Page 176 of The Demon Tide

Confusion rattles me. “How?”

“Through my shielding magic. It’s stronger than Vogel’s, and I can trace his magical bindings through it.” He holds up the wand in his fist. “That’s how I got hold of this.”

I remember the strength of Lukas’s shields as he wove them into me, again and again, during our escape from Valgard.

“Show me,” I press.

Lukas closes his eyes and inhales, neck cording. The ropes of Shadow around us draw sharply in, Lukas’s earth power branching around both me and the Shadow. All the energy in my lines suddenly warps toward Lukas’s power, my body arching toward him as I’m swept into the bizarre sensation of my very essence pulling out of my body and into his.

Lukas’s translucent form slips over mine, the terrace snapping out of sight.

I blink uncomprehendingly at what now lies before us—a cavern’s shadowy alcove, a larger cave just beyond. A knot of multi-eyed, grotesquely stretched-out scorpios scuttle past without taking notice of us. Another Shadow-corrupted scorpio stands stock-still before us, as if on guard, its powerful forelimbs coated in blood. Lukas turns his head, and we take in the dead Mage soldier lying crumpled in the shadows, his body mutilated, as if slashed clear through before being dragged to the back of the cave and stuffed into its darkest recess.

I remember this space—the prison Lukas was in when I connected to him via the dead wraith bat’s Shadow rune. A fragile hope lights. Somehow, he’s gotten hold of a wand and struck down the prison’s Shadow bars...

Lukas moves forward, and the motion pulls me with him. We peer into a gigantic cave opening just beyond our alcove...and fear grips hold. It’s mammoth, expanding seemingly forever, the height of the vaulted ceiling rising to obscurity. Affixed all over the cave’s obsidian walls is an organic growth resembling combs of a wasp’s nest—if wasps were as large as humans.

Soldiers are emerging from the nest’s wall of hexagonal cells, their eyes glowing gray as they drop to the stony ground. And not just Mage soldiers, Alfsigr too, their ivory bodies elongated, their eyes an enlarged, insectile gray.

Lukas sweeps our gaze over the scene, and I take in the Marfoir scuttling across the cavern’s higher reaches, bone-white spider legs sprouted from their stretched-out forms. Multi-eyed dragons are lined up in formation, corrupted wraith bats hang from outcroppings of stone, and scorpios hunch in neat rows along the cavern’s base, a nightmare army ready to be unleashed.

The scene breaks off and I almost lose my footing as I’m hurled back into my own body on the Vonor balcony, Lukas’s translucent image once more before me.

“My cousin, Or’myr,” I force out as I steady myself, determination reigniting, “he’ll be back any moment. He’s a powerful Mage and geomancer. We’ll get hold of a portal and travel Westtonight. Once there, we’ll track you—”

“There’s no moretime,” Lukas snarls. “I can’t hold off Vogel’s control much longer. And once he has complete hold of me, he’ll be able to take full hold ofyou.” Agony slashes across Lukas’s livid features, his eyes taking on a look of such tortured love it scares me. “Elloren, our fasting link has to be destroyed.”

“It can’t be removed!”

His gaze burns into me. “No. It can’t. But thereisa way to break the link between us.”

My mind reels. As a female, my fastlines are forever. But thelinkbetween us...

Understanding crashes home.

He means breaking it with his death.

“No, Lukas,no,” I cry, my protest feral in its intensity, fire blasting through my lines.

“Stop,”he commands. “As soon as this spell quickens to the point that I can touch you, I need to draw on as much of your power as I can. I’m going to buy you and the Eastern Realm time.” That fierce, pained love enters his gaze once more. “Elloren, you were right all along. There are bigger things to fight for than just power. Bigger things to die for.” His expression shifts, turning dagger-hard. “I’m going to kill Marcus Vogel and take out as much of this hive as I can. And then you’ll be free to finish what I started.”

The terrible reality crushes me like a vise. I can barely breathe against it. He’s already set the wheels in motion by breaking free of Vogel’s imprisonment. Which means he has to stage his attack on Vogelnow, before he’s discovered.

Sick panic knifes through my heart. “Lukas...”

“That green wand...” His eyes flick toward the spiraling weapon in my hand. “Vogel wants it. It must have more power than we know. Elloren, keep it away from him—”

Lukas’s warning cuts off as I’m hit by a sudden pulse of power so strong it rattles my teeth. Vogel’s dark tree shivers to life in my mind, luminous gray magic seeping through my lines in a twining stream. Lukas forcibly tenses, and the whorling fastline power around us contracts, pulling my essence into his misty body and the cavern once more.

“He’s coming,” Lukas murmurs, his mouth moving against the essence of mine as we peer into the massive cave. “Can you feel him?”

And I can, the gray power’s incoming flow directional. Lukas looks toward its source, and a tighter dread shudders through me as I spot Marcus Vogel emerging from the sea of soldiers. His priest attire is inexplicably gone, his black garb that of a soldier. He’s gripping his Shadow Wand, his form bracketed by the same demonic Mage envoys that were with him in the Agolith Desert, their eyes smoldering red, spiral horns made of smoke rising from their heads.

Vogel raises his Wand, and the sea of gray-eyed soldiers turns to him and stills.

Horror sears through me as Lukas flexes his power against mine. I rasp out a breath as I’m blasted back onto Or’myr’s balcony, the shadowy fastline-ropes once more streaming around us. Heart thundering, I meet Lukas’s gaze.

“Elloren,” he says, a look of brutal finality overtaking his expression. “Align yourself with Yvan Guryev. Align yourself withanyonepowerful enough to help you fight Vogel’s forces.”

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