Chapter Ten

Runic Twinning

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Agolith Desert

Twelve days after Xishlon

Gwynn ascends the spiraling red-stone staircase to the Sunlands, the exit bracketed by two grim-faced Smaragdalfar soldiers. Predawn’s indigo light filters in from above, and breathless anticipation wells inside her.

Gwynn was surprised by the ache in her heart and the pull on her lines that took hold when she woke up to find Mavrik gone, her magical draw to him stronger than it was the night before, leading her to rise and follow it through one Subland tunnel and up one spiral staircase after another, past throngs of heavily armed soldiers to where she’s certain she’ll find him.

Gwynn pauses at the cavern’s mouth before an elevated, scarlet-stone ledge, awe expanding her lungs as she takes in the sight in the distance.

Lightning-spitting storm bands high as mountain ranges line every horizon.

She’s read about these vast streaks of Wyvern-crafted storms that crisscross the continent’s center, the storm bands’ deadly, Wyvernfire-infused lightning magicked to deploy killing strikes at anything unwarded attempting to fly over them. But it’s one thing to read about the storm bands and another to come face-to-face with them.

Gwynn watches the bands, transfixed, as white lightning flashes through their long, roiling expanses. A deep-rose sunrise is forming over the eastern storm band, the Agolith Desert’s startlingly red stars still asserting themselves against a brightening cobalt sky.

A pleasurable tingle rushes through Gwynn’s lightlines, and Agolith-red sparks flicker through the corners of her Light Mage vision as she takes in the great swaths of ruddy stone arcing over the crimson landscape. And the scattered groves of trees. Some dark and bulbous, some a luminous, buttery yellow that seem to glow from within.

A vision of the Verdyllion pulses through Gwynn’s mind, as if it, too, is caught up in the shimmering pull of forbidden Fae color. The Wand gives a directional tug on Gwynn’s attention, and she slides her gaze that way, searching across the crimson sands and then freezing as she spots a pale, winged figure in the distance.

Wynter Eirllyn is sitting under one of the yellow-glowing yucca trees, her slender form luminescent against the predawn blue, her dark wings fanned out. A ring of suspended silver Alfsigr runes Gwynn is unfamiliar with surround her, as well as countless birds, some of them on the red sands, some perched on the yellow branches above. The Verdyllion a slim, iridescent speck of green held loosely in Wynter’s hand.

Gwynn’s gut clenches over how small and vulnerable the Wand seems. Just a trace of green in a huge, lethal world, Vogel’s Shadow behemoth rapidly closing in around them all.

Fighting the urge to cower in the face of the dangerous unknown, Gwynn forces herself to stride onto the elevated ledge before her. Pausing there, she sweeps her gaze down toward a knot of soldiers gathered around a runic green bonfire in the center of another flat ledge beneath hers, the winding path of red rock at Gwynn’s feet leading down toward that broad, lower ledge.

Her gaze snags on Mavrik, her pulse quickening, a flush heating her face as she remembers his kiss.

He’s seated amidst the circle of soldiers and talking to them in low tones, the soldiers mostly Subland Elves save for Wynter Eirllyn’s intense brother, Cael, and Cael’s quiet Second, Rhys. Mynx’lia’luure is pressed against Cael’s side in an overly familiar way and sipping from a mug while the commanding Subland soldier with the half-shaved head, Yyzz’ra, glowers at them both. The Amaz, Valasca, sits to one side beside the lavender Urisk woman, Sparrow, both women now garbed in Subland-green tunics and pants, their throats curiously ringed by emerald-glowing Varg runes.

Gwynn’s gaze swings back to Mavrik like a compass finding true north, and she begins to pick her way down the stone path. An almost hypnotic rush of magic sizzles through her in response to the way Mavrik’s green Mage shimmer is so dazzlingly enhanced by his shockingly emerald Smaragdalfar garb, her lines giving a hard, covetous lurch toward his.

As if sensing her magic’s yearning, Mavrik looks up, and their eyes meet.

Gwynn’s pulse jumps as sparks of luminous color flash to life on Mavrik’s lips, mortification dizzying her as her own mouth tingles, likely with matching threads of shimmering color.

Gwynn freezes, one hand covering her lips as everyone in the circle turns their eyes on her and quiets. Yyzz’ra’s belligerent gaze flicks toward Mavrik and then back to Gwynn, the Subland commander clearly having noticed the luminous color stinging both their mouths, an unkind smile forming on her own lips.

An almost unbearable shame swims through Gwynn.

You’re fasted, she chastises herself, a tight anguish clutching at her throat. You threw yourself at Mavrik so shamelessly, and you’re both fasted.

Fasted and Sealed.

“Gwynnifer,”

Mavrik says, his voice constrained but warm as he beckons her near, “come, have some tea and food.”

Gwynn’s shame is only marginally softened by Mavrik’s air of genuine welcome. Painfully self-conscious over the way her lips are still tingling with light energy, she goes to him and takes a seat between him and Mynx, careful not to touch Mavrik as Rhys quietly pours her a cup of tea from a copper kettle hanging on a tripod over the fire.

“I hope you were able to get a bit of sleep,”

Mynx says, pointedly ignoring Gwynn’s and Mavrik’s color-infused lips as she hands Gwynn a plate of steaming, nut-scented cakes, flashing her a sympathetic smile before formally introducing her to Valasca and Sparrow, Cael and Rhys, and some of the others. Gwynn mumbles greetings in return, her gaze drawn repeatedly to the sparkling violet crystal Sparrow is worrying under her fingers like a talisman.

It’s a rebellious act, Gwynn knows—Urisk females are forbidden by their religion from handling their class’s kindred stones, because Urisk women do not possess the “divine gift”

of geomancy. Gwynn meets Sparrow’s level gaze, a glint of defiance simmering in the Urisk woman’s amethyst eyes.

“Ready for your wandtesting after you’ve eaten?”

Mavrik asks.

Gwynn’s pulse kicks up and she turns to him, the glow of forbidden color still dancing over his lips drawing her eyes like a thrall. They exchange a loaded glance.

