Chapter Four

Traitor to the Magedom

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Valgard, Gardneria

Ten days after Xishlon

“Give me your wand hand,”

Mavrik Glass orders, coolly dominant.

The golden light from the small, suspended fire-orb he’s conjured flickers over his arresting features as he and Gwynn pause in the cramped kitchen of Gwynn’s family home.

Near the curtained back window they’re about to flee through.

“Why?”

Gwynn asks, the forest green of Mavrik’s penetrating gaze playing havoc with her lightlines. Verdant sparks crackle across her vision, a shimmer of the rich color racing over her wand hand as her power strains toward his with unsettling force.

“I need to link our fasting spells,”

he clarifies, jaw ticking, body tense, as if he’s steeling himself against their disquieting magical draw, as well.

“But . . . I’m not fasted to you,”

Gwynn sputters through their magical thrall. How can he possibly link their fasting spells?

Rapid-fire, her mind scours over every page of every grimoire she’s ever laid eyes on, searching for a spell that can connect unrelated fastlines, her trapped light magery giving her a picture-perfect memory.

Mavrik rolls his eyes and gives her a look of exasperation as he holds up a hand, his fastmarks a markedly different design than hers. “I’m quite clear we’re not fasted,”

he says. He turns his hand, palm up, thrusting it toward her. “Gwynn, we’re really short of time. Give me your hand.”

His tone is brusque, and Gwynn’s chest tightens with apprehension. His intense, domineering energy is nothing like Geoffrey’s mild-mannered congeniality . . .

A pang of turmoil twists her heart.

That’s how Geoffrey used to be. Before he stopped caring if children are tortured.

Seeming cognizant of her flare of anguish, Mavrik tenses his brow. He unsheathes one of his wands and holds it up for her perusal, and Gwynn takes in the charged sapphire Noi runes marked on the wand’s slim, dark surface, stunned by his display of blatant—and thoroughly forbidden—magical mixing.

“I’m going to connect a combined Noi-and-Mage tracking spell and a Mage vine spell to our fastlines,”

he explains, “and weave Noi barrier-breaking and linking spells around it. That way, if we get separated, I can track your location and reel you in.”

Gwynn’s mind whirls as she mentally connects the elemental building blocks of the spells he’s proposing, the puzzle pieces falling into their slots. “Oh,”

she breathes. “That’s clever.”

Mavrik smirks, mischief dancing in his green eyes. “Wandmaster. Remember?”

Gwynn’s light power gives another sparkling surge toward him, and she catches his slight shiver and the sudden tightening around his eyes, magical tension thick in the air.

“Our magic . . .”

she manages, fighting its pull to move toward him. “There’s some type of thrall between us.”

“I know,”

he stiffly agrees. “But there’s no time to parse it out. We have to think past it.”

Struggling to focus through the captivating thrall, Gwynn places her wand hand in his.

Her trapped light power spangles through her lines toward their linked hands in a heady, multicolored rush as she’s overcome by the sensation of his power sizzling toward her in turn. His eyes widen as he takes in her suddenly green-glowing hand, heat sizzling across her face.

“What’s triggering the green?”

Mavrik asks, swallowing thickly.

She bites her lip. “Your eyes,”

she admits.

“I was told you’re a Level One Light Mage,”

he presses, a skeptical edge to his tone.

“I am,”

she insists, a tremble kicking up in the hand she has in his. “I can’t access any of the magic in my lines.”

Mavrik’s grip firms around her, as if to help her quell her tremors. He peers closely at her. Her cheeks heat further in response to their sustained, forbidden hand-holding, the women of her sect never allowed to touch the skin of a man who is not their fastmate.

Mavrik gently pivots her palm up, and another rush of multihued sparks flash through her lines and vision. Her breathing suspends. He presses his wand’s tip to the center of her palm and murmurs a stream of spells, low in his throat, his eyes narrowing in concentration.

He has fastlines around his wrists, Gwynn notes. He’s fully Sealed like me . . .

A sting lights along Gwynn’s fastlines, and she flinches as thin blue and green lines crackle out of the wand tip. The magic forks around their hands like threads of lighting, encasing them in a fizzing net. Gwynn pulls in a surprised breath as the lightning net draws into their fastlines, their dark, looping fastmarks briefly pulsing blue and green before their normal black hue returns and the sting recedes.

Mavrik releases her hand and resheathes his wand, his magic-sparking eyes meeting hers. “Did you mark the runes around the armory and place the anchoring rune like we directed?”

“I did,”

she affirms, lowering herself to pull up a floor tile, revealing a circular disc of black lumenstone she stole from the armory, the disc marked with a glowing forest green Mage anchoring rune.

