Page 78 of The Demon Tide

“Is that the same wand I used in Verpacia?” Trystan asks.

“The very same,” I affirm. “I think it’s the mythical counterforce to Vogel’s Shadow Wand. The Sacred Wand of Myth. But...if it is, we’re in trouble. It’s nowherenearas powerful as Vogel’s Wand. It seems tohidefrom it.”

“How did it turn green?”

“It just...did. Out in the desert. I think it’s coming out of some type of dormancy.”

I tell him of the Wand’s gift of perfect aim and how it brings images of Watchers at unexpected times. I slide it back into my boot, a shimmering sense of rightness washing over me.

“But perfect aim isn’t enough,” I rue. “I need to get my Mage power unbound. And fast.”

“Well, let’s get it unbound, then,” Trystan says, and my heart tightens with another welling of gratitude to be reunited. He draws his wand and taps the skiff’s control board. The runes surrounding the skiff blink to life, beginning to rotate, as Trystan draws a shield back over us.

“Ren,” he says, hesitating for a beat as the runes whir faster, whipping blue light. “We have family here. Family that was hidden from us.”

Family?I’m speechless for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve an uncle here. And a cousin.Nothingis how we were told it was.”

The runes speed to a blur and the skiff begins to rise.“But...how can that be?”

“Our mother’s brother, Wrenfir, is alive. And Uncle Edwin has a child.”

Shock flashes through me. But then I remember how Aunt Vyvian raged about Uncle Edwin having had a forbidden relationship with an Urisk woman.

“And our parents,” Trystan says, growing even more serious as we ascend toward the dome holding back the storm, “they weren’t killed by the Kelts.”

My eyes widen. “What are you saying?”

“They were secretly fighting against the Gardnerian military. Against our own grandmother.”

“Ancient One,”I murmur. “Does that mean...”

Trystan nods and gives me a significant look as we’re enveloped by the maelstrom, its muffled roar overtaking us. “Our parents were part of the Resistance, Ren,” he says as he pilots us relentlessly forward. “And our grandmother murdered them for it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

STORMINGPOWER

Elloren Grey

Noilaan

Eastern Realm

Two days prior to Xishlon

Trystan blasts the rune skiff through the dense line of storms over the Vo Mountain Range’s peaks, wind roaring and lightning cracking over the translucent shield. I grip tight to the handhold as we begin a rapid descent, struggling to wrap my mind around the revelation that our parents, Vale and Tessla, were Resistance fighters.

The upending thought is whisked aside as our skiff bursts through the storm band, the night sky opens up and I catch my first glimpse of the mountain city of Voloi.

It glitters blue and purple in the distance, just past the expansive Vo River, which reflects the city’s light in spectacular ripples of color, the fabled purple Xishlon star of the East hanging over it all like a beacon. The city is astonishingly vertical, clinging to the sky-piercing Voloi Mountain Range in multiple staircase-like tiers that resemble streaks of sparkling paint striped horizontally across the purple and black mountains.

Trystan draws down our shield and we soar toward the city, the Vo Mountains below giving way to moonlit forest flowing down like a draped carpet. Just beyond the forest lies a sapphire glowing runic border wall hugging the Vo River’s western bank, stretching as far as my eyes can see. Blips of rune skiffs dart along the rune wall’s apex like industrious blue fireflies.

But none of this is what has my breath cinching tight in my throat.

Rising from the border to flow over the vast river and the mountain city is a huge, translucent dome, faint blue runes splashed over its surface.

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