“Ready,”

she staunchly returns, even though she feels like a fish cast clear out of a familiar pond and flung leagues away. Famished, she wolfs down the food, her gaze snagging on the Varg runes necklacing Valasca’s and Sparrow’s throats once more, her confusion gaining ground as she identifies the spell work at play. This combination of Varg runes gives anyone possessing the rune stone used to mark them the power to cut off the air to Valasca’s and Sparrow’s lungs at any moment.

“Why are you marked with imprisonment runes?”

she asks them.

Yy’zzra gives Gwynn a confrontational look. “I marked them. They’re both wanted by the Vu Trin for being allied with the Black Witch. They helped Elloren Gardner Grey escape Valgard so she could go on to raze Voloi.”

Valasca’s dark eyes flash at Yyzz’ra. “We were allied with Elloren before Vogel took control of her.”

“She was always Vogel’s Black Witch,”

Yyzz’ra bites back.

“No, she really wasn’t,”

Valasca emphatically counters. She shakes her head, looks to the heavens as if praying to the Amaz Goddess for strength, then spits out what sounds like a curse before setting her grim gaze back on Gwynn. “We underestimated Vogel. And it’s best if none of us ever do that again.”

“We might yet give him a run for his money,”

Mavrik says, a lethal edge to his tone.

Valasca raises a brow at this. “That you may, Glass. Appreciate your deft rune work with the spiders.”

She raises her teacup, toasting both him and Gwynn with it before narrowing her gaze on Gwynnifer. “And kudos to you for keeping the Verdyllion Wand-Stylus away from the Magedom.”

Valasca looks toward Wynter’s distant, still figure, and Gwynn follows the Amaz warrior’s line of sight.

Surprise shocks through Gwynn.

A dome of silvery runes now encases both Wynter and the bright yellow yucca tree she’s meditating under. Multiple thin lines of silver power flow from the Verdyllion toward the dome’s undersurface, giving the dome’s interior magic a dandelion-puff appearance with Wynter at its epicenter.

“How did you know I had the Wand?”

Gwynn asks Valasca, thrown by the shrewd look the Amaz is giving her.

“I’m well acquainted with Sagellyn Za’Nor,”

Valasca answers.

Gwynn stiffens, guilt rising. “Then you know I wasn’t a very good friend to her.”

Valasca’s piercing stare doesn’t waver. “Well, you seem set on a decent path now, Gardnerian, which is what’s important in this life.”

Yyzz’ra snorts, leveling an unkind smirk at Gwynn. “I don’t know about decent,”

she says, exaggeratedly eyeing the chromatic energy still stinging over Gwynn’s and Mavrik’s lips. “You fasted Mages get on with it rather quickly, don’t you?”

Another stab of remorse spears through Gwynn, and Mavrik lowers his mug to his knee, his piercing gaze homing in on Yyzz’ra, his lips curling into a cutting smile. “Jealous, Yyzz? Secretly pining for me?”

Yyzz’ra laughs, jabbing her thumb toward Gwynnifer. “Well, at least I could do more than kiss you, unlike this one here. Such a pity she’s fasted, isn’t it? Sealed too.”

Mavrik’s eyes turn cold as Gwynn’s remorse turns suffocating.

“You couldn’t take each other if you tried, could you?”

Yyzz’ra continues. She flicks her finger at Mavrik. “Well, I suppose you could without consequence, being a man.”

“Silence yourself, Yyzz,”

Mynx cuts in, silver eyes incensed.

“Why?”

Yyzz’ra protests as she sweeps a hand at Gwynn. “I’m just pointing out the barbarity of their wandfasting traditions.”

Outrage lights in Gwynn, every nerve bristling to hear Yyzz’ra commenting so assuredly on something she doesn’t live, wandfasting so trussed up with conflict and joy and pain and confusion, it’s like a choking force lodged in the center of Gwynn’s chest. And increasingly like a prison cage around her heart as well as a potential route for Shadow horror. You don’t understand, Gwynn wants to lash out at Yyzz’ra. You’re only right in a shallow, skirting-the-surface sort of way.

Mavrik has gone very still, his gaze pinned on Yyzz’ra.

Gwynn’s guilt rears its head once more, over having approached another man as if he were her fastmate. The nightmare of Geoffrey’s gray eyes shudders through Gwynn’s mind. His unyielding belief. His heart-shattering descent into Shadow . . .

“When did they fast you?”

Yyzz’ra challenges Mavrik, as if he’s somehow to blame for the invention of this tradition that was foisted on them both. “You’re both Styvian,”

she presses, leaning forward. “Was it at thirteen?”

Gwynn winces, hyperaware of her own fastlines.

Placed when she was thirteen.

“I know what it is to have a binding forced upon me,”

Cael cuts in.

Gwynn’s eyes snap toward Cael’s intense silver gaze.

“The Zalyn’or necklace I used to be marked with was forced upon me at only ten years of age,”

Cael comments. “I tried to fight my people, but they held me down and placed the binding on me in an effort to subdue my will and make me hate my sister.”

Emotion balls in Gwynn’s throat in response to the pain in Cael’s eyes.

Yyzz’ra’s biting voice cuts through the moment. “See,”

she crows at Mynx, “even your Alfsigr agrees that these bindings are barbaric.”

Yyzz’ra loses her jeering smile as her gaze swings to Mavrik. “And now, there’s a growing risk that Vogel might take control of every Zalyn’or-marked Alfsigr and every fasted Mage via your fastmarks, isn’t there?”

“The Mages are poised to take over everything, Yyzz,”

Mynx angrily counters.

Yyzz’ra rounds on her. “No, Mynx. These two Mages are a particular danger, and you know it. They need runic imprisonment collars around their necks. As do the Alfsigr, Zalyn’or marked or not.”

“All my wands are rune marked to self-destruct if I try to cast spells corrupted with Shadow magic through them,”

Mavrik flings back at her. “Satisfied?”

Yyzz’ra’s glower turns white-hot. “No. I am not satisfied. And I won’t be until your kind are thrown out of the Sublands and wiped clear off the face of Erthia! The Alfsigr too!”

Mavrik slams down his mug and gets up, lightly touching Gwynn’s shoulder. “Come with me, Gwynn,”

he stiffly offers. “Let’s get to work.”

