Page 76 of The Shadow Wand

I sit on the stone balcony for a protracted moment, my eyes locked with Lukas’s. He keeps his hand extended to me as his fire whips around me in an uncharacteristically discordant rush.

My power strains toward his to the point where I feel that, if I give in to the pull, my body might slide to his of its own accord.

I do not take his hand.

A disturbance shudders through Lukas’s fire as his face takes on a look of intense confusion. His fire dampens in a flash, and his searching look is replaced by a more severe demeanor as he withdraws his hand and I rise on my own. I smooth my tousled skirts with shaking hands, then reach up to touch my aching neck, an echo of horror rising.

Lukas’s fire gives a pulsing flare. “I should have killed him,” he says, and I meet his gaze once more, green fire spitting in his eyes.

I hold his fervid stare as my trembling lessens and the lashing flow of my power slowly dissipates.

Nothing is as it seemed, and my head is spinning from so many new realizations.

Lukas saved me from being fasted to a monster. He never conspired with my aunt to destroy my uncle and force me into fasting. It was all Aunt Vyvian’s doing—playing Damion Bane and Lukas off each other as a means to her wretched ends.

And Lukas stepped into her trap to save me from a truly nightmarish fate.

A sharper realization sweeps over me.

I remember all the Level Five Mages I was surrounded by on that day, my depraved aunt’s strategy so clear to me now. Aunt Vyvian not only arranged for me to be fasted to Damion Bane.She was careful to organize a guard large enough that Lukas wouldn’t be able to fight his way through it. Once there was no possibility of my escape, she likely called in Lukas at the very last minute and gave him an ultimatum—

Fast to Elloren...or see her fasted to Damion Bane.

I let out a long, shuddering breath, both astonished and newly decided. “I need to speak with you, Lukas.” I receive no response but a creasing of his brow, and in that moment I rue the divide between us.

I wish I could tell you everything, I agonize. I need a friend, and I need help. You don’t have any idea how high the stakes are. If I can survive, I’m a weapon that could bring down Vogel.

I remember how Lukas told me he considers Vogel to be unhinged. How he disapproves of the religious intolerance sweeping through Gardneria that Vogel is emboldening.

“Is there somewhere we can go?” I press, ready to plead if necessary.

Lukas’s jaw tenses and he looks just past me, as if trying to rein in some strong emotion.

But then his eyes meet mine and he silently holds out his arm to me.

For a split second I hesitate, unnerved by his piercing look and the memory of his out-of-control violence toward Damion.

Damion Bane.

Whom I’d be bound to without Lukas’s intervention.

For life.

I reach out and thread my hand through Lukas’s arm, careful to not let my hand brush against his.

I match Lukas’s long stride through the Mage Council Hall, the distant sound of orchestral music and the buzz of crowds growing louder as we step into a populated, tree-lined atrium with a constellation-imprinted ceiling. A sense of the surreal envelops me as I walk, arm in arm, with Lukas Grey, the memory of our fasting now viewed with such a drastically altered lens. I internally wince, remembering how I screamedI’ll hate youforever!at him.

And how everyone in this room likely knows it.

Mages drinking scarlet punch cast me looks of censure and narrow-eyed dislike as we cross the room, and I’m acutely aware of both the tension burning in Lukas’s banked-back fire as well as the scuff of my raw, shoeless feet on the smooth tile beneath me. A young soldier with aristocratic features approaches with the air of someone who has been looking for Lukas. I recognize Thierren, the Level Five Mage who guided me out of Lukas’s command tent in the Keltish Province and was part of my escort to the Greys’ estate.

“Where are the Banes?” Lukas asks him in an aggressive tone that impliesSo I can kill them.

Thierren’s gaze darts to me, his face remaining as impassive as Sparrow’s before he looks back at Lukas. “Commander Damion Bane has been brought to a physician,” he states succinctly, “and Commander Sylus Bane left with him. Mage Fallon Bane has been brought to the Valgard military base for questioning.” He glances at me again. “For attacking a fellow Mage with wand magic.”

Worry for Sparrow rises in me. “Have you seen a young Urisk woman with lavender features?” I ask him, concerned that the Banes could have enacted some vengeance upon her before they left. “She’s my lady’s maid, and she needs an escort home.”

Thierren loses his impassive look for a moment, his brow tensing hard as he views me searchingly. “She’s fine and is in a carriage traveling back to the Greys’ estate,” he assures me.

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