Chapter Two

Shadow Strike

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Agolith Desert Sublands

Fourteen days after Xishlon

“We have to get to the Northern Forest before Vogel invades it!”

Yyzz’ra snarls, her livid silver gaze boring into Gwynn and Mavrik. “How long until this damned portal is charged?”

Gwynn’s hackles go up, sweat lining her brow. Down on her knees, she murmurs spell after spell, holding the Verdyllion to the Vu Trin portal’s runic frame, one of a multitude of hidden underground Noi military portals, their runic charges long since spent. Mavrik is on his knees beside Gwynn, every nerve in her body hyperaware of his palm lightly cupping the back of her neck, his direct touch amplifying their merged power.

“I asked you a question,”

Yyzz’ra snaps as a rainbow of sparks sprays across Gwynn’s vision. She shivers, her and Mavrik’s twinned power coursing through her arm and wand and then into the Noi portal runes, flashes of sapphire magic igniting in them.

“Will you do your level best to be quiet?”

Valasca aims at Yyzz’ra, the Amaz warrior’s tone crisp. Valasca’s grayed arms are crossed in front of her chest, the runes of her imprisonment collar glowing emerald against her neck.

Yyzz’ra rounds on Valasca, quietly lethal Valkyr and intense Gavryyl bracketing her, the two young Smaragdalfar soldiers mirroring Yyzz’ra’s scowl. “Aren’t you my prisoner?”

Yyzz’ra snaps.

“Stupidly, yes,”

Valasca drawls as she splays her hand out toward Mavrik and Gwynn. “But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re clearly trying to charge that portal as fast as they can.”

“Well, they need to work faster!”

Yyzz’ra seethes. “Or by the time we get to the Northern Forest, Vogel will have already found a way to crash his storm bands clear through the Forest’s warding!”

Distracted by Yyzz’ra’s and Valasca’s constant sniping, Gwynn struggles to hold her focus. Wynter stands behind Mavrik, preternaturally still, even the Icaral’s smattering of kindred birds unnaturally motionless from where they watch, perched on stony outcroppings all around them, including the two Agolith Flame Hawks who, Gwynn notes, almost always have their flame-hued eyes set on her and Mavrik.

Willing calm, Gwynn murmurs the Noi interlocking spell, and a harder swoosh of light magery courses from her to her wand, the emptying sensation stealing her breath. Their woven spells snap through the portal’s runic frame with a sharp ping.

A burst of chromatic light rays out from every rune, and anticipation grips hold of Gwynn, the suspended Varg, Issani, Gardnerian, and Alfsigr charge-acceleration runes she and Mavrik have painstakingly crafted and connected to the portal all pulsing with her multihued light magery.

The normally sapphire Noi portal runes shift into a full rainbow of light as they begin to rotate and charge, and a swell of elation suffuses Gwynn’s every line.

Beautiful.

Sensing emotion searing through Mavrik’s power, she turns and meets his glowing golden gaze. That familiar flash of multicolored sparks ignites along the edges of Gwynn’s vision, a triumphant smirk pulling at Mavrik’s lips, words wholly unneeded in this moment. They can both sense that their spellwork has fully taken hold. And to have the power to charge and magically recalibrate a portal in a way that sets its course, speeds its charge and removes its lag . . .

Gwynn pulls in a hard, shaky breath.

It’s a formidable advantage.

“It shouldn’t be long now,”

Mavrik assures Yyzz’ra, pulling his gaze from Gwynn’s with what seems like great effort to focus back on the portal. He touches the tip of his golden wand to the portal’s frame, tracing one of the runes in a way Gwynn knows will measure the portal’s charge and lag. “We’ve amplified the charging process with quickening runes from multiple runic systems,”

he adds, “which should speed both the portal’s charging time and our journey through it.”

Gwynn glances at Yyzz’ra and her cohorts, still glowering beside her. Cael and Mynx are leaning against one of the narrow cavern’s rough walls, and Gwynn’s focus briefly snags on how the portal’s color dances over Cael’s snow-hued features and Mynx’s billiantly emerald visage, the two lovers boldly holding hands in blaring defiance of the near constant censure Yyzz’ra, Valkyr, and Gavryyl hurl their way.

Cael’s Second, Rhys, is hanging back to their left, one pale hand resting on an outcropping of crimson stone. Serious, watchful Sparrow stands by his side, the two having struck up a quiet friendship over the past days.

Gwynn considers how sympathetic Yyzz’ra, Valkyr, and Gavryyl initially were toward Sparrow, the three Smaragdalfar soldiers vocally outraged over the oppression Sparrow’s Urisk people suffered at the hands of both the Magedom and Alfsigr. But every trace of their sympathy was whisked away the previous night, when Sparrow grew incensed over the verbal abuse they were yet again aiming at Mynx’lia’luure and Cael.