Gwynn swallows thickly as she rises, so troubled and flustered she’s barely able to meet Mavrik’s gaze. When she finally dares to, she finds a blazing understanding there, but it does little to temper her lashing turmoil.

“Mavrik, we know you’re on our side,”

Mynx starts, seeming concerned.

Mavrik gives Mynx a harsh, cautionary look that silences her as Gwynn follows him down a rocky path toward the desert sands, an argument breaking out behind them in Smaragdalfarin.

An argument about them.

Gwynn does her best to blot it out, feeling as if the whole world is battering her like the winds roiling inside the storm bands in the distance, even though the sheltered predawn space surrounding her is cool and still and dry.

Arms splayed out for balance, Gwynn follows Mavrik down from the ledge and over the Agolith’s crimson sand. Rose sparks suffuse the edges of her vision in response to the deep-rose light of predawn brightening as the sun moves closer to the storm bands’ apex.

They pass Wynter’s distant form, the Icaral’s eyes closed in concentration. The Verdyllion in Wynter’s hand is raised as she murmurs spell after spell, small runes forming around her like suspended silver rain.

Gwynn’s shrewd eyes scan the designs of these newly conjured runes.

Storm-amplifying runes, all of them.

“Why is she crafting storm runes?”

Gwynn asks Mavrik as she follows him under one of the Agolith’s towering scarlet-stone arches, decadent red sparks flashing through her Light Mage vision and over her wand hand.

“She’s getting ready to feed more power into the storm bands so we can overtake them and deploy them against Vogel’s forces,”

Mavrik answers as they stride into a sheltered semicircle of stone, the stone’s rose striations alternating with lines of vivid purple, the streaks of forbidden color dizzyingly alluring.

Gwynn lifts her gaze toward the dark storm bands. They’re flashing with bright energy, a wall against Vogel’s forces, about to be strengthened and controlled by the Verdyllion. A slim bit of relief edges into her, but it’s doused by her memory of Yyzz’ra’s angrily voiced concerns.

“Yyzz’ra is right about us being a potential danger,”

Gwynn admits.

Mavrik turns to face her. “She is,”

he concedes, the color still crackling over his lips with provocative force. “So, we exhaust every magical course of action to fight Vogel and our fastings. Pool our knowledge. Pool our power. See what you’re capable of. And, what we’re capable of together.”

He pauses as their magic gives a palpable, insistent pull toward each other, the tingle of magic dancing over Gwynn’s lips intensifying along with the color flashing over Mavrik’s mouth.

“This is a good, open site to wandtest you,”

Mavrik comments matter-of-factly, all business as he draws one of the four wands sheathed at his hip—the golden, Issani-rune-marked one—but Gwynn can detect pent-up emotion in his tone.

She glances at his fastmarked hands and wrists, her own pent-up reaction to what transpired between them last night lapping against her in a damning tide. She tenses her hands against her looping fastlines—a fasting that was once the most precious thing in all the world to her. When tears threaten to make a play for her eyes, she blinks hard to press them back.

None of this matters, she chastises herself. The only thing that matters is fighting Vogel’s Shadow.

But still, the question clamors for release, and she’s unable to stop it from bursting forth. “Did you love your fastmate?”

Mavrik freezes, his expression turning as impenetrable as the Agolith’s crimson stone. He lets out a harsh sigh, his lips compressing into a tight line. “I was thirteen when I was fasted, same as you, I’d imagine.”

His jaw ticks as he glances toward the storm band lining the horizon, before turning his blazing green eyes back on her. “It was forced on me.”

“But . . . you’re also Sealed,”

Gwynn blurts out. Both of them, bound not just in a fasting but also in a Sealing at or past eighteen years of age, the consummation of the fasting nonnegotiable.

Mavrik narrows his eyes at her, a flash of intensity heating them. “I went on my first deployment the day after our Sealing. By the time I returned, I was hells-bent on resistance. And quickly found out I had been paired with a woman who’s like your Geoffrey. Who fully supports slashing the tips off the ears of children like Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee, then deporting them to ‘purify the Magedom’s Holy Soil.’?”

He grimaces and glances away before casting her a troubled look, jagged pain in it. “It was an impossible situation. I quickly found myself very much alone.”

He looks away again, mouth tensing before he turns back to her. “I was soon undercover to the Vu Trin, lying to every Mage around me.”

His eyes take on a haunted look. “Gwynn . . . if you’d seen the Fae slaughter going on in the north . . .”

He stops, appearing momentarily stricken with both devastating remorse and remembered horror.

Contrition tightens Gwynn’s gut. “I’m sorry,”

she says, understanding, all too well, a piece of his remorse and horror. And what it is to find your life suddenly spinning out of control, the image of the armory and her family’s home exploding surfacing again and again. Leaving her fastmate and throwing her lot in with the Resistance went against every last thing she was taught her whole life.

As did falling into alliance with a rebel like Mavrik.

But she also can’t shake a series of even stronger images—the frightened Smaragdalfar children fleeing through the Sublands. Bloom’ilya’s and Ee’vee’s terrified faces as their ears were cropped. And from what she’s learned since then, that’s only a trace of the barbarity the Gardnerians have rained down on the world.

“I know how hard it is,”

Mavrik says, cutting into her thoughts, his tone and gaze softened with compassion, “to go against everything you were ever taught. And I know what it is to have your heart broken by reality.”

Gwynn pulls in a harsh breath, blinking back the sting of tears as she holds his gaze, the memory of how kind he was to Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee only escalating her draw to him. “I fell into your magic last night,”

she admits, struggling not to feel like a criminal. She can tell, from his knowing expression, that he can read the forbidden subtext she can’t bring herself to voice.

I fell into you.

“I fell into your magic, as well,”

he admits before he coughs out a self-deprecating laugh, biting at the color still forking over his lips. He gestures toward his mouth, an ardent intensity overtaking his expression. “I loved kissing you, Gwynn, I won’t deny it. Our thrall is making that a bit too obvious. The Verdyllion seems to have enhanced the magical attraction between us when it linked our lines. It’s quite adept at creating strong linkages, among other things.”

“Have you tried wielding the Verdyllion on your own?”

Gwynn asks, cognizant that he was Gardneria’s premier wandmaster before the Magedom marked him as its enemy.

