Page 88 of The Shadow Wand

Our attacker is bent low on her horse, rapidly gaining distance, and I recognize the style of her dark gray tunic marked with glowing blue Noi runes. There’s a gray headband tied around her head and rune swords fastened to her back.

The uniform of the Kin Hoang—she’s definitely one of the Vu Trin’s elite assassins.

I stumble over jagged cornstalks as I struggle to keep up with Lukas, half running, half being dragged, the fancy embroidered shoes Lukas obtained for me just the wrong sort of footwear for chasing down assassins.

Lukas halts, one hand still clenched around my arm as he raises his wand and grinds out the words to another spell before the rider can crest the long hill.

Fire shoots from his wand, focused in a stream aimed directly at the woman’s back.

Just before the stream of fire reaches her, a shimmering runic portal edged with luminous sapphire runes appears out of nowhere at the hill’s crest, its gilded interior flowing like molten glass and blocking the moon from view.

The sorceress rides straight into the portal and is engulfed in the golden liquid, both rider and horse disappearing from view as Lukas’s fire slams into the portal with a fierce roar. The fire curls up and around the portal’s frame, setting the surrounding cornstalks alight.

Lukas releases my arm and runs to the portal, cursing angrily to himself.

I glance around with disbelieving eyes. The decimated carriage at the bottom of the field is still smoking, the dead horses and driver dark mounds on the road.

Remorse stabs through me once more over the death of this innocent stranger and the animals too.

I turn back to Lukas, who’s come to a frustrated halt just in front of the shimmering portal and smoldering stalks of corn.

Breathing hard and dazed from the trauma of the attack, I slump and let my hands fall to my knees, my legs close to buckling as questions assault my mind.

Have the Vu Trin sent more assassins to strike me down? What happened to Chi Nam and my other Vu Trin allies? Will the entire Vu Trin army come after me now?

Should I tell Lukas what I am?

The remnants of Lukas’s shield are now a faint buzz on my skin that rapidly dissipates to nothing. As the shield fades, the acrid smell of smoke comes rushing in.

I remain hunched over for a long moment, catching my breath. My emotions a blaze of mounting alarm, I lift my skirts to check my badly scratched ankles, then take a deep breath, straighten, and make my way up the hill toward Lukas. Everything hurts, from my star-bruised body to my scraped ankles to my throbbing head and nose.

When I reach him, Lukas is quietly stalking around the fading portal. Only a hazy wisp of its shape remains and shimmers in the air. Lukas passes his hand through it, as if evaluating it with equal parts admiration and frustration.

“The Noi are talented with portals,” he says flatly, his lips taking on a rigid line.

He takes a deep, resigned breath, sheathes his wand, then pulls another wand out from under his tunic.

A wand that’s marked with glowing Noi runes.

Lukas lifts this wand and murmurs a new spell at the misty portal. It promptly explodes into finer mist, then disappears.

For a moment, we both stand there, looking at the place where the portal once was.

“Couldn’t you have used it?” I finally ask, since he’s clearly no stranger to combining magical systems.

“No,” he replies with a shake of his head. “There was no opening this portal. It’s beyond me, anyway. The Vu Trin have a firm lock on portal magic. Well done, really.”

In a rattled daze, I look down at the singed ground, at the marks the horses’ hooves gouged out of the soil, the line of tracks coming straight from our destroyed carriage to where the portal once stood, where the hoof marks abruptly disappear.

“Elloren,” Lukas says, his voice all tight control.

I look up, my stomach clenching at the unmistakable edge to his tone.

His eyes are fixed hard on mine. “Why was an elite assassin trying to kill you?”

I open my mouth...but nothing comes out. I’m still not sure I trust his allegiances enough to tell him the truth, and I’m unable to voice every lie that comes to mind.

He stands there waiting, as if he’s ready to wait all night if he has to.

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