I’m not so good at purity myself, Sparrow announced, rising to her feet, her violet eyes fair burning with confrontational light. I’m in love with a Mage.

It was like a runic explosive had detonated, Yyzz’ra, Gavryyl, and Valkyr glaring daggers at her. Sparrow promptly went to sit beside the blaringly Alfsigr Rhys, and now Sparrow and Rhys are near inseparable.

A small firework of prismatic sparks bursts from the tip of Mavrik’s wand, yanking Gwynn from her fitful thoughts as the portal frame’s runes whir into a faster rotation.

“This portal will be charged in about six hours,”

Mavrik postulates. “Give or take. In any case, we should arrive at the Northern Forest’s southernmost Subland edge before tomorrow eve.”

He glances at Wynter. “That’s close to when you sensed Elloren Gardner Grey and Yvan will arrive there.”

“And well before Vogel arrives with his Shadow storm bands,”

Wynter adds with a look of genuine gratitude, a Crimson Cactus Wren landing on her shoulder. Wynter’s silver eyes flash worriedly toward the bird, and Gwynn guesses she’s getting another reading on the Shadow storm bands’ locations through the vibrations the birds can detect in the overhead root system.

Gwynn glances up at the root network interspersed amongst the ceiling of crimson Subland stone, the glowing, prismatic runes of the net-barrier she and Mavrik twinned their power to hugging the ceiling, the dark runes of Vogel’s Shadow net fused to its back, the Magedom angling to outpace them to the Forest . . .

“We’ll have a strong lead,”

Wynter assures them all, seeming to read Gwynn’s worries, “thanks to the Verdyllion’s twinned Light Mages.”

Mavrik turns his head slightly and casts an almost-glance toward Gwynn, a spark of emotion flashing through their fused firelines once more, an echoing line of feeling shivering through Gwynn, her heartbeat quickening.

“Our weapons are charged,”

Mynx states, and Gwynn glances around at the rune-marked blades, swords, and bows and arrows strapped on the Smaragdalfar soldiers.

“Well, that’s a good thing,”

Mavrik says. “Because in a few hours we’ll portal to the Sublands just outside the Northern Forest, break down its Dryad warding and surface inside the Forest. Hopefully amidst an army of Dryad Fae.”

Valasca coughs out a laugh. “Who might try to kill your Crow ass on sight.”

Mavrik’s lip twitches as he shoots her a sardonic look. “I’d appreciate it if you intervened, if it comes to that.”

Valasca shrugs. “They might try to slay my ass, as well. Folklore has it the Tree Fae are about as charitable toward intruders as, well, we Amaz are toward men . . .”

Her grayed, angular face tenses, a tremble suddenly kicking up along her lips. Gwynn’s heart tightens, certain Valasca is being swept up in the horrible remembrance of her destroyed country . . . and the Magedom’s murder of thousands of Amaz.

Mavrik’s eyes narrow on Valasca, and his jawline firms as he stands. “Amazakaraan will rise again,”

he insists, adamant, his eyes blazing with a defiant compassion.

Valasca draws in a sharp breath and nods. Straightening, she makes the Amaz Goddess symbol on her chest, kisses her fist, and thrusts it toward the heavens, meeting Mavrik’s unwavering gaze once more in a flash of alliance.

“When we get to the Northern Forest’s Sublands,”

Mavrik says to everyone, “Gwynnifer and I might be able to draw on the elemental power of the roots of a primordial Ironwood tree that Wynter’s kindreds spotted near the Forest’s southern border.”

“The Great Tree of all Erthia’s myths,”

Wynter murmurs, the image of the Sacred Ironwood Tree shivering through Gwynn’s mind.

Mavrik nods. “If some of the myths are true, we might be able to further amplify our power via the Great Tree’s fabled light magic—”

“Not fabled,”

Yyzz’ra snaps, grimacing at Mavrik. “That magic is the Goddess Oo’na’s own, emanating from her Sacred Roots. Her Holy Tree has been unjustly cut off from my people for generations.”

Yyzz’ra spits out a disdainful sound. “Because the Dryad Fae know we will wield the Subland magic of Oo’na’s Roots to return the entire Sublands to its rightful dominion—ours.”

She scowls at Mynx and Cael, her thoughts about their linked hands blisteringly clear.

Valasca lets out a beleagured sigh and stares at the Subland ceiling for a moment, her lips moving, as if she’s either cursing or praying for her Goddess’s strength, before she levels her gaze at Gwynn and Mavrik both. “You two should get some rest,”

she prods before glancing at everyone else. “Everyone should. We’ve done what we can for the moment, and we’ll need everyone in fighting form when we get north. Let the portal charge. I’ll stand guard.”

“I’ll join you,”

Cael offers.

“I will, as well,”

Mynx chimes in, prompting a chilly look from Yyzz’ra.

“No,”

Wynter states with calm authority. “Everyone go, rest. My wingeds will patrol the surrounding caverns and routes, and I’ll read what they see. I’ll sound an alarm if danger comes.”