He nods. “It won’t let me send magic through it. The Wand seems to have a mind of its own. For the moment, only Wynter seems able to wield it as a runic stylus.”

“I feel like . . .”

Gwynn hesitates, biting at her own tingling lips. “My magic wants to leap into yours.”

His eyes sharpen with a knowing light, and she struggles to not fall into the gorgeous green of them. “Your magic perfectly complements mine,”

he says, his tone low and confidential. “I think that’s why the Wand was able to forge such a strong link between us. I’m a Level Five Air, Wind, Earth, and Fire Mage. I’m only lacking in light magery. And you have a very strong line of light power. Last night, when we . . . connected . . . I felt like that link was reforged. Amplified, even.”

He rubs at his lips as Gwynn turns this over in her thoughts, the space between them suddenly crackling with forbidden possibility.

“When we kissed . . .”

Gwynn forces out, an ocean of conflict rising “. . . I did think you were Geoffrey.”

“I’m clear on that,”

Mavrik says, his voice and stance hardening. “Gwynn, I’m not him.”

So much is conveyed in those two words. A tingle races down Gwynn’s spine as she holds his blazingly intent gaze.

No, she considers, you are definitively not Geoffrey.

Caustic misery and guilt and anger dig their claws in.

Did Geoffrey witness slaughter? What atrocities was he party to after he deployed?

Yet, unlike Mavrik, he stayed.

“Geoffrey’s eyes . . .”

she tells Mavrik in a strangled voice. “A few months back, they took on a gray glow. He’s ensorcelled in some way . . . probably by that Wand of Vogel’s. Perhaps not of his own volition—”

“No, Gwynn,”

Mavrik cuts in. “It’s a choice for Mage soldiers to take on Shadow magic. I was offered it, as well. Geoffrey saw what they’re doing. He saw it, Gwynn. But he wanted power.”

His words are a strike to the heart. A part of her guessed this already. Sensed the change in Geoffrey before his eyes started to turn gray. She remembers him railing against his Level Two earth magery, increasingly bitter over how his low level of power robbed him of rank and prestige.

And as much as she had once loved him, she can see the brutal truth so clearly now—Geoffrey would have absolutely traded in his humanity for power and acceptance. As it was, his humanity was already slipping away, to the point that the torture of children was acceptable to him. And to her parents, as well.

Her misery slides into blistering outrage then reckless defiance, the will to fight resurfacing. She gives Mavrik a hard stare. “Let’s see what I can do with a wand.”

Mavrik’s eyes glint, as if he’s seeing something new in her that he adores. He flips the wand in his hand and holds its hilt out to her. “Try it,”

he prods. “Send out a spell.”

Gwynn nods and takes it, a thrill coursing through her as she considers the wand in her hand, noticing its wood is the exact same hue as the tree Wynter is sitting under. There’s a small grove of the same Golden Yucca trees huddled together in the near distance, their bright color gaining ground as the rising sun inches closer to the storm bands’ top edges.

Drawing in a shivering breath, Gwynn lifts the golden wand and murmurs a simple Mage light-orb spell, her light magery flashing to life through her lines and sparking toward her wand hand.

Her magic flashes against her palm’s underside, triggering an explosive ache as it shimmers fitfully there, unable to break through to the wand in her hand. Caught up in the wildly frustrating yearning for magical release, Gwynn grits her teeth, her voice rough when it comes. “My magic is still blocked.”

“Then let’s try the spell with us touching,”

Mavrik offers, his tone full of a patient warmth that skims the edge off Gwynn’s frustration.

Beating back her turbulent emotions, Gwynn nods, stiffening against the way her magic leaps toward Mavrik’s as he slides in behind her, reaches out, and closes his wand hand around hers.

The flashing exchange of their power shocks through Gwynn as their lines connect.

She inhales at the same time that Mavrik does, his hand tightening around hers.

“What magic should I try?”

she murmurs, flustered by the surge of her light magery and Mavrik’s proximity.

“Fashion Mageline-connection runes,”

he slyly suggests.

She glances at him over her shoulder as comprehension of his intention triggers a more complicated idea.

“I should try Issani power-connection runes,”

she counters. “I can imprint one on each of us and set down a Noi flow rune between them to amplify the connection. It might set up a transient linkage that’s much stronger than a Mage ward.”

Mavrik’s brow lifts with obvious surprise before he grins wolfishly at her. Gwynn’s thoughts scatter a bit, the feral masculinity of that grin combined with the feel of his hand wrapped around hers bringing her right back to his exciting kiss.

“That’s wickedly clever,”

he purrs, looking her over as if seeing her, once more, in an expanded light. “Try it,”

he prods with a devilish grin. “Access your magic, Light Mage.”

Giddy from his encouragement—encouragement to own her power that no one has ever given her before—Gwynn pulls in a deep breath and murmurs the spell.

Small sparks of bright yellow light spurt from the wand’s tip, and a startled sound escapes Gwynn, her pulse accelerating. As her wand hand trembles in Mavrik’s grip, the yellow sparks fizzle out before they can even begin to form a rune, but still.

Still.

She coaxed actual light magic into existence.

Her magic.

From a wand.

For a moment Gwynn can barely summon a breath. She chances a look at Mavrik to find him grinning dangerously at her, the threads of color shimmering over his lips brightened along with the energy tingling over hers at the remembrance of how his thrilling kiss blasted their magic to more potent life.

The thought slips out before she can fully process it—

“We should kiss to amplify my power.”

Mavrik’s eyes widen slightly, and she stiffens, nearly overcome by the strength of the ingrained, cultural pushback ricocheting through her over so brazenly wanting things a Styvian Gardnerian woman is never supposed to ever want unless it’s sanctioned and controlled by the Magedom itself.

Power over her own magic.

And Mavrik’s lips on hers.

Religious conflict storms through her, fiercer than the inside of any storm band, and she looks at the red sand at her feet, readying herself for the Ancient One Himself to strike her down.

Mavrik’s hand comes to her shoulder. “Gwynn, look at me.”

Raging against the rise of mortal fear, she does.

“I think you might be on to something,”

he offers. “But we need to be honest about how overwhelming this thrall between us feels. Which makes it dangerous. We can kiss to try and free up your magic, and not go any further with it. Gwynn, we can’t go any further with it, ever. It has to be said.”

