Chapter Two

The Reaping Times

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Valgard, Gardneria

Ten days after Xishlon

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes hurries along the green-torchlit periphery of Valgard’s huge, crowded Cathedral Plaza, night closing in on all sides. Fear tightens her chest in a constricting ache, but she holds fast against it, her jaw stiff with defiance.

Because she’s all too clear on the monster the Magedom has become.

And so, Gwynn beats back the fear and anguish threatening to tear her apart and scans the vast throngs of black-clad Mages, intent on finding her parents amidst the sea of zealous Gardnerians eagerly drinking in High Mage Marcus Vogel’s every last syllable. She knows it’s vital that she make an appearance with her kin on this night.

As cover.

But the surrounding color . . . she can’t let her mounting draw to it reveal her rebellious nature or her awakening light power, her wand hand increasingly gleaming with any hue her trapped light magery is drawn to. And so, Gwynn clenches it, struggling to ignore the brilliant green of the torchlight and the golden luminescence of the fiery Blessing Stars suspended around the plaza. A speckling of green-and-gold sparks flits through Gwynn’s vision and affinity lines, the glow from the torchlight and stars mingling to produce a heady chartreuse luminescence that bathes the mob’s enraptured faces and the plaza’s central statue depicting the Great Black Witch killing the Cursed Icaral.

A chill races down Gwynn’s spine as she takes in the martial statue. Because the Magedom has found its next Black Witch—Elloren Gardner Grey.

A Black Witch who could finish bringing the Reaping Times to all of Erthia.

A Black Witch who is now fasted to Vogel, as evidenced by the gray fastlines marking the High Mage’s hands as well as the dark military uniform he now wears instead of his former priestly garb.

“My Blessed Holy Mages . . .”

Vogel’s rune-amplified voice thunders out over the packed plaza.

Bile rises in Gwynnifer’s throat, and she quickens her stride even as her knees tremble. She casts a glance toward where Vogel stands on the landing atop Valgard Cathedral’s huge sweeping staircase. A forest green amplification rune hovers just below his chin, and rows of Mage soldiers line the stairs before him.

A shiver races through Gwynn as she takes in the four glamoured pyrr-demons bracketing Vogel. She can spot their true natures through the veil of their Mage glamour quite clearly. As a former Bearer of the Wand of Myth, she can detect the simmering red points of their eyes and their twisted Shadow-smoke horns, as well as the Shadow rising from Vogel’s Wand of Power, the gray tendrils twining around the High Mage’s form . . .

The Wand of Myth pulses hard in the back of Gwynn’s mind, its spiraling green form flashing with chromatic light, a vision of herself and six other Bearers with multihued light power shimmering to life around the Wand. A vision that’s ocurring more and more frequently, along with a sense of the direction the Wand lies in. Like a migratory pull on Gwynn’s very center. North. And down. Below the ground, drawing ever closer . . .

One of the demons pivots its head in her direction, as if it’s scented something in the air. Fear igniting, Gwynn ducks her head slightly and averts her eyes, her breathing carefully measured, every nerve in her body primed for flight. Because she knows that if she meets the demon’s sulfuric eyes, even for a blink of a moment, it will sense the Wand of Myth in her very thoughts.

And mark her as one of its former Bearers.

“We have dealt a staggering blow against the heathens of the East,”

Vogel states as Gwynn resumes searching for her parents. “Our Blessed Black Witch and Mage forces have struck down Noilaan’s Wyvernguard and their unholy cesspit-city of Voloi.”

A rousing wave of cheers and applause swells, unity crackling in the air as Gwynn keeps her eyes averted from the demons.

“But be warned, Holy Mages,”

Vogel intones, his amplified voice a bone-deep vibration resonating through her, “the Icaral demon and his Dryad beasts have taken hold of our Black Witch.”

Thunderous outrage crashes through the plaza, Gwynn’s shock momentarily skidding her to a halt.

