Page 87 of The Shadow Wand

My eyes meet Lukas’s. He’s also braced himself and looks as surprised as I am.

A man’s howl of terror slashes through the night air, and the horses shriek. Lukas pulls his wand, his gaze fierce as he peers out the windows and motions for me to stay back.

Wide-eyed, I, too, look out the windows and frantically search the dark as a sickening realization washes over me. “Lukas—”

The carriage gives another violent jerk to the side.

Lukas reaches for me, his hand coming tight around my arm, steadying me as we both struggle for balance, his body tense and coiled as the carriage lurches about haphazardly and begins to veer on and off the road.

We hit a particularly painful bump, and the carriage pitches clear over and falls hard on its side.

Pain bursts as my head slams into the window and Lukas falls onto me. The hanging lamp smashes into shards that rain over us as its light snuffs out.

I look around, dazed, as Lukas shifts, lifting his weight off me in a shower of glass. I sit up. Stars wink in my eyes then give way to stars shining through the window that’s now above me, the carriage’s floor to my back, its roof before me as my heart thuds against my ribs. For a split second, all is ominously quiet but for the tinkle of broken glass falling from our bodies.

“They’ve come for me,” I say, my throat cinching with fear, only half able to make out Lukas’s features in the dark.

“Who’s come for you?” he asks with confusion.

“The Kin Hoang.”

Lukas’s eyes widen. He grabs my arm, sending glass shards everywhere. Then he jerks me backward and tightens his grip on his wand. “Hold on to me,” he orders, his voice sharp. “Don’t let go!”

My hand grasps the side of his tunic as he raises his wand slightly higher and murmurs a spell through clenched teeth.

A fuzzy, glowing mist flies out of the tip of the wand, over him then over me like a second skin, the magical shield’s buzzing energy coating me like millions of tiny flies bouncing uncomfortably off my skin as a metallic, whirring noise slices through the outside air.

The center of the carriage’s roof explodes inward with a spray of sawdust as a small, silvery blur flies toward my head and slams straight into my shielded nose.

My head jerks back as pain blossoms, my eyes temporarily crossed from the blow as the sharp object bounces off Lukas’s shield, ricochets back against the carriage’s base, and comes to a clattering stop at our feet.

My stomach lurches.

A silver star.A Kin Hoang assassin’s killing star.

Lukas turns to me just as a barrage of stars explode through the carriage’s roof. I cry out as they strike my chest, my head, my limbs, beating me backward toward the carriage’s base as Lukas holds on tight to me. It’s like being hit by rocks while covered by a blanket, each blow leaving behind a new, throbbing ache, the stars clinking against each other as they fall to the carriage’s side in a sharp pile.

And then it’s over. The roof of the carriage before us now resembles a slice of salty Krillen cheese, full of irregular holes slashed liberally by the killing stars.

Lukas thrusts his wand straight out of the carriage’s roof, grasps me tight, grows stone-still, and forcefully murmurs the words to another spell.

I recoil as an explosion of fire rips from his wand, cutting out all visibility as the flames engulf us and flow tight around the magic shield. It’s like my one attempt to use a real wand, my desert inferno, all other sound cut off by the roar of the fire. The brightness of the flames forces my eyes shut and fills the world with red heat. The carriage wall beneath me gives way and we fall down into a concavity I can’t see, the buzzing of Lukas’s shield against my skin now hot and stinging.

Lukas clutches me close and I keep hold of him. I can’t open my eyes. It’s still too painfully bright.

Behind my eyelids, red rapidly turns to orange then yellow then blue. And finally black.

I open my eyes and gasp.

We’re crouched in a smoldering pile of ash and rubble, a radius of charred ground all around, only one blackened carriage wheel still identifiable and spinning pathetically in the air. The horses are dead, their charred necks exploded, and so is our unlucky driver, whose burned body lies sprawled out on the singed ground, his neck a bloody mess and slashed almost clear through. Horror slashes through me at the sight of this innocent man so gruesomely slain.

Retreating hoofbeats sound, and movement catches our attention through the haze of smoke—a woman on horseback, both her rune-marked uniform and her horse dark as ash, racing up the sloping cornfield before us, her horse’s hoofbeats muffled by the loamy soil.

Racing straight toward the moon.

Lukas tightens his hold on my arm and pulls me to my feet, the buzzing shield still uncomfortably pasted around us.

“Come on,” he orders as he sets off in hot pursuit of the Kin Hoang, dragging me beside him.

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