The full cruelty of her fasting is suddenly bearing down on Gwynn, her fastmarks an unbreakable prison. She can sense, in the mutual desire flickering in Mavrik’s look, that the subtext blazing between them doesn’t need to be voiced. They’re both clear that what transpired between them last night wasn’t just about a magical bond. His kiss was an explosively thrilling pleasure and a comfort, lighting her up in a way Geoffrey never lit her up. Leaving her both frustrated and ashamed to be suddenly considering that type of connection with someone she’s not fasted to.

“I loved my fastmate,”

Gwynn admits, feeling poised on yet another life-altering, unforgivable precipice.

“I’m sorry, Gwynnifer,”

Mavrik says with a look of pained commiseration.

She holds his gaze, impassioned conflict rising. “I never thought I’d ever want anyone else . . .”

Mavrik takes a step back, shaking his head as if warding off their magical pull. “We can’t dare to think that way. Not bound up in fasting spells.”

He gives her a stricken, searching look, gesturing toward the wand in her hand. “Gwynn, what do you want to do?”

Gwynn looks to the storm bands and thinks, yet again, of the Urisk she witnessed being herded into wagons, the Smaragdalfar children fleeing for their lives. The monster of the whole Magedom bearing down. And then, the memory of how kind Mavrik was to Ee’vee and Bloom’ilya, to the point that Ee’vee was reluctant to leave him.

She meets Mavrik’s piercing gaze. “Geoffrey is gone. But our power—it’s right here. This fight is right here. I want you to kiss me. Help me access my power. For the good of Erthia.”

Mavrik stills, then nods, his breathing tripping into a faster cadence as he steps close, brings his hand up to caress her arm, then leans down and brings his lips to hers.

A shock of multicolored light cracks through Gwynn, an explosion of wanton pleasure flashing through her as they both gasp against each other’s mouths and their magic breaks free to surge through each other’s lines. Swept up in their powers’ prismatic undertow, they draw each other closer, and Gwynn can feel, in the twining of their power, their instantaneous mutual desire to fuse.

Something shocks through Gwynn, the sense of trapped magic in her center breaking open in a burst of light as she grips his tunic’s side.

Breaking the kiss, Gwynn looks around, dazed, to find that every color in the crimson desert around her is brightened, Mavrik’s face and form limned in an aura of shimmering multihued light.

“Try the spell again,”

Mavrik huskily prods as he slides around her once more and clasps his wand hand around hers.

Forcing focus, Gwynn lifts the wand, Mavrik following her motion as she murmurs the runic spell.

A clean, luminous yellow line sweeps from her wand’s tip, and Gwynn’s heartbeat leaps, utter disbelief surging. “Holy Ancient One,”

she rasps out.

“Go on,”

Mavrik prods, “finish the rune.”

Getting hold of herself, Gwynn finishes crafting two small suspended golden amplification runes then drags and fuses one to her wand arm and the other to Mavrik’s. Deciding to experiment, Gwynn hands Mavrik’s gold wand back to him and places her hand around his this time.

Murmuring the Noi flow-rune spell, Mavrik fashions a suspended sapphire rune, seeming stunned by his new Light Mage ability to create runes. Visibly gathering himself, he connects the Noi rune’s power to the golden runes on their arms via two luminous rays of sapphire, Gwynn’s light power running bright through his lines.

“This changes everything,”

Mavrik says, seeming awestruck by the Noi rune suspended before them, raying out light. He turns to her. “Do you have any idea of the magic we can do together? We have access to all five elemental lines.”

He hands her back the wand. “Try to cast a spell without me touching you.”

Drawing in a bolstering breath, Gwynn raises the wand and murmurs the Mage light-orb spell once again.

Her magic surges toward the wand and flashes against her palm’s underside once more, triggering an even stronger ache as it remains blocked. Frustration swamps her, but before she can give voice to it, dawn breaks over the distant storm bands’ towering apexes. Gilded sunlight washes over the desert’s breathtakingly vermillion expanse, and Gwynn’s heart lifts as her lines fill with a euphoric energy. A bright orange hawk soars into view overhead, then another, the raptors circling each other like two spots of saffron flame.

A small gasp escapes Gwynnifer. “Those are Agolith Flame Hawks,”

she tells Mavrik. “They pair for life.”

Her voice hitches around the words as she watches the hawks wheeling through the sky. She turns and meets Mavrik’s intense stare as an idea lights, bright as the hawks’ feathers and sudden flood of sunlight. “We could join ourselves with Issani twinning runes,”

she ventures. “The Issani twin their high-level sorcerers. That way, they have full, permanent access to each other’s magic. Without needing to touch each other.”

She can sense the wheels of Mavrik’s wandmaster mind turning as he peers more closely at her. “That’s Issaan’s most powerful military magic, Gwynn,”

he says, a strong note of caution in his tone. “A complete fusing. As permanent as fasting. More so. And the amplification of power it triggers . . . it can be lethal. Which is why it’s rarely cast.”

He shakes his head. “If you were to set down that twinning spell and we survived its fusing, we’d never be able to remove it. We’d never function as separate Mages again. We’d have to stay in the same location. Always. And if one of us died, the other would die too.”

Gwynn pulls in a deep breath, peering up at the hawks as her lines strain toward Mavrik’s. Undaunted, she lowers her gaze to his, tension igniting between them.

“It’s too dangerous, Gwynn . . .”

he insists, slicing his hand emphatically through the air. “We can’t—”

An explosive CRACK booms out from every horizon, knifing through Gwynn’s ears and breaking off Mavrik’s words as the image of the Verdyllion pulses hard against Gwynn’s mind.

Startled, they turn toward the sound, and shock lances through Gwynn at the sight they’re met with.

The tall black storm bands in the distance have morphed to dark gray and are rising higher into the sky, rapidly gaining height as they flash and boom with a strange, curving black lightning, their bright white lightning gone.

“Bloody hells . . .”

Mavrik exclaims as the morning’s golden light dims and Gwynn realizes that the storm bands are not only enlarging but moving toward them. The Verdyllion pulses against her mind once more with dire urgency.