“The Dryad beasts are portalling our Black Witch to their warded Northern Forest,”

Vogel warns. “Bent on slaying her. She is caught in a portal lag as we speak. And the surviving Vu Trin forces are mobilizing, ready to advance upon both our Black Witch and our most Holy Magedom.”

He pauses, and Gwynn can feel the righteous fury of the crowd rising around her, her pulse ratcheting up to a gallop.

“We are nothing but Crows and Roaches to them,”

Vogel seethes. “They live to see us cower before them. They live to blot out the Ancient One’s own Holy Light. But the Reaping Times, my Blessed brethren, are here.”

Vogel thrusts up the Shadow Wand, and the crowd’s fury explodes, their roar of vicious support battering through Gwynn’s ears. She stiffens, horror streaking through her lines. Because there’s no protection from this nightmare. Or from Vogel’s Shadow Wand.

But she’ll go down fighting the Magedom with everything in her.

“We will use their own heathen power to smite them,”

Vogel snarls, raising the smoking gray Wand. “And make use of our sanctified Shadow power to slay the Great Icaral demon and his Dryad Fae beasts, then free our Black Witch!”

The crowd goes wild just as Gwynn spots her parents at the edge of the mob. A surge of agony almost buckles her legs as she takes in the way her stout, jovial mother and wandmaster father are cheering.

“Pray with me, Mages,”

Vogel croons, and the crowd settles. “Let us pray for our Blessed fallen in the East.”

Gwynn slides in beside her parents as they bow their heads, close their eyes, and bring fists to their chests. The zealous tension that tightens their beloved faces strikes like a blade through Gwynn’s heart.

Hand quivering, Gwynn reaches out to touch her father’s arm, her gut twisting anew at the sight of the white armbands wrapped around his and her mother’s arms. White bird pins are affixed to their shoulders, depicting the Ancient One’s holy messenger clutching a bouquet of Ironflowers, the decorations a tribute to Gardneria’s “Blessed fallen Mages,”

so “cruelly cut down”

by the Eastern Realm’s “heathen” forces.

Lies, Gwynn wants to scream at her parents while she shakes them until they see. You’re being fed lies upon lies upon lies!

But Gwynn knows from the beatific reverence in her parents’ expressions that they’re hopelessly immersed in their collective sacred story like the rest of the crowd—like she, herself, once was. Certain they’re living in the Reaping Times that will cleanse Erthia of all Evil Ones and usher in a perfect Magedom.

Her father opens his eyes and turns to her, just as a tear streams down Gwynn’s face. A look of kind concern tightens his gray-bearded, bespectacled face, and he brings one hand to her shoulder, gutting Gwynn anew.

Heart constricting with misery, Gwynn gives her father a false, wavering smile and reverently makes the sign of the Blessing Star on her chest. His expression relaxes into relieved approval, and Gwynn knows he imagines her to be emotionally caught up in Vogel’s holy words, his daughter securely on the One True Path.

The prayer concluded, Gwynn’s mother opens her eyes, spots Gwynn and breaks into a warm, happy smile, which sends another clutch of agony shuddering through Gwynn’s chest. She forces a happy return smile, her heart fracturing over her wildly traitorous path.

But what she’s set in motion this evening must be brought to completion.

Gwynn remembers the moment everything changed for her, the horror of it branded on her soul. Her family is Styvian, part of the very strictest sect of Gardnerians, and they never mingle with non-Mages. But one night several months ago, at a rally much like this one, her connection to the Wand of Myth revealed the true nature of Vogel’s Shadow magic. She fled the rally and took a wrong turn in her panic, accidentally venturing outside of her sheltered Styvian world.

Halted in her tracks by the sound of children screaming, she shifted course and ran toward the screams, certain that Evil Ones had taken hold of Mage children, as all the stories warned they were wont to do. Full of the Ancient One’s own fury, Gwynn swiped a rock from the ground then raced into the dark alley . . .

. . . and the sight she was met with exploded her entire world view.