Mavrik lowers himself beside her, and draws a thicker black wand emblazoned with emerald Varg runes. He points the wand’s tip at the rune stone and meets Gwynn’s gaze with lightning-rod intensity. “Are you ready?”

Her throat unbearably tight, she nods.

Murmuring a spell, Mavrik touches the wand’s tip to the anchoring rune.

The rune shifts to a brighter green. A magical tang bursts to life, and a light-headed sense of diving off a cliff sweeps through Gwynn as the anchoring rune sends its charge out to every complementary rune she marked around the armory.

“Let’s go,”

Mavrik urges.

They spring up and stride to the kitchen’s back window . . . and catch sight of a Mage soldier just beyond it.

Gwynn’s heart flies into her throat as they both draw sharply back, past the window’s sides, then peer out through the slim gaps at the curtains’ edges.

The Mage is just outside the window, down on one knee, silver Level Five stripes marking his uniform and cloak. He’s unsheathed his wand and is pressing its tip to the rune now visible on the cobbled ground, the overturned flowerpot it was hidden under pushed aside, four more Level Five soldiers closing in around him.

“The cobbler stumbled into the pot and found the rune,”

the soldier explains to the others.

Gwynn’s pulse explodes as she turns back to the flashing anchor rune at their feet, glowing brighter and brighter . . .

A lethal resolve entering his gaze, Mavrik grabs hold of her wrist, their magics spearing toward each other as he pulls her toward the front door.

Gwynn plants her feet, hard, resisting his pull.

Mavrik’s eyes snap to hers, a demand in them. “Gwynnifer,”

he hisses, his eyes flicking toward the anchor rune. “We are literally out of time.”

“The armory guards,”

Gwynn cautions in a vehement whisper as the anchor rune gains potency. “We can’t just stride out this door.”

Mavrik grins dangerously at her. “Watch me.”

He kicks the door open and pulls her onto the landing beside him, the two Level Five guards bracketing the adjacent armory’s entrance immediately turning toward them.

“Good evening, gentlemen,”

Mavrik taunts.

Gwynn’s alarm skyrockets as the guards’ eyes widen. Their expressions turn murderous, and they unsheathe their wands at the same time that Mavrik levels his Varg-rune-marked wand at them, viper swift, while murmuring a spell.

Two thin bolts of emerald flame flash from Mavrik’s wand toward the wands of the guards and explode the weapons in verdant flame. Releasing Gwynn’s wrist, Mavrik sweeps his wand in a wide arc over the entire thoroughfare before them, intoning Smaragdalfar spells with single-minded fluency.

Gwynn flinches back against the doorframe as a multitude of thick black columns of vine explode up through the cobbled street before them, one column blasting from beneath the guards’ feet and hurling them into the air. People scream as carts and carriages are upended and the columns rise, branching out into dense tree shapes.

Gwynn gapes at the scene, frozen in place by the potency of Mavrik’s earth magery, as the armory’s guards right themselves, draw fresh wands, and launch themselves toward them.

With focused calm, Mavrik levels his wand at them once more, his finger sliding over one of its runes.

Wind bursts from his wand and slams into the guards, punching them backward, their wands blown from their hands. Mavrik’s conjured vine trees enlarge further as people flee. Mavrik thrusts his wand forward and blasts wind around his conjured vine forest, lifting street debris into his turbulent storm.

Earth and wind, Gwynn considers as her hair whips against her face. Mavrik has Level Five earth and wind.

“C’mon,”

Mavrik urges, stepping toward the street, but Gwynn remains frozen in place.

Wind buffeting them both, he rounds on her, taking in her frozen stance with a look of sheer incredulity. “Do you need an engraved invitation?”

he asks, his tone glass-sharp as he thrusts his hand toward her.

Gwynn grabs his hand, and they sprint into the fleeing crowds and whipping winds and are quickly enveloped in the chaos of the destroyed street as they skirt rubble and the huge vine tree forms.

Green light flashes over the world as they reach the thoroughfare’s other side.

They both turn and see a huge Mage rune sizzling to life on the armory, covering two of its stories.

Runic firebomb, Gwynn notes, before the huge explosion she enabled detonates in an earsplitting BOOM.

A cry tears from her throat as the armory, her family’s home, and the Mage Council building on her home’s other side burst into green flames, the explosion ringing in her ears, her legs almost buckling beneath her.

Traitor to the Magedom. Staen’en blasphemer.

The names for what she has just become strike through her with devastating force, her course irrevocably set.