Her eyes meet Mavrik’s as the horrific understanding crystallizes. “Vogel’s taking over the storm bands!”

she cries. “And he’s coming for the Verdyllion. We’ve got to get everyone below ground and shielded!”

Mavrik draws his Varg-marked wand and grasps hold of Gwynn’s wrist, their magic bolting through each other’s lines as they launch into a run toward Wynter, skidding over the sand, the wind picking up as the sky rapidly grays. A series of earsplitting rumbles of thunder crackle, and Gwynn winces, the surrounding storm bands barreling closer.

They speed under a crimson stone arch, birds and wildlife scampering and darting away from the advancing storm bands. Gwynn glances over her shoulder just as a dark swarm of flying creatures bursts from the incoming wall of roiling gray chaos and soars rapidly toward them.

“Wraith bats!”

Mavrik cries out.

A rush of pure terror courses through Gwynn as the bats fly nearer, wind and sand scouring her back as her mind runs through everything she’s read about the beasts, almost immediately realizing her fatal mistake.

“Control your fear!”

Mavrik yells over the wind. “They feed on it!”

Gwynn forcefully stamps down her panic as she’s filled with a sense of the bats’ vicious energy pressing into her mind, drawn to her terror.

“Wynter!”

Mavrik booms out as they run.

Wynter is sprinting toward them, the Icaral’s pale form pummeled by gray gusts, her eyes alight with silver fire, wings drawn in tight. The Verdyllion is clasped protectively against her chest, her bird-kindreds winging around her in panicked, wind-battered flight.

Mavrik releases Gwynn’s wrist, and her magic slingshots painfully back into her center as Mavrik throws himself between Gwynn, Wynter, and the incoming wraith bats. He drops down on one knee, thrusts his wand forward and grinds out a spell.

Emerald energy blasts from his wand’s tip. A translucent green half dome-shield shimmers into existence, high as a barn’s rooftop, and multiple wraith bats crash against it, their shrieks knifing through Gwynn’s ears as they burst into green flame. Wind roars against the shield as Mavrik springs back up, and the three of them race toward the Subland cavern’s entrance.

Cael, Mynx, and Yyzz’ra are running down the rocky path toward them, along with Valasca and Rhys. Mynx waves Gwynn, Mavrik, and Wynter forward as she skids to a halt along with Cael and Rhys, all three of them swinging Varg bows off their shoulders before nocking emerald-glowing runic arrows.

“Fight back your fear!”

Mavrik yells at the incoming soldiers. “They can paralyze you with it!”

Gwynn glances over her shoulder as a huge incoming wraith bat opens its fanged mouth. Dark lightning bolts from its maw and explodes against Mavrik’s storm shield, blasting it into Shadow mist.

Panic rises inside Gwynn once more, and before she can tamp it down, she feels the huge bat hooking into her fear, its vicious energy shouldering straight into her mind. She stumbles and halts as the bat amplifies her panic, mushrooming it into paralyzing terror.

“Gwynnifer!”

Mavrik shouts, grabbing tight hold of her arm as Cael and Rhys and Mynx release arrows at the screeching bats while Valasca and Yyzz’ra hurl Varg-marked blades.

The bats shriek as they fall, but Gwynn can hear scores more soaring toward them as Mavrik drags her rigid body toward the Subland entrance. Wynter throws herself between Gwynn and Mavrik and the bats as a much larger swarm soars straight toward them.

“Get back, Wynter!”

Mavrik cries, and Gwynn manages a glance behind her.

Wynter remains fixedly in place, snapping her wings out to their full breadth.

It’s over. It’s all over, Gwynn’s heart pounds out as Wynter throws her wings down, rises into the sky and raises the Verdyllion in her hand.

Gwynn’s breath stutters in her chest as raying lines of silver energy blast from the Verdyllion in all directions, each line of power rapidly coalescing into the translucent form of a rune-marked bird made of spiraling silver lines.

With a warrior cry, Wynter thrusts her free palm forward, and her runic birds wing toward the wraith bats and collide with them in sprays of silver light.

The bats shriek as the aura of Wynter’s magical energy hits Gwynn, flashing silver light through every line.

The light filled with pure, undistilled courage.

The fearlessness of a true artist.

Wynter’s power rushes through Gwynn, dissolving her fear and galvanizing her to move as bats explode into silver flame and Mavrik pulls Gwynn into a sprint.

“Get inside!”

Mavrik growls at everyone as they race up the rocky path to the Subland entrance and Wynter soars in above them then touches down on the entrance’s ledge.

They all burst into the cavern, Wynter’s panicked birds swarming around them along with the paired Agolith Flame Hawks.

Wynter leaps through the entrance, and they all turn toward it just as the Shadow storm band blasts against the cavern, a violent gust slamming through its opening and into them all.

Gwynn’s breath is punched from her lungs as she’s tossed clear across the cavern with the others, their backs colliding with the stone wall as they’re pinned there, the ferocious power of the wind rattling Gwynn’s very bones.

Cursing under his breath, Mavrik grits out a spell and thrusts his Varg-marked wand forward, blasting out another green half dome-shield that punches the Shadow storm back a fraction.

The wind releases, and they all drop to the ground in a heap.

Seizing the window of opportunity, Gwynn lurches toward Mavrik and throws her wand hand around his, their magic intertwining, Gwynn’s light magery releasing into his lines.

They thrust out the wand together, and Gwynn hastily conjures interconnected Varg, Mage, Noi, and Issani storm-repel runes shot through with multicolored lightning.

Huffing out another snarling spell, Gwynn blasts the runes forward.

Rays of color flash from the linked runes and flow through Mavrik’s shield, then crash into the Shadow storm with a resonant BOOM, driving the gray chaos clear out of the cave.

Mynx and Yyzz’ra hastily leap forward and press their palms to the Varg runes marked along the cavern’s entrance. A crystalline-green wall closes over the opening, sealing it shut.

Shadow power slams against the conjured barrier in a concussive BOOM, and Mynx and Yyzz’ra leap back as the very ground shakes beneath them all, sprays of stone raining down from the cavern’s ceiling.