A mob of six Gardnerian men, some wearing strict Styvian garb, were holding down two Urisk girls—a blue-hued child who looked no more than six years old, and a pale rose-hued child with pink braids who was, at most, eleven. Horror speared through Gwynn as she registered the men digging knives into the tops of the screaming children’s ears and swiping off the points, blood streaking down the girls’ terrified faces.

At that moment, something in Gwynn broke, like glass shattering.

Screaming, she leaped at the Mages and, with her stone, beat whichever of their heads she could reach, so full of outrage she barely heard their snarls of “Get back, you staen’en bitch!”

and barely felt it when they shoved her to the ground and fled, yelling parting threats—“Your family will hear of this, heathen lover!”

Her heart thundering, Gwynn scrabbled toward the sobbing children. They screamed and recoiled from her at first before fearfully allowing her ministrations, the little one vomiting all over Gwynn’s tunic as she ripped cloth from her underskirts and bandaged their bloody ears the best she could with shaking hands, then rushed the children back to the non-Styvian home where they worked as indentured maids. In hushed tones, she vowed to help them get out of Gardneria, the translucent image of two Watcher birds of the Ancient One briefly shimmering into view, perched on the girls’ shoulders, the sight streaking a bolt of religious upheaval through her.

“Rise up, Holy Mages,”

Vogel charges, yanking Gwynn from the horrific, life-changing memory. “We will break through the Dryad Fae wards surrounding the Northern Forest,”

Vogel seethes, “and burn the wilds there to ash for the Magedom’s reaping plow!”

Rigorous cheers rise, fists thrust into the air, her parents enthusiastically looking at Gwynn as bile rises in her throat. She forces another emotional smile, close to retching all over the plaza’s polished tile.

She’s tried—tried—to make her parents and fastmate, Geoffrey, see the horrific truth.

That night, after she aided the Urisk girls, she ran home and told her parents and fastmate everything in a tangled rush, desperate to keep Geoffrey from deploying to be part of something so monstrous. Desperate to enlist her family’s help in fighting this nightmare. She breathlessly revealed to them how the Gardnerians were torturing children, and how Vogel had aligned himself with something wicked and Erthia-destroying.

And she told them that she saw the Ancient One’s Watcher birds perched on the Urisk children’s shoulders.

Geoffrey and her parents exchanged dire looks and listened intently as Gwynn pleaded with them to turn against the Magedom. Geoffrey embraced her tenderly, and Gwynn burst into relieved tears, hope swelling in her rattled heart. Her mother warmed up a bowl of her favorite chicken dumpling soup and her father handed her a mug of soothing honeyed tea, and they all murmured words of comfort and support, promising to carefully consider her revelations.

The next morning, Gwynn entered the kitchen with a spark of hope burning in her chest. The spark was immediately snuffed out when she found not only her parents and Geoffrey there, but her family’s stern-faced religious leader, Priest Orioth, bracketed by several church acolytes, who glowered at her just as condemningly as the Styvian priest.

The acolytes’ wands drawn.

Panic surging, Gwynn launched into breathless pleas, imploring her fastmate and parents not to send her away, only to be met with their stoic, agonized refusals and her mother bursting into tears. And then, both Geoffrey and her father exchanged pained, knowing looks with Priest Orioth, who nodded solemnly, and Gwynn felt the abyss opening beneath her.

When Gwynn moved to flee the kitchen, wands flicked out, and her wrists were quickly tethered together and leashed to the acolytes.

“Didn’t you hear anything I told you?”

she implored Geoffrey as she struggled against her bonds, tears streaming down her face. “They’re attacking children!”

“Heathen children!”

Geoffrey snarled back at her, the level of zealous anger in his tone something new, the anguished look of agreement her parents gave him like a lance through her soul.

In that moment, as Gwynn was led away for “purification,”

she realized that her parents and Geoffrey were irretrievably lost to her.

And so, during her church imprisonment, she read The Book of the Ancients without ceasing. Nodded in emphatic agreement to every last thing the priests and their acolytes said. After a month, it was determined that she had been saved from the grip of Heathen Evil by the Ancient One’s Holy Grace, and her parents and Geoffrey joyously welcomed her back into the fold.