Mavrik tugs on her arm, and Gwynn stumbles into a sprint, tears burning her eyes even as renewed purpose grips hold, the two of them dashing toward the dark alley where she prays Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee are still waiting.

Please be there, please Ancient One let them be there, Gwynn petitions as she and Mavrik bolt into the long alley and her eyes adjust to the dark.

A soft emerald glow flashes into being from the tip of Mavrik’s wand, and relief lashes through Gwynn to find the girls still huddled there, backs pressed to the alley’s dark wall.

Bloom’ilya’s pale rose face and little Ee’vee’s sky blue expression morph into startled looks at the sight of Gwynn and Mavrik barreling down the narrow alley toward them. The girls’ gazes snap toward the Wanted poster affixed on the wall across from where they’re huddled, Mavrik’s evilly rendered face glaring from it.

Gwynn catches Mavrik’s horrified look as they slow and his gaze passes over the girls’ mutilated ears. He drops to one knee before them, and they recoil, eyes flicking from him to the poster and back to him again as Ee’vee hugs her threadbare fawn toy and begins to cry.

“I’m Mavrik Glass,”

he tells them in a tone so compassionate it catches Gwynn off guard. “You’ve probably seen my picture—”

he glances over his shoulder at the poster “—well, pretty much everywhere.”

He dips his head in a gesture of apology. “Not a flattering one, I’ll give you that. But I’m certainly not on the side of the Mages.”

His gaze turns fierce. “I’m on your side. And I think you should come with us. Quickly.”

For a split second, the girls hold his intense stare. They look to each other, then to Gwynn as if seeking reassurance, little Ee’vee’s lip quivering as she hugs her toy.

Pulse thrumming, Gwynn nods encouragingly and holds out a hand, and the girls leap to their feet.

Wasting no time, Mavrik sweeps skinny little Ee’vee up in one arm, while Gwynn grasps quick hold of Bloom’ilya’s trembling hand. Multiple bootheels pound at their rear, men’s voices shouting to each other. They all turn, Ee’vee letting out a fearful shriek as several Mage soldiers run into view, wands drawn.

“They’re here!”

one of the Mages bellows.

Mavrik points his wand at the soldiers and hurls a spell at them before the Mages can get one out. Glowing green vines lash from his wand’s tip and fly forward several feet before expanding into a tightly woven shield that spans the alley’s width, walling them off.

“Go, go, GO!”

Mavrik urges, and they launch into a run toward the alley’s far end.

An explosion sounds behind them, and a galvanizing jolt of fear races down Gwynn’s spine as they dart into a faster sprint and Gwynn glances over her shoulder to find Mavrik’s vine wall igniting with silver gray flame, the strange fire burrowing into the ground instead of flaring up like normal fire.

Dread fires through Gwynn. Demonic Shadowfire.

The dark fire is streaking through the ground toward them, two Mages with glowing red eyes and Shadow horns appearing through the smoke where Mavrik’s barrier just was.

Their sulfurous eyes lock with Gwynn’s, and recognition shocks through her as she sights them through their glamoured forms—it’s the same pyrr-demons she and Sage encountered, so many years ago . . .

The demons bare their teeth in predatory smiles, and the taller of the two raises a hand.

Before Gwynn can cry out a warning to Mavrik, pain strafes through her lines, and she’s frozen in place. Invisible bonds seem to be hooked into her lightlines, holding her captive. The scene around her blinks out, save for the two glamoured demons, the taller demon’s terrifyingly multitoned voice searing through her mind.

WHERE IS THE WAND, MAGE WHORE! WE KNOW YOU CAN TRACK IT!

KILL HER! the other snarls. BEFORE SHE CAN JOIN WITH OTHER LIGHT BEARERS!

NO! the taller demon shrieks. LET HER LEAD US TO THE SECOND WAND OF POWER! THEN WE DEVOUR HER!

Then they’re palpably rooting through Gwynn’s thoughts, burrowing through her mind, their power scorching around the image of the Wand of Myth pulsing there, and her resurgent sense of the Wand drawing ever closer . . .

“Gwynnifer!”

Mavrik’s sudden grip around her hand and the potent flash of his Level Five power around hers cuts through the demons’ thrall. The world snaps back into focus, her free will flooding in just as a blast of the demons’ steely fire explodes against a translucent green shield Mavrik must have conjured while she was enthralled, the shield’s Varg-emerald color shimmering to gray.

Panic shoots through Gwynn’s veins as she tightens her hold on Bloom’ilya’s hand and Mavrik pulls them both into a run, Ee’vee still gripped in his arm. “They’re glamoured pyrr-demons!”

Gwynn cries

“I know!”