“It’s Vogel,”

Wynter states, silver fire guttering in her eyes as she clutches the Verdyllion to her chest, her birds flapping around the cavern in panicked, aimless trajectories. “That entire storm . . . it’s shot through with his Shadow power.”

“We need to get farther underground and strengthen the Sublands’ Varg shielding,”

Mavrik urges them all.

Another explosion hits the cavern’s barrier, and they set off in a sprint down the spiraling stone stairs until they reach the cavern’s base. Following Mynx and Yyzz’ra, they race through a narrow tunnel, then into the expansive crimson cavern at its terminus, its huge ceiling covered in a net of interlocking Varg runes, part of the huge web of runes shielding the entire Central Desert’s Sublands.

Two young Smaragdalfar soldiers are there—Yyzz’ra’s comrades, the perpetually angry Gavryyl and quietly dangerous Valkyr—along with Sparrow, who rushes over to greet Valasca. The two Subland soldiers are casting Varg rune after Varg rune into the air from precharged runic stones, swiftly spelling each rune upward to strengthen the rune net as fast as they can.

“All the tunnels to the south, west, and east of us have collapsed,”

Valkyr calls to Yyzz’ra as he fashions runes. “We’re trapped. Cut off from the rest of our forces—”

Another seismic blow rattles the earth, and the Varg rune net gives a worrisome flicker to gray.

“Holy gods,”

Valasca snarls. “Vogel’s storm bands can overtake Varg magic!”

Wynter’s artistic courage still reverberating through her, Gwynn calmly narrows her eyes at the rune-netted ceiling and can tell, by reading which details of the runic design are flickering out, that the Smaragdalfar’s Subland barrier is a few minutes away from falling.

“It won’t hold,”

she says to Mavrik, harsh and emphatic. “We need to fuse our magic with the Issani twinning spell, then link it to the shield.”

She meets Wynter’s silver-fire-rimmed eyes. “Using the Verdyllion.”

Gwynn’s eyes snap pointedly back to Mavrik’s, a fervid look passing between them before he nods.

Without a beat of hesitation, Wynter tosses Gwynn the Verdyllion, and she catches it. A tremor passes through her as the Wand’s prismatic energy shoots through her every line. Her trapped power expands, a sense of pure rightness filling her core as the Verdyllion’s green glow spreads over her wand hand and straight up her wrist.

Mavrik’s arms come around her from behind, his wand hand closing around hers.

Their combined power floods Gwynn’s lines, her light magery streaking toward the Verdyllion. She sets about fashioning two large, bright gold Issani twinning runes to hover in the air before them, the potential consequences of the twinning magic be fully damned.

Another violent BOOM sounds, like a monster battering against the earth, its intensifying roar against the Subland ceiling a nightmare of fury. The Varg rune net above them shivers to a grayer green, a few pieces of the ceiling cracking off and crashing to the floor, a small preview of the devastation to come.

“Pull up your tunic,”

Gwynn orders Mavrik. He releases her hand, her light magic snapping into its trapped state as he wrests off the garb.

Ignoring her neck-prickling rush of heat from staring at his naked upper body, she grabs the side of his belt and drags him close. He takes hold of her wand hand once more and follows her movements as she touches the Verdyllions’s tip to one of the runes then drags the rune onto his body, murmuring an Issani spell to fuse it there.

Mavrik shivers as the rune brightens in a rush of golden sparks then settles into a luminous golden design against his taut abdomen.

Another devastating BOOM sounds, spiking through Gwynn’s ears. A hail of rocks rains down as the Subland Elves furiously cast Varg runes, the runes fragmenting to gray as quickly as they’re cast.

Hurling modesty aside, Gwynn pulls up her own tunic and drags the second rune onto her skin, fusing it there in a prickling profusion of sparks, Mavrik’s grip firm around her hand.

Wasting no time, she fashions a third golden rune in the air before them. Bolstered by Mavrik’s steady grasp, Gwynn clamps her teeth together to dampen the dizzying clamor of nerves, and crafts golden lines connecting the suspended rune hanging before them to the runes marked on both of their abdomens. Feeling like she’s about to jump off a cliff leading straight off Erthia, she draws in a deep breath, exchanges one, last fraught look with Mavrik . . . and murmurs the Issani twinning spell.

Searing gold cuts through her vision. A startling pain strikes through her every line, her affinity lines tearing toward Mavrik’s with eviscerating force.

She cries out, Mavrik grunting out a sound of agony as they collide against each other, desperate to relieve the terrible pull, Gwynn’s lungs feeling on the verge of collapse as the agonizing tension nears breakage.

Fumbling for a way to connect and survive, she crashes her lips onto his.

The pain exploding through Gwynn’s lines abruptly morphs into a stunningly intimate sense of Mavrik’s every line of power fusing to hers, a startled energy blazing through his magic as a bright Issani gold overtakes Gwynn’s sight. They break the kiss, both of them pulling in great gulps of air, the gold in Gwynn’s vision rapidly clearing . . . to reveal Mavrik before her, his irises now an incandescent gold that Gwynn can sense shimmering through her own irises. Her eyes flit to Wynter Eirllyn’s silver-burning gaze. The two Agolith Flame Hawks are perched on Wynter’s shoulders, their feathers illuminating her slender form in vivid orange light.

Another cave-rattling BOOM sounds.

Flooded with a resolve she can feel blazing through Mavrik’s power as well, Gwynn releases her hold on Mavrik and aims the Verdyllion at the Varg shielding while gritting out an Issani rune-connection spell, intimately aware that her and Mavrik’s connection no longer involves touch.

An iridescent bolt of their twinned power rays out from the Verdyllion and spears toward the cavern’s ceiling, the golden light startling Gwynn with its beauty. The rays furcate as they streak through the ceiling’s grayed Varg runes, blasting away the Shadow and recharging them all, each rune flashing into multihued light until the entire cavern’s ceiling pulses with Gwynn’s full spectrum of color power. The rain of stone lessens then abruptly stops, the Shadow storm’s onslaught muting to a faint, distant roar.

Gwynn pulls in a hard breath, filled by the heady, intrinsic sense of every Varg rune cast throughout the Central Desert’s Sublands now merged to her and Mavrik’s twinned power to create an impenetrable net of protection, the Sublands now a fortress.