A beat of hesitation ensues before everyone concedes. The Verdyllion, still glowing in Gwynnifer’s hand, gives a sudden, tingling pull toward Wynter, and Gwynn hands the Wand-Stylus off to the Icaral while most everyone departs into the small side caverns surrounding this larger area.

Gwynn sets off for the circular cavern where she and Mavrik have grabbed a few fitful hours of sleep in the past two nights, hyperaware of Mavrik following her, the rich crimson of the stone surrounding them triggering a sizzle of ruddy sparks through their fused lightlines.

Amplifying her pull toward him.

Their twinned magic has made it difficult to be separated from each other, the two of them careful to sleep just out of reach.

Which is increasingly an exercise in magic-provoking torment.

Which means, Gwynn realizes, that it’s been over three days since she’s had any real semblance of sleep, exhaustion bearing down like a leaden weight.

Gwynn steps into the cavern and stills, engulfed by the sudden, potent sense of Mavrik pausing on the cavern’s threshhold, their prismatic draw intensifying. Flustered, she turns and meets his eyes.

Their twinned bond bursts into color, and a rush of magic sizzles straight through Gwynn’s entire form, the unbidden sensation prompting a rise of illicit heat.

Mavrik quickly looks away, biting at the tracery of prismatic color now forking over his mouth.

He wants to kiss me, Gwynn realizes, breath catching.

Light power crackles mortifyingly to life over her own lips, and she stiffens, the gold color of Mavrik’s eyes spangling over her wand hand.

Mavrik’s hands come to his hips, his jaw tensing. “It’s getting stronger,” he says.

“It is,”

Gwynn admits, giving him a sheepish look. “We need to stay focused on spellwork. It’s an awkward time for this to kick up.”

“Or a good time,”

Mavrik suggests. “We’re going to need the full might of our twinned power when we get north.”

He sighs, shooting Gwynn a heated look. “This draw, frustrating and dangerous as it is, seems to be part of it.”

Gwynn bites at her tingling lip and nods, railing against her physical pull to him. “I know we need sleep,”

she says, “but we should take a moment to pool our knowledge of ward-breaking spells.”

Mavrik nods, seeming as if he’s struggling to assemble his scattered thoughts. “There’s a cavern farther down this tunnel,”

he says, angling his head toward it. “It’s shot through with obsidian. The black in it is absorbing much of the charged color so the cavern . . . it’s less likely to amplify our . . . light draw.”

He casts her a meaningful look as another tingling rush sweeps through their twinned magic.

Gwynn’s thoughts fragment, muddled by both their dangerous attraction and the way their magic is increasingly intertwined. She remembers Mavrik’s words. A complete fusing . . . as permanent as fasting . . . we’ll have to stay in the same location, always . . . and if one of us dies, the other dies too.

Holding his gaze, she nods and follows him toward the obsidian cavern.

“Vogel is going to strike at those wards with everything he’s got,”

Mavrik notes.

Gwynn nods, down on her knees beside Mavrik, his golden wand clasped in her hand, all of their rune-marked blades and wands, save the ones in their hands, strewn around them to experiment with.

The complicated runic diagram they’ve drawn on the floor of the black cavern is splayed out before them, ward designs fabricated with streaks of golden wand light that illuminate the room in a buttery glow that’s so gorgeous it quickens Gwynn’s pulse.

Mavrik taps a section of one of the ward designs with his midnight-black wand’s tip, the rune drawn from Gwynn’s memory of a diagram of the Northern Forest’s warding that she uncovered in the Valgard armory. “I suspect Vogel will siphon energy from his storm bands and attempt to link that energy to the Forest’s warding here,”

Mavrik postulates, “to blast the Dryad barrier apart.”

“Hmm . . . most likely,”

Gwynn agrees, glancing at him. “We’ll need to mark everyone’s weapons with runes that can counter every known angle of Shadow attack. In case Vogel gets through the wards before we do.”

Mavrik nods in affirmation, his eyes fixed on the sprawling diagram. “I’m going to stay up a bit and mark our weapons with a linked combination of Noi mirror-strike runes and Varg spell-dismantling wards.”

Comprehension clicks. “Ah,”

Gwynn breathes out, her mind thrilling to his cleverness. “To neutralize Mage deflection runes.”

He shoots her a mischievous glance. “That might cause a time lag in the deflection spell’s rebound.”

Gwynn smiles. “And give us an unexpected edge.”

She taps her light-infused lip, deep in thought as they both mentally tussle with the likely avenues of attack. “You could cast an Amaz shield spell over those two spells,”

she ventures. “You’ll get a longer lag.”

Mavrik’s embracing magic stills around hers. “Gods, you’re brilliant,”

he breathes.

Surprised by the emotion in his tone, she meets his eyes, the openly enraptured look he’s giving her catching her off guard. The flush that rises on his face matches the heat she feels in hers, prismatic color pulsing to more intense life on their lips.