And Gwynnifer began planning her own strike against Vogel’s nightmare.

She began with whispered comments murmured near Urisk laborers in various shops, revealing her access to the Valgard armory and a whole host of grimoires and magical tools. One thing led to another, and when the Resistance connection flowed in like a stealthy tide, Gwynn opened her arms wide and dove in.

“I . . . I need to find Geoffrey,”

Gwynn whispers to her parents as Vogel’s voice continues to sound out over the plaza and what she longs to say balls up in her throat.

I love you, Pappa and Mamma. I love you so much.

But this has to be fought.

Her father gives her hand another warm, approving squeeze, which she returns, lips trembling. She reaches out and grasps her mother’s hand one last time, tears flowing, certain her parents are once more mistaking her show of emotion for zealous love of their Great High Mage.

Their monster.

“The heathens will fall, and the Magedom will rise!”

Vogel booms.

Another thunderous roar bursts from the crowd as Gwynn turns her back on her parents . . . on her entire life.

She strides toward the rear of the plaza, her heart striking into a harder rhythm against her ribs as she spots her fastmate standing stiffly on duty amongst the soldiers lining the plaza, their uniforms all marked with the Ancient One’s Holy Bird, one of the flaming Blessing Stars encircling the plaza suspended in the air above Geoffrey.

Cold dread shivers through Gwynn, something she never thought she’d feel when faced with her formerly beloved fastmate.

When Geoffrey returned from clearing heathens from the forests of Northern Gardneria, there was an off-kilter harshness to him that was never there before as well as an odd gray glow ringing his eyes that only Gwynnifer can see. It made her retch into their privy’s washbasin, cementing the realization that her longtime love had given himself over to the monstrous.

Becoming a soldier of the Gardnerian nightmare.

Geoffrey turns his head and catches sight of Gwynn. She gives an inward jolt, the gray glow around his irises catapulting her out of her memories. Dread slithers through her as she takes in the animalistic way his nostrils flare, as if he’s scenting her approach. She fights the urge to recoil.

His stare eerily unblinking, Geoffrey lifts his lips in a slight smile, as if with emotion half-remembered. “What’s the matter?”

he asks as she nears.

She takes his offered hands and kisses him on both cheeks, gutted anew by the familiarity of the intimacy and his warm scent. “It’s just . . .”

She struggles to find the lie.

Geoffrey’s gaze turns piercing, as if he’s rooting for impurities the way the priest and his acolytes did that terrible morn she was taken away.

Forcing her lips into a quavering smile, Gwynn gestures all around. “It’s just so beautiful to see the Magedom so united.”

The hard planes of Geoffrey’s face relax as Gwynn’s pulse hammers in her neck. “I’m going to find Echo and a few others,”

she enthuses brightly, “to go hear the Valgard Choir straight after this. I might not see you until much later.”

Geoffrey nods, a more genuine smile now on his lips. “I’ll see you later, then,”

he says, sounding so much like the old Geoffrey that a sob almost rips out of Gwynn’s throat. “I’ll volunteer for night guard.”

She struggles not to nod too enthusiastically. “Yes. You should. It’s a blessing to guard our most holy cathedral.”

Another genuine smile breaks through on Geoffrey’s face, and Gwynn has to beat back her anguish as he leans his tall frame down and kisses her.

Sure she’ll come apart at the seams if she hesitates a second longer, she forces one last smile, lets go of his familiar hands and walks away, leaving her devastated heart on the tiled ground behind her. Forgetting herself, she chances one sidelong look toward Vogel and his demons.

To find the sulfuric red-eyed gaze of one of them pinned directly on her.

