Page 95 of The Shadow Wand

As his lips make contact with my cheek, his hand clenches around my arm, tight as a vise.“Your power,”he hisses into my ear, too low for anyone to hear.“How much can you access?”

I choke out my whispered answer, terrified.“All of it.”

Lukas pulls back. And when his eyes lock on to mine, I’m horrified to see fear there. Fear for me. He leans in again, his hand clenching harder, his whisper full of fierce urgency.“Tell no one.”

Feeling unable to breathe, I force a nod. I can see him trying to convey an extreme sense of danger with his expression alone.

Mage Vogel’s Level Five guards close in around us, waiting for Lukas to follow.

Lukas releases my arm and shoots me one more brief, intense look. It scares me, how hesitant he is to leave. Without him I’m incredibly vulnerable. But there’s no choice. Not with Vogel waiting.

Masking his feelings, Lukas gives me one final perfunctory bow.

And then he’s gone.

CHAPTER TEN

ORDERS

ELLOREN GARDNER

Sixth Month

Valgard, Gardneria

Escape.

It’s foremost in my mind as I scan the stout backs of the guards stationed outside my bedroom’s diamond-paned windows.

Anxiety tightens my chest.

More soldiers on horseback are riding in just beyond the guards outside. I turn and take in my bedroom’s heavy Ironwood door, knowing two more soldiers are posted just outside this room.

A trap closing in on both me and Lukas.

An image of Vogel’s malevolent Shadow Wand fills my mind as well as a remembrance of his terrifying magic. Magic he’ll consume me with if he finds out what I am.

But then the vision of another Wand blazes into being—a Wand able to send out the image of a starlight tree to wind around and destroy Vogel’s Shadow tree.

The Wand I’m a Bearer of.

The Wand of Myth.

My actions hidden by the bed’s side, I kneel down and hastily retrieve the Wand of Myth from inside the lining of my travel sack, lantern and woodstove light flickering over me as, with trembling hands, I fold back the edges of the handkerchief the Wand is wrapped in. Even though its ability to channel magic went dormant when Trystan last tried to wield it, power leaps through my lines at the sight of it, straining toward the Wand’s pale wood.

Everything in me yearns to touch it, and I’m careful not to let its spiraling wood make contact with the skin of my wand hand. Instead, I stare at the Wand, almost mesmerized. Its wood is so beautiful—opalescent with an underlying glow.

As if it contains a guiding star in its bright depths.

A frisson passes through my lines as I’m caught up in the sense that the Wand is staring back at me.

Without warning, an image of white birds explodes into my vision, then a Shadow tree, then a flash of bright light, one image after another in staccato bursts. My head jerks back, a rush of energy coursing over me as I’m filled with the sudden, innate sense that it’s desperately important to keep this Wand close.

And to not let Vogel get hold of it.

My pulse thundering, I wrap the handkerchief tight around the Wand, shove it into the side of my boot, and pull my skirts down over it.

My sense of danger surges, triggering the fearsome desire to press my hands onto every piece of wood in sight and release an inferno of fire.

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