“Gwynn,”

Mavrik says, swallowing, a pained look tensing his face as he rubs his mouth. “This draw is insanely difficult to manage.”

A more potent heat sears through their merged lines, and Gwynn’s emotions burst into a turbulent storm of conflict as she struggles to formulate a response . . .

. . . just as a stinging pain takes hold of her fastlines.

Gwynn flinches at the same time Mavrik does, a strangled cry escaping her lips. They both drop their wands and jerk their hands protectively inward. Dread sluicing through Gwynn’s veins, she glances down, her gaze zeroing in on the tendrils of Shadow smoke coiling up from her rapidly graying fastlines.

And Mavrik’s.

Terror constricts her chest and she meets Mavrik’s equally horrified gaze. “Ancient One,”

she rasps, “Vogel’s coming after our fasting spells right now.”

“Then we need to wrest hold of the spell,”

he snarls. “Right now.”

“How?”

Gwynn challenges, trembling now as she forces herself to mentally flip through every remembered runic grimoire, spells flying through her mind.

“I’m working on a hunch . . .”

Mavrik says, grabbing his midnight-black Noi rune–marked wand from the floor before taking her free hand and bringing his wand’s tip to her palm. “The runes of our Issani twinning spell and the wand motions needed to craft the fasting spell . . . they’re based on a similar sequence of primordial linking glyphs. We could use a Noi weaving spell—”

“—to pull our twinning linkage straight through our fastings,”

Gwynn murmurs, her mind rapidly assembling his plan as gray pulses alarmingly through her vision.

Mavrik nods. “The fasting spell can’t be broken . . . but we might be able to overtake it.”

“We’ll need to cast the magic at the same time,”

Gwynn cautions. Mavrik nods once more as Gwynn grabs up her wand and they point their wands at each other’s Shadow-smoking fastlines just as the scene around them abruptly cuts out.

Gwynn pulls in a hard gasp, the two of them thrust into a vision of an aboveground, Shadowed world. Huge arches of stone tinted a steely hue surround them, Shadow mist smoking up from grayed sands, the images wavering and dreamlike at the edges.

The Agolith Desert above us, Gwynn realizes, but completely stripped of its ruddy coloration by Vogel’s Shadow.

Her pulse pounds out a panicked rhythm, and she turns to find Mavrik crouched beside her on the Shadow-smoking sand, a combative look in his eyes.

Vogel appears in the mist before them, swiftly closing in, his dark cloak flowing out behind him and a multi-eyed raven perched on his shoulder.

Gwynn recoils, fear striking through her. Vogel’s upper face is a grotesque mass of glowing gray eyes, his darkened teeth bizarrely elongated, the Shadow Wand gripped in his glimmering gray hand.

He’s here with us, she realizes, staring at the true nature of what Vogel has become, all of them drawn inside his Shadow Wand’s link to their fastlines.

“Cast the spell!”

Mavrik cries as he grabs hold of her free hand and presses his wand’s tip to her fastlines. Battling back her fear, Gwynn brings her wand’s tip to Mavrik’s fastlines at the same moment Vogel levels his Shadow Wand and blasts a bolt of wind at them.

Before either of them can get a spell out, the wind slams into Gwynn and the breath is crushed from her lungs as both she and Mavrik are hurled apart and through the air, their wands blown from their hands.

Gwynn slams down onto the vision’s smoking sand, crying out as her shoulder and hip painfully absorb the blow. Nightmare-swift, Vogel lunges forward and grabs hold of her arm with a clawed hand, gnashing his too-long teeth close to her face. “You little staen’en whore,”

he snarls, every glowing eye boring into her as he bares sharp, gray teeth. “I will bite my Shadow into you!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Gwynn catches Mavrik leaping toward his wand, and the primal will to live sparks. Yanking herself from Vogel’s grip, she lunges for her own wand, just as Vogel springs for it, bizarrely fast, his bootheel slamming down on the golden weapon as he angles the Shadow Wand toward Mavrik and bolts more wind at him, blasting his wand from his grip again and punching Mavrik back to the ground.

Smiling, Vogel thrusts his Wand skyward.

A giant tree of Shadow blasts up from the ground behind him, and Gwynn’s eyes widen with fear. It’s taller than the tallest desert arch, its smoking canopy rising higher than the clouds and rapidly branching out to cover the whole desert scene. A grotesquerie of Shadow roots emerges in arcs beneath it, giving the gigantic tree a spiderlike appearance, a small root cage at the end of each appendage.

Thousands upon thousands of cages.

Most cages hold dazed-looking Mage soldiers, with ropey lines of Shadow extending from the root bars to their fastlines, with a few scattered cages enclosing shirtless Alfsigr soldiers, connected to them via their Zalyn’or imprints.