Panic breaks through her lightlines like a crimson tide. The image of the Wand of Myth blasts through her mind and strobes there, as if in blaring warning. Gwynn darts off the plaza and into the shadows of an alley, then down a side street. Reaching into her tunic’s pocket with a shaking hand, she grabs hold of one of the Issani demon-diversion rune stones she’s pilfered from the Valgard armory’s cache of magical tools from all the lands, the golden-rune-marked Issani stones able to draw off a pyrr-demon’s sight tracking. She presses its center, activating the rune, then hurls the stone into a side alley before swerving down another street, inwardly flinching as an intimidating mob of male Mages pass by. Their gazes slide over her strict Styvian garb and white armband as they pass, nodding with looks of approval.

Every nerve blazing, Gwynn purposefully bumps into a Mage at the mob’s rear, murmuring her apologies as she surreptitiously slips another activated stone into the stern young man’s pocket before she turns around a corner.

Her gaze alights on a Wanted poster tacked on the storefront window beside her, and she skids to a halt before it. There are identical postings tacked up all over the city, a drawing of a young, wickedly striking Mage printed on them. He glares at her with a conniving expression, his feral green eyes seeming to peer straight into Gwynn’s soul, a dark wand raised menacingly in his hand.

Wandmaster Mavrik Glass.

Traitor to the Magedom. Wanted by the Mage Guard.

Gwynnifer’s eyes slide toward the Wanted poster to the right of Mavrik Glass’s, a posting Gwynn hasn’t seen before. Paling, she takes in the female emblazoned on it, a sinister Alfsigr Icaral demon with evil silver eyes, her black wings fanned out threateningly, a green Wand-Stylus with a spiraling handle in the Icaral demon’s bone-pale hand.

Wynter Eirllyn, the posting says. Icaral beast and runic sorceress. The Icaral and her Wand of Power wanted by the Mage Guard.

Gwynn’s gaze zeroes in on the Wand, the whole world receding as the image of the verdant Wand pulses through her mind once more and an astonishing realization punches into her.

The Wand of Myth . . . it’s in the possession of an Icaral demon.

The sulfuric red gaze of Vogel’s pyrr-demons invades Gwynn’s mind. She remembers how those same demons relentlessly tracked the Wand so many years ago, before she sent it away with Sage Gaffney. Demons aboveground and demons below, all wanting the Great Wand of Myth. And now, one of them has it.

But this Icaral demon . . . Gwynn’s been assured by the Resistance that Wynter Eirllyn is an ally.

Bent on trusting the Resistance, Gwynn lurches back into motion. She rounds another corner and finds a bonfire aflame in a small plaza’s center. The bonfire’s heat licks over her as she cautiously passes and takes in the great pile of Gardnerian women’s clothing being eaten by the flames. Four conservatively garbed Mage women stand beside the fire, slim torches gripped in their hands. Their searching gazes look over Gwynn, and they nod at her equally strict garb, devoid of the forbidden Fae colors Gwynn spots on the burning fabric—vivid purple embroidery edging the hem of one; saffron daisies fashioned from delicate ribbon scattered over another.

The forbidden hues sizzle through Gwynn’s Level One lightlines, and she tenses her wand hand against their pull, shuddering to think of what might have become of the owners of that garb since wearing Fae colors became an imprisonable crime.

Her own attraction to Fae colors now an imprisonable crime.

Every night, mobs with torches stalk the streets, rooting out the “impurities”

of the city, burning books and other “blasphemous”

items. Ransacking stores thought to be impure and setting them alight with Blessing Stars. And every night, Urisk are at risk of being beaten and having the points of their ears viciously cropped.

In the narrow alley that leads to her home, Gwynn slows and focuses on two small cloaked figures huddled there. Relief floods her—the two Urisk girls are waiting just where she told them to be.

Ten-year-old Bloom’ilya and skinny six-year-old Ee’vee fearfully meet her gaze. Little Ee’vee is pulling in stacatto breaths, the blue-hued child’s large sapphire eyes glancing repeatedly at the alley’s ends, her threadbare cloth toy fawn clutched in one arm. Bloom’ilya looks wan and equally frightened, hunched low and holding on to Ee’vee’s hand.

