Page 83 of The Shadow Wand

I’ll never see you again.

I cry, devastated, wanting to scream at the heavens. Wanting to send my fire over Vogel and every soldier in Gardneria before they can cut me down in turn.

“Yvan,” I sob aloud, breaking apart. “Yvan.”

I cry for a long time, crumpled forward, my eyes tightly closed, my forehead pressed to the chill bluff stone.

Yvan...I agonize, lost and unmoored and suddenly landed in terrain too brutal to navigate on my own.

What would you want me to do?I finally ask, as if the thought can reach him.

Yvan’s unwavering answer sounds bright in my mind.

Fight them.

I grow still, a sob catching tight in my throat as merciless clarity descends.

Vogel’s power is horrific, and it’s growing.

The power of his wand is growing. His wand of shadows...

The Shadow Wand.

I can feel residual stinging along the demon-sensing rune on my abdomen.

Vogel will wield the evil power of that Wand against everyone and everything I love. Against everything good in the world.

Nothing and no one is safe.

Yvan’s words from the day I found out I’m the Black Witch light up like a beacon in my mind.

This is bigger than just us, Elloren. If no one steps forward, they’ll win.

I remember the exact look on Yvan’s beautiful face when he said this to me. A face I’ll never see again.

Grief makes another play to tear me apart, a wail threatening to pull loose from my throat as an orb of sapphire light rolls up beside me, a glowing blue line trailing behind it from the grove as a sudden awareness of Lukas’s fire blazes through my lines.

The Noi tracking rune.

As I look behind me, Lukas bursts through the grove and onto the rocky bluff.

Our eyes meet, and fire ignites in my lines, the sight of his Mage uniform triggering a rage in me that’s so raw, I might have stricken him down had I wood in my hand.

I bolt to my feet, fury thick and potent in my blood as Lukas’s fire intensifies along with mine, both of us abruptly caught up in a violent, chaotic blaze.

“Elloren,” Lukas says with blistering urgency, accentuating each word, “does anyone other than your aunt and me know that you were with the Icaral of Prophecy?”

Fire explodes through my lines as I raise the palm of my wand hand.“Stop,”I demand of him in a teeth-clenched snarl, my other hand balling into a fist as my Dryad compulsion to be honest with him grips me fiercely “Tell me,” I command Lukas, my voice breaking around my fury. “Tell me that you’ve broken with Vogel. Tell me that you’re only standing here, in that vile uniform, because you’re planning to use your position to destroy him.”

Lukas’s gaze is as ferocious as mine as we stare each other down.

“Yes, Elloren,” he finally says, his voice ironhard.

A blast of shock hits me, the world altered yet again. Because Lukas Grey cannot lie to me and I can read the truth of his words in the forceful current of his fire.

I blink at him, rapidly adjusting to his stunning admission. I can sense him holding back a broader explanation—an explanation I need from him.

Because he is still wearing their uniform. And I need to know that he hasn’t just broken with Vogel, but with Gardneria as a whole.

---