Page 124 of The Demon Tide

“So, I have the Black Witch on my ship.” Mora’s tone is hard with the full ramifications of this. With the full ramifications ofme.

A tense silence falls over the kitchen, both doors firmly shut now. Professor Hawkkyn is leaning against a counter, his long arms crossed, his face severe. Mora sits at the prep table opposite me, her gaze on me as fierce as Professor Hawkkyn’s. I’m struck by how formidable the two of them are.

“Vogel can break military runes,” Mora’lee says, more a dread-laced, awful statement than a question.

I nod at her, feeling the ominous weight of this.

Professor Hawkkyn glances at Mora. “By bringing this information here, Elloren might have saved the entire Eastern Realm. They’ve just enough time to strengthen their runic border and weapons with varg shielding before Vogel’s forces arrive.”

Mora’s furious glare on me hasn’t budged. “Bleddyn should have told me what you are. You should have told me, as well.”

My own voice is tight with remorse when it comes. “She thought it safer for you not to know—”

“No,”she cuts me off sharply. “You both should have told me. There are children here.”

I nod, chastened. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“There are children throughout this entire realm,” Professor Hawkkyn gently reminds her.

She holds his stare, then turns back to me, as if caught partway between outrage and indecision. “You aided Nym’ellia’s sister and her mother too. You helped get Olilly and her sister out of Verpacia. Bleddyn too.”

My breathing is suspended as she carefully takes my measure. “I did,” I agree.

She gives me a shrewd look. “I’ll help you in turn, Elloren Gardner Grey. It seems you’ve proven your loyalty to our side, regardless of the prophecies being read about you.”

“The prophecies are prejudiced,” I insist, ire at the Forest rising. “They’re all based on tree divination, and the trees hate me.”

Both Mora and Professor Hawkkyn cock a brow at this.

“I’m going to find Jules,” Professor Hawkkyn says to Mora. “She does need to be relocated.”

“She’s likely safe for the moment with that glamour,” Mora points out.

“For the moment,” he cautions, as if bymomenthe meanssecond. Or split second.

Mora nods, then looks back at me. “Go to the bedroom I gave you and stay there. We’ll come for you.”

I scan the river from the bedroom’s circular window, the small room softly green-lit by a single Smaragdalfar rune lamp and the varg wards marking the walls. Perched on the slim bed abutting the outer wall, I lean into the window, my cheek to its warm glass, and wait, my thoughts repeatedly circling back to Lukas then Yvan with a dual yearning that’s impossible to fully suppress. Both of them out there, somewhere...

Exhaustion blurs the river’s spots of rune-ship light, the emotions surrounding my feelings for the two of them impossible to navigate, capsizing me again and again. Minutes pass, bleeding into what feels like hours, my eyelids fluttering and soon closing as the conflict and longing fragment into exhaustion and I fade to sleep.

At first, everything is a dense, blessed black. But then the black gives way to an infiltrating gray mist that morphs and twists into tendrils of Shadow. I’m standing in it, fingers of gray rising to twine around my legs and weapons. Around myWand.

A figure emerges from the wraithlike gloom. A hooded man, his head tipped down and darkened by the fog. He slowly lifts his head, and Vogel’s pale green eyes meet mine.

I recoil, fear knifing down my spine.

Vogel’s mouth lifts in a serpentine grin and I watch, frozen in horror, as an additional eye appears on his forehead, then on his temple, then on his cheek, one eye after another, until his entire head and neck are nothing but a grotesque mass of eyes and a grinning mouth.

He opens his lips, teeth elongating, and lunges for me.

I cry out as I bolt awake and yank my cheek from the window, fire roaring through my tangled lines as my Wand vibrates urgently against my calf, my hands stinging like someone dragged a knife over my fastlines.

I glance down and fright lances through me. My fastlines are visible and no longer black. They’re made of twisting smoke, twining through the glamour like steam.

I let out a strangled gasp. “No... Ancient One, help me...”

The smoke abruptly vanishes, along with the pain, but the scalding heat roaring through my lines intensifies, flashing gold against my vision and sweeping me into its blaze. I immediately recognize the unique golden quality of this burgeoning flame as I’m overtaken by a want so vast I feel as if it will burst through my ribs.

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