Mavrik fires back before leading Gwynn and the terrified girls toward another alley the moment his shield falls, twin bolts of silver gray fire narrowly missing them as they duck into the alley. Mavrik lets go of Gwynn’s hand, redraws his Varg wand, and aims it over his shoulder while growling out a spell, blasting another shield into being, this one a wall of emerald flame.

A ground-shaking boom crashes against the shield, and its green flame pulses gray.

“That’s not strong enough to hold them off!”

Gwynn yells as she parses through her knowledge of demonic magic with rapid-fire speed.

Not waiting for his response, Gwynn lets go of Bloom’ilya and grips Mavrik’s wrist, ignoring the rush of prismatic sparks racing through her lines while wresting hold of the demon-spell-blocking rune stone in her pocket. Drawing it out, she thrusts the stone against Mavrik’s wand. “Draw this rune’s power through your shield now!”

she cries.

Their eyes lock in a flash of alliance, comprehension igniting in Mavrik’s gaze. He snarls out a spell, and a second wall of roiling green power bursts out of his wand to form a second shield, this one translucent emerald, against his wall of graying fire.

Another booming punch slams against the first shield, wiping out its flame, but the second shield remains standing.

Launching back into motion, Mavrik leads Gwynn and the children toward the alley’s end, all of them skidding to a halt before a pile of broken-down crates.

After setting down a sobbing Ee’vee, Mavrik hurls aside the crates and levels his wand at the ground as Gwynn draws both girls close.

A shattering explosion sounds to their side, all of them flinching as the translucent shield Mavrik cast erupts into gray flame at the same moment that a wheel-size emerald Varg rune appears at their feet. The rune rapidly sizzles away to reveal a hole with a metal ladder leading into eerily greenlit depths.

The Sublands, Gwynn registers, heart pounding. The supposedly hellish lair of the vicious Smaragdalfar Elves. Are they about to trade one hell for another?

“Go!”

Mavrik growls at Gwynn as their shield falls and the glamoured pyrr-demons, backed by countless Mage soldiers, launch themselves forward.

Clear out of options, Gwynn reaches in her tunic pocket and thrusts her last Varg rune stone into Mavrik’s grip before prodding a shivering Bloom’ilya down the ladder.

Mavrik presses the stone to his wand and conjures another shield, the demons’ and Mages’ magic punching hard against it as Gwynn grabs a hysterical Ee’vee and swiftly follows Bloom’ilya down the ladder, her legs shaking, the ball of her foot almost slipping off a metal rung.

Gwynn and the girls touch down inside a narrow tunnel around the ladder’s base, and she quickly scans her surroundings. Black rough-cut stone encircles them, lit sporadically with luminous Varg runes, a second tunnel’s entrance before them.

Scared for Mavrik, Gwynn turns just as he lands beside them with a heavy thud, springs up, and points his wand toward the hole above them. An emerald rune shimmers to life over the circular entrance and sizzles into a barrier of crystalline green stone.

“We need to move,”

Mavrik urges as he scoops up Ee’vee and urges Gwynn and Bloom’ilya forward.

Taking hold of Bloom’ilya’s trembling hand, Gwynn sprints into the tunnel and down a sharp, rocky incline, Mavrik’s bootheels thudding behind her. He prods her down a series of ladders, then through two curving tunnels, muffled explosions booming to their rear, louder and louder . . .

They spill into a huge cavern, and Gwynn skids to a halt, her breath seizing in her chest. It’s like they’ve been shrunk down and set inside the center of a giant green geode. Huge, jutting crystals surround them, their glittering majesty overtaking Gwynnifer’s trapped light magery, large tree roots above them winding around the geode’s mammoth crystals along with a net of Varg runes. The crystals’ verdant color flashes into Gwynn’s vision and races through her lightlines, surprise sparking as her vision clears and she takes in the Smaragdalfar army standing before them. Lethal Varg swords made from interlocking emerald runes are gripped in every Smaragdalfar Elf’s hand, and three Noi portals pulse a short distance behind the army.

All the swords are raised and leveled in their direction.

Gwynn’s shock is a war hammer to her chest. Because there, in the center of the Smaragdalfar Elf army between two male Alfsigr Elf archers, stands the Icaral Elf demon from the Wanted posters—Wynter Eirllyn.

There’s a Watcher perched on the Icaral’s shoulder, and her dark wings are fanned out behind her, silver fire burning in her eyes.

The image of the huge Ironwood tree made of starlight bursts into Gwynnifer’s mind, and she gasps, the tree-vision’s glow fracturing into prismatic light as Gwynn’s whole world contracts toward the spiraling, green-glowing Wand gripped in Wynter Eirllyn’s hand.