Page 140 of The Demon Tide

He gives me a frustrated look, his jaw tensing.

“You once told me,” I say, “that we had to put the safety of our loved ones above our own wants.”

A short, bitter laugh escapes him.

“Your mother’s here, yes?” I prod.

“She is,” he answers, voice tight.

“As is close to everyone we care about. And...all of the other people here—you know as well as I do what’s going to happen to them if Vogel successfully invades. He’ll bring a nightmare. That we might be able to stop.”

He pulls in a shuddering breath. “I know it, Elloren.”

And I can feel it, our shared, revolutionary spirit rising in our fire even as we both rail against fate.

“Iwillget Vang Troi to parley with you,” he bites out.

I nod, struggling to swallow back the unspoken. His fire is suddenly circling me more intensely and he steps nearer, the flow of his heat blazingly ardent.

“I can’t kiss you again, Yvan,” I say as opposing impulses crash through me.

“I know,” he says roughly, his lips lifting even as agony slashes through his fire. “I also know that you want to.”

Tears gather in my throat, making it hard to speak as I fist my wand hand, the rune still uncharged, allowing us a moment longer. “I’m sorry I hold your fire bond,” I tell him, my voice splintering with fierce regret. “I wish there was a way to free you.”

“Elloren...” A tremor shudders through his fire, my name wrung from him like a precious thing as he draws me into an embrace. I close my eyes and hug his hot body close as his lips come to my temple, my chest rising and falling against his, and I realize that this moment is both a solidification of our alliance and a permanent goodbye to what can never be between us.

“It’s impossibly hard to leave you,” he says in a ragged whisper.“Even though I know...you’re his now.”

Remorse ricochets through me, my heart painfully torn. “I’m the Black Witch above anything,” I say roughly, drawing back from him as I blink back tears. “And there’s no way of knowing what the future holds for me.”

The fire in his eyes rises to an inferno. “It holds me in it as your ally,” he declares, the force of his magic taking me by surprise as it burns through my lines, momentarily singeing away my tears and my grief and every terrible thing in the world, fierce love running through it.

He steps back even as his fire desperately reaches for me and mine reaches for him in turn. A hotter portion of his flame escapes his control and brushes over my lips in an impassioned kiss that he holds himself decidedly back from, sparking a powerful ache in my heart.

And then he fans out his wings, gives them a hard flap down, and lifts into the air, hovering just above me, a rhythmic flow of air whooshing down.

I’m frozen, my breath caught in my throat, his fire lingering on my lips as our eyes remain locked for one molten moment. He holds my gaze for a second more, then flies up and up toward the starlit opening high above.

A blast of his fire courses back toward me, embracing me with shimmering heat.

And then he’s gone.

“Are you ready?” Ra’Ven asks, emerald rune stylus in hand, as I stand before him, partially unclothed in the circular cavern. I hold my balled-up tunic against my chest, grateful that Valasca helped me learn to manage my overwhelming Gardnerian shyness.

Everyone whose power will be needed to free my magic quietly stands in a circle around me—Sage, Rivyr’el, Or’myr, Tierney, Trystan, Lucretia, and also her brother Fain, who’s just arrived. The Lupines have positioned themselves just outside the cavern’s entrance to guard it.

“I’m ready,” I say.

Ra’Ven brings his stylus’s tip to the tattoo imprint of each of the six runic chains marked around my neck in turn, my skin prickling as each chain morphs from a flat tattoo to a three-dimensional linkage of Smaragdalfar varg runes. He gently takes hold of one of the chains and lifts it off me.

Tension releases along the top of my ears as they lose their points, a portentous feeling sizzling through me. He lifts off another chain, and a sweep of energy courses over my scalp and I glance down to find my pale gray hair morphed back to black. Another chain off, and green sparks light in my vision, the glamour lifting as the remaining chains come off one by one, and I know, as Ra’Ven straightens, that I look like the Black Witch again.

I raise my green-glimmering wand hand and take in the curling fastlines once more visible on my hands and wrists, and my heart constricts. It was so difficult to feel anything past Yvan’s Wyvernbond when he was so near, but now, with him gone, the memory of finding Lukas in his dream rushes in like a tide. I clench my fists around my fastlines as if desperately grasping hold of what will soon be my path back to Lukas.

Sage and Rivyr’el take Ra’Ven’s place before me as I slide my tunic back on. Lowering herself to one knee, Sage motions for me to raise my tunic’s hem, then brings her purple wand’s tip to the demon-sensing rune on my abdomen just as Sparrow Trillium and Thierren Stone slip into the cavern.

“You’re here,” I say, astonished to be reunited with my former Valgard lady’s maid and Lukas’s Level Five Mage ally, Thierren’s uniform now that of a Vu Trin soldier. “I’m so glad you made it East,” I say, swept up in the remembrance of our escape from Valgard while Sage removes a section of the rune she marked on me in Amazakaraan with a stretching sting that has me wincing.

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