Prickles of fear shoot down Gwynn’s spine as she realizes she’s looking directly into Vogel’s growing network of Shadow power.

Desperate to fight back, Gwynn lunges for her wand under Vogel’s heel at the same time Mavrik races toward his wand. Two of the Shadow tree’s roots whip up and slam root cages down around each of them and Gwynn cries out and falls, both she and Mavrik now pinned, backs to sand, several paces apart.

“You cannot defeat the Ancient One’s Holy Will,”

Vogel intones, his grotesque, multi-eyed appearance giving way to that of a normal-looking Mage as Gwynn senses his anger abating, something akin to twisted compassion gleaming in his green eyes. “My control over you both will be your salvation.”

Gwynn meets Mavrik’s gaze through the root bars, a blazingly poignant look in it, as if he’s desperately trying to convey something. His covert intention flashes through their twinning spell as he curls their internal light magery into a golden shape—an Issani power-blast rune.

An obscure memory lights in Gwynn’s mind, a footnote in the back of one of the armory volumes on Issani military-grade sorcery detailing how twinned sorcerers can manifest runes on their palms without styluses.

Gwynn draws in a harsh breath, a look of understanding passing between her and Mavrik. Drawing power from their twinned lines at the same time Mavrik does, Gwynn mentally draws the rune on the palm of her wand hand, the lines of magic sizzling over her skin.

With a quick nod to Mavrik, she thrusts her rune-marked palm toward Vogel at the same time he does. Their twinned power surges as, in unison, they slide their thumbs over the runes’ central triggers.

A pulse of golden energy detonates from their palms and collides with their cages. The bars light up gold then explode in earsplitting cracks before the power rushes forward to slam into Vogel, hurling him backward.

Seizing their chance, Gwynn and Mavrik leap toward their wands, grab them, and race toward each other as Vogel rights himself with a hissing growl and thrusts his Wand up toward the Shadow tree.

Another colossal root cage barrels down toward Gwynn and Mavrik as they reach each other and touch their wands’ tips to each other’s smoking fastlines, murmuring the Noi weaving spell in unison.

The root cage slams down with killing force just as gold light rays out of their fastlines and their twinned power blasts through their fastmarks.

The scene around them shatters, Vogel’s snarling cry reverberating straight through Gwynn as the obsidian Subland cave reappears around them. Mavrik is crouched beside her, both of them breathing hard and clutching each other’s wrists.

Dizzy with vertigo, Gwynn lifts her hand and gasps as she takes in her newly gold-glowing fastlines. Looking rattled, Mavrik holds up his hand beside hers, the tendriling Shadow gone, their designs completely altered. No longer do they have different looping black designs—their fastings are now identical golden lightning-bolt patterns limned with iridescent color.

Astounded, Gwynn meets Mavrik’s intent gaze. “Do you think it worked?”

she asks, barely able to get the words out.

“I think it just might have.”

He huffs out a stunned breath and shakes his head as they both rise to their feet on unsteady legs. “To my knowledge,”

he says, “no one’s ever tried to flow Issani twinning magic through a wandfasting spell . . . I didn’t fully expect it to be able to infiltrate it.”

“Do you suppose that’s how Vogel took over Elloren Gardner Grey’s fastlines?”

Gwynn presses, heart pattering hummingbird-fast. “Using Shadow-corrupted twinning magic?”

Mavrik’s eyes narrow, riveted on hers. “It’s a distinct possibility. It’s the strongest sorcerer-linking spell there is.”

“He might have used this route to link Shadow power to the Alfsigr Zalyn’or necklaces, as well,”

Gwynn postulates, the words coming out in a breathless rush.

Mavrik grows very still and Gwynn can feel the contained, prismatic tempest forming in his magic. “Do you realize, Gwynnifer,”

he says, his words low and measured, “that if what you say is true, we might have just found a way to break into not only Vogel’s fasting tether to his bound Mage soldiers . . . but into the magic that could bind all of Alfsigroth through their Zalyn’or necklaces?”

Tension sparks in the air between them as Gwynn slowly nods. She swallows, considering their hands again, studying the identical lightning marks now emblazoned on them both.

“Mavrik . . .”

she says, her awareness of what this means, not just on an Erthia level, but on a personal level, consolidating. “Do you think . . . that we’re truly fasted to each other?”

He blinks at her before taking hold of her hand and placing his wand’s tip to the luminous fasting designs marked there, then murmurs spells.

Ah . . . clever, Gwynn thinks as her light magery stirs, a shiver of intellectual appreciation coursing through her over how smart he is, as he draws on her light power to cast a suspended Noi linkage-detection rune combined with an Alfsigr linkage-breaking rune just over their hands, then connects both runes to their fastlines via slim sapphire and silver lines.

Their fastlines flash sapphire, then a stinging silver, before settling back into luminous gold, the Noi and Alfsigr runes disappearing.