Gwynn’s heart twists at the sight of the girls’ mutilated ears, her own pain forced away as she’s faced with the nightmare bearing down on these two children.

“Are you ready?”

Gwynn whispers, and the girls respond with jerky nods. “Wait here,”

Gwynn directs, summoning a hard edge of courage on their behalf, hating to leave them, but certain that they’re safe here for the moment.

When she exits the dark alley, Gwynn’s home comes into view.

Her emotions seize at the sight of the beloved, charmingly vertical house, sandwiched between Valgard’s sprawling armory and Mage Council offices, one room to each story. All Gwynn’s happy childhood memories are wrapped up in this wedged-in space. All her happy adult memories, too, the one-room apartment she shares with Geoffrey located high up on the dwelling’s fifth floor.

Gwynn’s gaze sweeps toward the armory, determination firing as she takes in the threadbare force of two Level Five soldiers standing sentry before it, the six additional soldiers who are usually stationed there attending Vogel’s rally. The soldiers nod to her in greeting as she approaches her home’s Ironwood front door, Ironflowers carved into the door’s dark wood to convey a protective blessing.

Forcing measured breaths, Gwynn retrieves her keys from her tunic pocket, unlocks the door with a trembling hand and slips inside. She shuts the door firmly and relocks it, glancing toward the unlocked kitchen window across from her that Wandmaster Mavrik Glass is supposed to slip through any moment now, the window’s forest green curtains slid open.

Leaning against the front door, her palms to the polished Ironwood, Gwynn forces measured breaths and closes her eyes as she summons every last sliver of will. Doggedly setting back into motion, she opens her eyes and races up and up and up her home’s spiraling staircase, until she reaches the tower bedroom of her childhood at its apex.

She pauses, struck hard by grief.

Her mother has kept the space frozen in time. White birds and Blessing Stars Gwynn fashioned from paper years ago in a rush of religious zeal hang from slim strings throughout the room in happy flocks and constellations. As they are on every floor, dead Ironwood trees are set into the walls, their leafless branches tangling overhead, the dead trees symbolic of Mage dominion over the Fae wilds. Countless religious books and pious journals line the shelves set below the tower’s ring of windows, which afford a panoramic view of nighttime Valgard. Gwynn pivots to her craft table, pushed up against one of the windows, the surface still littered with multiple replicas she carved, so many years ago, of the Wand of Myth.

The Wand now in the hands of an Alfsigr Icaral demon.

Her pulse a steady, pounding rhythm, Gwynn lowers herself to the Ironwood floor and searches under her broad bed. Her breath catches as she finds all her forged and stolen grimoires gone, smuggled away as she was told they would be, her sacks of carefully fashioned and pilfered rune stones taken, as well.

She straightens and peers out the windows at the unimpeded view. The Ironflower trees that used to stand around the tower were mercilessly cut down, as were all the living trees in Valgard, to cleanse the city of their “Fae stain.”

For a moment, she’s overcome by the bittersweet memory of how, for years before she and Geoffry were Sealed, he would climb those trees and visit her on the sly.

Swallowing back a suffocating swell of misery, Gwynn grabs her stuffed travel sack and moves to throw its strap over her shoulder.

“Leave it,”

a harsh, masculine voice orders from behind her.

Startled, Gwynn drops the bag and whirls around, heart thundering as she meets the piercing green eyes of the young Mage poised at the top of the stairs, his skin glimmering a brooding forest green in the tower’s dim light.

“Mage Glass?”

Gwynn can barely breathe out the Resistance wandmaster’s name.

His eyes narrow in appraisal. “Call me Mavrik,”

he drawls.

As he saunters toward her, her trapped light magery breaks into a fitful shimmer, and Gwynn wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. Moving with controlled ferocity, Mavrik Glass gives her a cool smirk that doesn’t reach his assessing eyes—eyes that are taking in every last inch of her as if evaluating the fitness of a horse for a long, rigorous journey through hell and back. He tosses the edge of his dark cloak over one shoulder in a fluid motion, revealing multiple wands sheathed at his side.

