force my expression to remain blank.

Then I sling the bag over my shoulder, exchange one last cryptic look with Thierren, and follow him to the carriage.

CHAPTER TWO

EVELYN GREY

ELLOREN GARDNER

Sixth Month

Valgard, Gardneria

“Mage Evelyn Grey wishes to meet with you straightaway.”

A broad, dour-faced, and pale-violet-hued Urisk woman stands before me, framed by the carriage door she’s just opened. She’s holding a wax cloth up high to form a rain-sheltering canopy for me to step under, raindrops drumming against the top of the stiff fabric. Just beyond her I catch Thierren’s eye as he rides away with the three other soldiers who guarded my carriage on the journey, his cloak’s hood pulled over his head.

Concerned to see my guard moving away from me, I rise from the carriage seat, my legs cramped from so many hours of travel, then freeze before the carriage door as I take in the sheer size of the estate that lies before me. Aunt Vyvian’s mansion is a small cottage in comparison to it.

The Grey estate is sprawling, and I immediately worry that it won’t be possible for such an enormous structure to be adequately guarded against assassins. Although...it is placed on elevated land near the edge of a towering bluff that overlooks the Malthorin Bay.

A huge cliff, that’s good, I consider. Makes it difficult to approach the estate from the west.

The estate is also encompassed by a spiky iron fence that appears to be warded against trespass by glowing Gardnerian runes affixed to its larger posts.

The mansion’s two stories are supported by massive sanded Ironwood trees, and its tunneling entranceways are framed by more trees’ densely woven branches, as if the entire structure has been wrought from a forest. And there’s a private, cultivated forest encased in a gigantic arboretum, the huge glass structure attached to the estate, the trees inside blurred by the rain.

The estate’s windows are striking, and I can’t help but notice their exquisite craftsmanship as we pass them, even in my state of jumped-up surveillance—they’re diamond paned and bordered by elegant stained-glass vines. And there’s a roof garden with multiple potted trees and flowering vines that spill over the roof’s edging in a cascade.

I frown, unsettled.

It would be so easy for an attacker to hide amidst all that foliage.

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