Page 62 of The Shadow Wand

Evelyn Grey freezes, her eyes seeming to flicker in thought. A dark smile forms on her lips, and she considers my hands as if she’s seeing them clearly for the very first time.

A tremor of desperate alarm streaks through me, and I tug my hands away, her nails scratching me as I do. I step back and cradle my hands protectively over my thudding heart.

Mage Grey straightens and smiles at me like a shark. “You’re going to the Mage Council ball tonight.” She says this with renewed purpose, as if she’s terribly pleased with how clever she is, a malicious gleam in her eyes.

I swallow hard. I don’t like the way she seems firmly set on some devious course of action. And I can’t travel unprotected to a ball with assassins possibly on my tail. “I should ask Lukas first,” I shakily insist. “I’ll send a rune hawk—”

“No,”she grinds out, clearly incensed. “You will do asIsay.”

I’m suddenly as aware of all the wood in this room as I am of the unknown threat emanating from this woman—the Ironwood tree trunks and their tangling branches that support the room, forming wavering rafters above my head. The Ironwood planks beneath my feet.

Dead wood. All around me.

An image of the living Ironwood trees this wood came from flashes in my mind as power pricks at my heels and I curl and uncurl my toes against it, fire roused in my lines. I force a deep, quavering breath and fight back the feral desire to set Lukas’s mother and this entire estate alight.

Something just behind me catches Evelyn’s eye and I turn, blessedly distracted from the pull toward magical violence.

“Mage.” A different, younger Urisk woman with lavender skin, violet hair, and amethyst eyes stands in the doorway, her features stunning, and I’m struck by the feeling that I’ve met her before. She looks about my age. “Oralyyr sent us.” She dips her head in a graceful bow.

The bow is artlessly echoed by the skinny little Urisk girl I now see standing beside her, the child perhaps no more than eight years of age. The little girl has wide, bat-like ears and the deep-violet skin of the Urisk’s most royal class. There’s something troubling about the stiffness with which these two hold themselves, frozen in their deferential bow, as if they’re afraid Mage Grey will have them beheaded if they make a wrong move.

Mage Grey eyes them with distaste then fixes her gaze back on me. “Sparrow and Effrey are to be your lady’s maids whilst you are here, and Sparrow will accompany you everywhere and report back to me as to your comings and goings. In addition, I will be sending two soldiers to accompany you to the dance. They, too, will report back to me. Do I make myself clear, Mage Gardner?”

I’m a caged bird, dangling from her elegant finger.

A mounting alarm swells. “I don’t need lady’s maids,” I counter, barely able to disguise my apprehension.

Mage Grey pins me with her stare. “You are living undermyroof now, Mage Gardner. You will abide bymyrules. Not your own.”

Through my tunic pocket, I finger the stone Chi Nam gave me, pressing it into my thigh. “Yes, Mage,” I concede, even as anger quickly gains ground inside me.I despise you, you witch. You and your cursed family. And especially your cursed son.

“Effrey,” Evelyn says to the younger girl, keeping her piercing eyes tight on me, “take Mage Gardner’s cloak. Then you and Sparrow can show her to her room.”

“Yes, Mage Grey,” the child hastily replies.

Effrey hurries to me as I unclip and slide off my cloak. I hand it to her, and the child takes it then rushes back toward Sparrow, dragging a triangle of my cloak’s hem artlessly across the floor. Just before she reaches Sparrow, the child knocks into a small, circular table, jostling an exquisite Ironflower-decorated vase that’s set near the table’s edge.

Sparrow’s eyes go wide as the vase teeters precariously. Quick as a flash, she darts toward the table, catches the vase with nimble fingers, and sets it right.

Effrey is frozen, her mouth falling open as she views the vase with sheer horror. The child turns slowly to face Mage Grey, cowering and hugging my cloak as if for protection. She bows down, almost to the floor. “Please, Mage,please. I’mso sorry, Mage.”

The little girl’s clumsiness tugs at my memory, and recognition sparks—the Valgard dress shop. That’s where I’ve seen these two before. Last year, when I first came to the city with Aunt Vyvian. The child was there, the clumsy little girl forever tripping over bolts of cloth. And graceful Sparrow. They were both there.

Evelyn Grey moves to a nearby refreshment table and pours herself a drink from a scarlet crystalline decanter. “Effrey,” she says. “Shall I have Oralyyr beat the clumsiness out of you?”

Effrey’s eyes grow wide as saucers as outrage blazes to life inside me in response to this cruelty toward a child, my wand hand flexing into a fist.

“Sparrow,” Evelyn says in an even tone as she turns away from Effrey, as if she’s completely lost interest in the child, “show Mage Gardner to her room. She’s to attend the Victory Ball this evening at the Mage Council Hall.” She sips her drink and peers back out at her storm-lit gardens, her lip twitching up into a derisive smile. “Clean her up. Try to turn her into something that at leastappearsrespectable.”

CHAPTER THREE

VASES

ELLOREN GARDNER

Sixth Month

Valgard, Gardneria

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