“I know what you’re thinking,”

he croons, eyes glinting with battle-hardened mischief. He leans in, as if confiding a delicious secret, her magic sparking unsettlingly toward him. “?‘He’s so much better looking than his picture on the Wanted posters.’?”

He draws back, scrutinizing her. “That’s because the Magedom can’t seem to help itself.”

He gestures toward his face. “Making me look so pointy-featured and evil on the posters.”

He cocks a brow. “I am evil. Make no mistake about it. But a conundrum for the Magedom, as they like to picture their villains as vile looking.”

Gwynn gapes at him, a knot caught in her throat. Thrown by his blithe banter at a time like this.

Mavrik Glass glances at the paper Watchers hanging from her ceiling. The Blessing Stars suspended on slim threads. “Interesting base of military-level operations you have here.”

He cocks an amused brow as his gaze swings back to hers. “Ready to become a renegade, Princess?”

It takes Gwynn a moment to summon the courage to answer, her entire world about to be torn apart. “There are two servant girls,”

she reminds him, emphatic. “They’re coming with us.”

“It’s sorted,”

he states. That intimidating glint returns to his eyes, and Gwynn is filled with the impression that Mavrik Glass does things his own way, no questions asked. She moves to pick up her dropped bag, and he halts her with a raised palm. “Leave it. We need to travel fast.”

“But . . .”

She glances around, suddenly unable to bear the course she’s set herself on, her breath coming in forced shudders as defiance rears and she moves to pick up the bag once more.

Mavrik’s hand closes around her upper arm, his expression shot through with intensity, and her trapped magic gives a confusingly strong surge toward him. “Gwynn, I said leave it.”

She startles at his use of her familiar name. “You don’t understand.”

She yanks her arm out of his grip, trembling. “I’m leaving my fastmate. My family. Everything.”

Mavrik’s eyes flash. “I do understand.”

He holds up a hand, fastmarks looped around it and his wrist too. And Gwynn can tell, from the sudden streak of pain blazing in his eyes, that at some point, he left everything behind, as well.

“I loved him,”

she admits, voice splintering. “I loved my fastmate.”

“He’s lost to you,”

Mavrik says, harsh as an axe through her heart. She winces, tears pooling in her eyes, then shuts them tight, struggling not to shatter over what she’s about to do.

“Gwynnifer,”

Mavrik says, his hand coming around her arm once more, both his voice and touch gentler now, her magic sizzling toward him as if it wants to stream straight into his hand. She opens her tear-soaked eyes to find his gaze locked on her with a look of vast compassion. “Have your moment of grief,”

he says, low and measured. “One moment. I did, as well. Your path just became impossibly hard and harsh. Like mine has been. But it’s just.”

Gwynn thinks of Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee huddled in the alley—of everyone who is being brutally abused by the Magedom.

“I believed. I believed all of it,”

she blurts out, voice breaking. “I was wrong.”

His lips give a bitter twist. “Welcome to the circle of Mage unbelievers.”

His eyes take on a conspiratorial glint as he leans in. “Trust me—once you get used to us, we’re a lot more fun. That’s the upside.”

Stepping back, he holds his hand out to her, serious once more, his eyes flicking toward her bag. “Your old life is dead to you, Gwynnifer. Let it go. We need to leave.”

There’s a strong note of alliance in his tone. Gwynn pulls in a deep breath and rallies her courage. Leaving her bag on the floor, she takes Mavrik Glass’s hand.

Prismatic sparks flash through her vision, and her lines seize. She gasps, every last shred of her trapped magic contracting toward his hand while she’s blasted by a sense of his magic straining toward her—a hot stream of fire, a tempestuous whoosh of air, a black dart of vining earth and a roiling rush of water.

Mavrik flinches, his breathing going as uneven as hers. He gives her an intense look as their invisible combined power swirls together with grasping potency. But there’s no time to wonder at any of it as he pulls her into motion, and she descends with him into the shadows of the night.