Page 11

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.