Mavrik’s eyes widen as he stares at their fastlines, seeming stunned anew. “I think we’ve taken true hold of the fasting spell,”

he rasps. He meets her astonished gaze. “Gwynn, I think we might be truly fasted.”

“Moving that spell . . . manipulating it . . .”

Gwynn stutters.

“. . . is the first step in figuring out how to destroy it,”

he finishes for her.

“Do you know how many ‘unbreakable’ spells are based on the same spell segments as the fasting spell?”

she asks, her tone awed over what they’ve wrought.

He nods tightly, swallowing as the ramifications bear down more intensely. “All,”

he responds. “All the higher-level Mage spells. And all the higher-level Alfsigr spells, as well . . . and so many of Erthia’s other magical systems . . . their strongest spells are all based in similar primordial magic . . .”

Gwynn ceases to hear him as her eyes fixate on her wrist then his, and she realizes, in a sudden, throat-tightening wave of dread, that their fastlines might be transformed to golden streaks of lightning . . .

. . . but the Sealing lines around their wrists are still black.

A frisson of urgency breaks through.

“We need to own the entire spell,”

she breathes, lifting her gaze to Mavrik’s. “Mavrik . . . our wrists.”

He pales. “Ancient One . . .”

Gwynn freezes as the forbidden idea grips hold.

“There’s only one way to fully overtake a fasting spell,”

she forces out, an uncomfortable flush heating her face. “Only one way to completely lay claim to it.”

She watches him furtively as he stills, a flush pinking his skin as well, the pieces falling into place in his mind.

“Seal it, you mean,”

Mavrik says, and they regard each other soberly.

She gives him a slow nod, a momentous tension burgeoning in the air between them.

Mavrik gives her a deeply searching look. “Gwynn, if we’re wrong and we . . . consummate this fasting—”

He shakes his head, glancing down at his fastlines before bringing his gaze back to hers, his expression fraught with concern. “Your hands and wrists could be painfully scarred. For life.”

“And I’m safe now?”

she challenges, defiance flaring. “Are either of us ‘safe’ if Vogel takes hold of our Sealing? You know as well as I do that the Sealing spell is a stronger spell. It can overtake the fasting spell in a heartbeat.”

Mavrik tilts his head in grim acknowledgment, his gaze riveted to hers.

“We need to Seal this fasting,”

she insists as her heart thuds and her emotions storm. “We need to Seal it now, before Vogel draws up enough power to overtake us again.”

“Gwynn . . .”

Mavrik starts, his tone troubled as his magic churns fitfully against hers.

She rises and draws off her cloak, fingers trembling, then hangs it over the cavern’s narrow, arcing entrance and raises her wand to affix it there with three small bolts of earth magery drawn from Mavrik’s lines. Then she lifts the edge of her tunic and marks a small Issani contraceptive rune just above her hip, conflict twisting her heart as she beats back a memory of Geoffrey before he fully joined with Vogel’s forces. Caught up in a wilderness of feeling, she turns to Mavrik, hoping he’ll make the first move, because she finds herself unable.

“We need to do this,”

she says in a tight whisper, unable to reconcile how much she wants him. Warring against how much she wants him. “Please, Mavrik.”

For a moment Mavrik doesn’t move. But then he gets up and draws near, his hand gently finding hers, prompting a welling of tears in Gwynn’s eyes.

“You know,”

Mavrik says as he lifts her hand and gently traces his thumb over one of her golden, color-limned fastlines, “in Noilaan, instead of fasting at thirteen, when Noi’khin reach eighteen or older, they decide how they’re going to ‘dwell in the garden.’?”

Gwynn stares at him in bafflement, thrown by the direction of this conversation. “The ‘garden’?”

she asks, swiping away a tear streaking down her cheek.

“It’s a euphemism,”

he clarifies with a slight smile, compassionate warmth sparking in his golden eyes. “Meaning, ‘ways to be romantically intimate.’?”

Her flush deepens. “What are the ‘ways’?”

she asks, grateful for his momentary foray into unexpected terrain.

He shrugs. “There are quite a few of them. Some choose ‘one flower, and to dwell in a single aspect of the garden.’ Some opt to ‘create their own garden.’ Some decide to ‘gather many flowers.’?”

“Many flowers?”

Gwynn repeats, thrown.

His lip twitches up. “More than one partner,”

he clarifies.

“Ancient One . . .”

Gwynn huffs, unable to get her mind around such an idea.

“They accept men with men, as well,”

he says as he continues to caress her hand with a gentleness that stays some of Gwynn’s emotional upheaval. “Women with women. They have these concepts of some who are fluid in their gender. It’s complex and very different.”

“Quite a bit different from our upbringing,”

Gwynn notes as they share a small smile, the Noi traditions sounding truly astounding. But then a shard of pain intrudes. She can sense it cutting through the small flare of humor for both of them. She holds up her hand. “No fasting at thirteen for them, then?”