Walled off from the Magedom.

Gwynn’s legs buckle. She’s caught by Mavrik, the two of them sinking to the ground, their twinned power momentarily spent, everything in them sent into the Subland shielding.

“You did it,”

he murmurs, kissing her forehead, seeming overwhelmed. “Well played, Gwynnifer.”

Gwynn clings to him as Mynx, Cael, Valasca, and others race over to them. She shivers, the full interconnection of her and Mavrik’s lines disorienting, the two of them like one fused entity. Gwynn can sense his emotions through their merged lines, almost as clearly as she feels her own, Mavrik’s potent determination to protect her rushing through her while her equally potent desire to protect him shimmers through them both in a sizzling aura of light.

“Don’t move!”

Valasca orders, raising the Varg-marked blade in her hand, her eyes pinned on something above and behind Gwynn and Mavrik.

Gwynn turns just as a raven soars from a stony alcove and Valasca hurls her weapon. The blade impales the raven. A chillingly multitone, too-low caw sounds from the raven as it falls, the pair of Agolith Flame Hawks screeching out sounds of distress as they wing away to perch on an outcropping of stone.

Valasca runs to the flapping, fallen raven, and Gwynn notes, with a sharp recoil of fear, that the bird has eyes of swirling Shadow massed all over its upper head, with a single pale green eye set in their center.

And there’s a Shadow rune on the raven’s side.

Valasca grabs the raven and hoists it by its feet, the pale green eye fixing on her with a look of palpable hate that sends a dart of fright down Gwynn’s spine.

“I’ve encountered this type of beast before,”

Valasca growls. “Vogel’s in it. He’s watching us through this runic spy. It’s likely he’s been watching us for a while now.”

With a sweep of her blade, Valasca decapitates the raven spy, and its head thumps to the ground, its Shadow eyes deadening to black, but the pale green eye—the Vogel eye—remaining brutally fixed on Valasca.

Growling, Valasca thrusts the thing’s body to the side, grabs hold of the raven’s decapitated head and stabs her blade straight into the Vogel eye, scouring it out.

Everyone stills while Wynter lowers herself beside the raven’s body and places her hand on its rapidly disappearing Shadow rune. A slight shiver ripples through her.

Valasca is breathing hard, her blade’s hilt gripped tight in her fist, as they all take in the horror before them. “So, he knows we’re here and that we have the Verdyllion,”

Valasca states. She looks to Yyzz’ra and the two young Subland soldiers bracketing her. “Which means he knows quite a bit about your Subland army.”

Her dark gaze swings to Wynter. “And there’s a chance he knows what Wynter can do with the Verdyllion.”

Valasca turns to Mavrik and Gwynn, her eyes flicking toward the prismatic Subland shielding they just conjured. “And he knows that you’ve twinned your magic to wall the Magedom out of here.”

“So he has his little spy,”

Mavrik snarls back. “He can’t get through our shielding.”

“He can,”

Wynter murmurs.

Everyone’s gaze swings toward Wynter.

She draws her hand back to cradle it against her chest as the Shadow rune marked on the raven’s side vanishes, her wings drawing in protectively around herself. “Vogel is going after the wilds,”

she warns. “I read his intent through that Shadow rune’s tether to his power. He’s not just targeting Elloren and Yvan, but the entire Northern Forest.”

“To get hold of the Black Witch,”

Yyzz’ra impatiently snaps.

“Not just that,”

Wynter counters, looking to Yyzz’ra. “To destroy the forest itself.”

“Well, we best hope the Dryad wards surrounding that forest hold,”

Mavrik says. He narrows his gaze at the prismatic shield above them, the chromatic runes pulsing every color over the cavernous space before he lowers his gaze back to Wynter’s. Gwynn stiffens as his worry sizzles through their twinned power. “If Vogel destroys enough forest,”

Mavrik says, “he might be able to break through our shielding.”

Gwynn furrows her brow. “I don’t understand,”

she says. “How could destroying forests break through our shielding?”

Mavrik gives her a grim, searching look. “Gwynn,”

he says. “We’re Dryads.”

A reflexive protest rears over this outrageous claim. “We’re Mages . . .”

“Yes, Gwynn,”

he agrees, a hard edge entering his tone, “we are. And all Mages are part Dryad. Trees are the source of all our magic. Magery flows from the rooted forest, through our lines, then out through our wands. If you kill enough trees, you destroy our magic.”

His gaze darkens. “Unless you replace the elemental power in our lines with Shadow power.”

Gwynn blinks at him, pinned by the intensity of his stare, her thoughts at war. Just uttering that thought is the highest sacrilege in Gardneria.

“Did you ever think about the dead trees that decorate practically every Gardnerian home?”

Mavrik presses, unrelenting. “The dead trees set into the Valgard Cathedral itself? The forest decor everywhere, in every Mage home? The wands of layered wood? The religious obsession with Ironflowers, which are the beginnings of trees? The Sealing ceremony full of dominion over the elements of nature culminating with control over the trees themselves?”

Gwynn’s disorientation intensifies, and she can feel the blood draining from her face.

“We’re part Kelt, part Dryad,”

Mavrik vehemently continues. “We’re not ‘First Children,’ sprung from the Great Ironwood Tree. Gwynn, we’re part Tree Fae.”

The undeniable truth cycles down, slamming through Gwynn with the force of a thousand runic storm bands. Part Tree Fae. We’re part Fae.

She gapes at him, stunned, as Vogel’s muted power thunders against the world above. “How have I never pieced that together?”

Mavrik’s lips give a bitter twist. “The power of religion. Able to make us deny even the most glaringly obvious of truths.”

He glances up at their color-pulsing shielding. “Wynter’s right,”

he says, warning in his eyes. “We’re not just walled off from the surface of Erthia by Vogel’s Shadow storm bands—”

“We’re walled off from the trees,”

Gwynn finishes for him, holding his piercing gaze with burgeoning alarm.

“Vogel is going to keep us trapped underground,”

Wynter states with terrible certainty. Her eyes flick toward the Verdyllion in Gwynn’s hand before she meets her gaze. “And while we’re trapped, he’s going to destroy Dryad magic, bring down your Subland shielding, and take hold of the Verdyllion.”