She immediately feels an even deeper jab of pain, along with another rush of longing for Geoffrey. For what he was, before.

He’s gone, she reminds herself, the ache cutting deep, her throat closing around it. Forever gone. And he chose the Shadow of his own free will. Tears well in her eyes as she looks at Mavrik, finding the same unsettled conflict in his gaze.

And understanding.

“If you were Noi,”

she asks, voice rough, “what part of their garden do you think you’d choose?”

Their magical draw shimmers in the air between them as Mavrik holds her challenging stare, the intensity in his eyes remaining unbroken. “One flower,”

he states with unsparing emphasis. “One garden.”

Her heart trips into a faster rhythm. “That’s what I want, too,”

she says, tears coming to her eyes as they consider each other. “My pull to you keeps intensifying,”

she shakily admits.

“It’s not just the magic, Gwynn,”

he states, eyes burning with certainty. “If we were magic-free, I think I’d be drawn to you just the same.”

Gwynn instantly grasps what he means, the two of them a perfect intellectual and emotional match. So easily getting lost in each other, despite having known each other for only a few days. Complete harmony on every level.

Still . . . the thought of being intimate so soon . . .

But if they’re going to truly wall Vogel off from their lines, it has to be done.

And quickly.

Mavrik reaches up to gently caress her cheek, and a pleasurable frisson courses over Gwynn’s skin that only intensifies her searing guilt. “Gwynn,”

he says, voice low and serious. “We’ve both done this before.”

She meets his gaze to find him giving her a knowing look as her thoughts lace with pain.

With someone I loved, she rages, not able to choke out the words to him. With someone I was fasted to. Someone I’m betraying. But then her thoughts tilt once more toward the Magedom’s horror, and a harsh tremor runs down her spine.

Someone who chose to be part of the monster.

She averts her eyes once more from Mavrik’s compelling golden gaze. Fights the sense of rightness in her pull to him. Because if this is right, why didn’t the Ancient One lead her to Mavrik instead?

“Let’s Seal this fasting,”

she insists, battling against the fact that she’s falling in love with him. And battling against how much she wants this. How much she wants him.

“Gwynn . . .”

Mavrik says, concern in his eyes. “This is a pressured situation for us both . . .”

He pauses, swallowing thickly, clearly thrown, as well. “But it doesn’t have to be bad.”

His voice lowers to a more intimate register. “I can feel your magic constantly reaching for mine. I feel it now.”

His hand comes to her arm, and gooseflesh rises as the contact intensifies the breathless urge to fuse, her magic clamoring for his in a prismatic conflagration. “What would make this easier for you?”

Heart throbbing, Gwynn shakes her head, pulses of wanton color flashing in her vision and through their lines, her body growing warm from it.

“Nothing will make this easier,”

she forces out. Because it’s wrong to love you and want you.

Mavrik stiffens, his expression gaining a stubborn edge even as his magic twines through hers with more wanton energy. “Gwynn, I cannot do this against your full will.”

Her own stubborn rebellion flares, scarlet sparks exploding as her magic ignites against his with bright force. She grabs hold of his tunic, pulls him close, and kisses him with sudden fervor, sending a shock of flaming red straight through him.

Mavrik grips her upper arms and firmly pushes her back, breaking the kiss, the gold of his eyes intensifying as his power heats around hers, growing crimson with desire as he looks deeply, relentlessly into her eyes, and Gwynn can feel him reading everything she can’t voice . . .

Ancient One help her, she knows he’s reading the truth of it.

She wants him.

She wants him in every way.

“Are you sure?”

he demands as his power gains bright ground against hers, his breathing growing uneven, his face flushed with want.

Their chromatic draw surging to unbearable heights, Gwynn holds his gaze and gives a tight nod.

His mouth comes down on hers, every hue exploding through her vision as their power merges more intensely, her back arching against the sensation of falling into his magic.

She tries to hold back her hungry response to his open passion. Tries to tell herself she doesn’t truly desire it when he draws her down onto a bedroll and frantically undresses her, the two of them kissing each other brazenly, lost to the magic as he yanks off his weapons and clothing with an intensity bordering on desperation, his hands caressing her everywhere.

And then, caressing her in a way that makes her feel as if she’s going to dissolve into a marbled puddle of color before they powerfully join.

Gwynn gasps, her eyes widening at the sensations of fullness and their magic amplifying through their merged lines, an exquisite pleasure coursing through her as every resplendant hue flashes through her body and vision. Giving in to the thrall, she wraps her legs tightly around his, driving his magic—driving him—deeper into her.

Mavrik groans, low and gutteral, their connection to each other strengthening in a flood of color and wild pleasure as he and his magic move within her, and Gwynn moans against his mouth, their bodies and fused magic burning as hot as a prismatic star.

She tries to hold back her cry of ecstasy as the chromatic pleasure builds with astonishing intensity, a gilded heat rising through her every line even as conflict rears and she resists her out-of-control desire.

Fights the building tide.

But then Mavrik growls into her shoulder and his magic and want detonate, the force of his release tipping her over into her own starbright explosion, pleasure and light flashing through her in a radiant blur.

And then his eyes meet hers through the bright haze of light . . . and Gwynn comes undone.

That look . . . it steals her breath, the prismatic color suffusing his eyes like a molten rainbow that she wants to fall into forever.

She’s unprepared. Unprepared for this much emotion toward him igniting inside her.

“Gwynnifer,”

he says, his voice and magic full of such raw feeling that Gwynn’s heart clenches. He runs a hand down her arm, trailing shimmering sparks as he glances toward her fastlines. “Your hands . . . are you all right?”

“I . . . I think so,”

she murmurs as she flexes her hands and looks at them, noting, with a jolt, that both her hands and wrists—and his—are marked only in glowing gold lines, the patterns on their wrists now identical to the fastline designs marking their hands.

Her magic and feelings suddenly upending, Gwynn tenses and gives him a slight push away, even as everything in her yearns to keep him close.

Mavrik responds immediately, unlinking their bodies, but his magic keeps hold of her in a fervid embrace of color, their bodies lit up with it

Gwynn moves away, her heart constricting. She catches his quick look of concern and confusion as she draws on her clothing. Mavrik tugs on his pants, his magic a tempest of emotion, eyes blazing as he lifts his hands to study his wrists’ new golden Sealing lines.

“I think we did it,”

Gwynn manages, conflict brewing inside her like a storm.

Because she loved it. Even though she fought the feeling, she loved being with Mavrik.

Much more than she ever loved being with Geoffrey.

“I think we’re fully Sealed,”

she roughly states, her out-of-control emotions surging as she takes in his body once more.

His handsome form glimmers with incandescent streaks of rainbow everywhere they touched. For a moment her gaze is riveted on him, her pulse thudding as her eyes flick over the lingering effects of their impassioned coupling.

Mortification rises in a relentless tide because she knows, from the tingling energy coursing over her own skin, that her body shines in a similar way.

Mavrik moves toward her, his power shimmering around her in loving embrace, as if he can read her conflict, read her drawing away from him. “Gwynn,”

he says, taking gentle hold of her shoulder. “There’s something deeper here than just overtaking a Sealing—”

“Stop.”

Gwynn cuts him off, the fault lines of religion and culture threatening to pull her into their gaping chasm. “Please. I can’t.”

“Hey,”

he says, holding his ground even as she flexes her shoulder, attempting to shrug him off, even as every speck of her magic strains toward him. “This isn’t evil,”

he sets down in firm refute of the internal war Gwynn knows he can feel sparking through their magic. “No matter what you’re thinking,”

he insists, “what just happened between us . . . it wasn’t wrong. I genuinely want you, regardless of this situation.”

His hand slides down to caress her upper arm, his touch tentative, and she shudders against it. Fights her magic’s bucking pull toward him.

And then Mavrik releases her arm and holds out his gold-fastline-marked hand, palm up.

Gwynn stares at it, tears stinging her eyes, his power caressing hers with loving strength.

She slides her hand into his, and the two of them study each other for a protracted moment, the fierce alliance in their shared gaze sending a flush of heat through Gwynn’s lines.

His lips ticking up, Mavrik lifts her hand and gently kisses her palm, a potent rush of his magic flowing into her, as if his floodgates have been fully breached.

Hers blown wide open.

“Allies,”

Gwynn forces out. “It’s all I can be to you right now. Allies fighting against the cursed Shadow.”

His jaw tightens, and Gwynn’s heart clenches over the hurt that flashes through their intimately linked magic—a connection that’s stronger than anything she ever had with Geoffrey.

Remorse surges, turning her magic into a rioting tempest of dark blues.

“All right, then, my ally,”

Mavrik drawls, challenge in the word. She can sense him holding back the hurt. Holding back a thousand protests to the contrary.

A more intense warmth for him sparks in her.

Because she can also sense him giving her space to work this out, as he puts the bigger picture ahead of this thing building between them . . . and ahead of his turmoil over her response to it.

“This Sealing,”

Gwynn forces out. “It’s strengthened our connection.”

Her throat goes dry as she meets his gaze once more, color raying through them both.

He nods, and Gwynn can sense it’s taking everything in him to mirror her formal distance, his eyes piercingly serious as he traces his thumb over the back of her hand, the enticing motion making her shiver.

“We should get some sleep, my beautiful . . . ally,”

he offers, lifting her hand once more and gently kissing the back of it, the mischief lighting his eyes cutting through the confusion of the moment. “And tomorrow,”

he croons, “we’ll portal to the Northern Forest, break into it, and intercept the Prophecy.”

A harsh look enters his golden gaze. “And then we’ll find the Forest’s Great Tree, bind its magic to ours, and run every forbidden color straight through Vogel’s Shadow power.”