Page 67

Shadow Mage

Damion Bane

Vo Forest

Damion Bane glances at the smoking fastlines on his hands and wrists as he strides out of the Shadow portal he conjured into a foggy, grayed stretch of Noilaan’s Vo Forest, following the pull of the Shadow Wand.

A pull toward Voloi.

Shadowed thunder booms overhead, and Damion glances up at the Shadow storms battering against the shielding the heathens cast over the Vo River and its bracketing land. Shadow storms he wrested hold of and drew East, more rolling in, ready to crash through the shield’s northern and southern focal points.

His Shadow attack on the East just beginning.

The heathen’s shielding is about to fall, regardless of the rise of a new Tree of Power.

Pausing, Damion draws in a deep breath, lifts his wand hand and runs a finger over the steely fastmarks on it, a tendril of gray smoke emanating from them curling around his finger. Concentrating on the Shadow Wand’s directional pull on his fastlines, he senses the Wand closing off its power from heathen detection while it floods its gray might into him, its magic thrumming with the desire for him to recapture the Wand and take it firmly in hand.

Rising as the Magedom’s true ruler.

A Magedom that will rise again and prevail against every vile enemy.

Anger ices through Damion’s lines and quickly barrels into vengeful rage. Because he’s seen, through his brief, forced, fastline-connection to the Fae Wilds, what Vogel truly was all along—a cursed Icaral demon.

The whole Magedom led disastrously astray.

Damion balls his fastmarked hands, savoring how he used the Forest’s brief linkage to his fastlines to find out as much as he could about the Magedom’s enemies, leaving him with the information he needs to retake the Shadow Wand, gather the small army of true Mages who resisted the heathen Forest’s pull, wrest hold of the continent’s Shadow power, then take down the Dryad whore and her allies once and for all.

Oh, yes, he’ll finish what he started with Elloren Gardner on that Valgard balcony so many months ago.

Damion’s magic whips into a frenzy, battering against his lines for release, Shadow-amplified wind and water storming through him. The desire to avenge his slain sister, Fallon, and their brother, Sylus, surging.

He’ll hunt down his fastmate, Aislinn, as well. The little wolf bitch belongs to him. His to do with as he pleases, Lupine freak that she is. Arousal takes root just thinking about it. Oh, he’ll fully break her this time. And get his fill of her animalistic corruption before killing her slowly.

Leaving him free to fast to another.

The certainty of his impending triumph floods Damion with resolve. He launches back into motion, striding toward the Shadow Wand, reveling in its guiding pull, a sense of destiny filling him.

A slim, cloaked figure suddenly slips in front of him, so fast it’s as if she’s appeared out of nowhere.

He halts, startled, and reflexively unsheathes his wand, his Shadow-amplified power brewing to life.

Killing life.

The slim figure raises her gaze to meet his, her cloaked face cast in darkness.

But her eyes.

Wild and glowing with amber ferocity.

Concern sparks inside Damion, but then he looks closer and his concern evaporates.

Aislinn.

His little bitch of a fastmate.

He flashes her a congenial smile as he begins to murmur the binding spell in the back of his throat.

“Hello, Damion,”

Aislinn says.

Her tone catches him off guard. It’s so lacking in inflection. Devoid of the tremor it used to hold when she was under his control. But she’ll be under my control in a moment, he considers as binding power fills his wand. Because Lupines might be immune to Mage magic, but they aren’t immune to Shadow magic. And she’s so very alone.

Damion’s blood heats.

Oh, he’s going to savor breaking her once more.

“My fastmate,”

he croons before subtly flicking his wand, Shadow vines lashing toward her . . .

. . . to flick against nothing as she’s gone in a blur, his wand suddenly wrested from his hand and his vines colliding with the tree Aislinn is no longer in front of, binding tight to its trunk.

Every nerve sparking, Damion spins as a blur races around him and Aislinn appears, once more, where she previously stood, his wand now in her hand. Those wild amber eyes pinned unblinkingly on him.

A sudden creeping tingle coils through Damion’s spine, and his skin bristles with a sense of the situation shifting . . .

But then he remembers how weak she is. How pathetic. How easily browbeaten.

“You can’t wield it,”

he chides as he stares her down, gesturing with a flick of his fingers toward the wand. He grins at her, the sheer force of his domineering aura always enough to gain the upper hand. “Which means you’ll have to fight me.”

But that stare of hers. That unnerving, amber stare.

“I promised myself that I would never touch you nor be touched by you again,”

Aislinn states, calm and cold as deep winter.

Some of Damion’s fear uncoils. “Good, good,”

he says, his throat thick, relief loosening his lungs as he plans his attack . . .

“But they made no such promise,”

Aislinn says as several black dragons slide into view from every side, moving as silently as Aislinn did through the Void Forest’s dense fog.

Damion’s breath catches in his chest.

Because the nearest dragon . . . he remembers this one. The giant black one that he couldn’t break. Even after he smashed her wing and leg. Even after he tore off her ear and ate it in front of her.

The huge dragon snarls, the sound rumbling straight down Damion’s spine as his eyes snag on the piercing green gaze of a leaf-hued Amaz carried on the back of another incoming dragon. Damion’s alarm intensifies.

Alder Xanthos . . . the Dryad Amaz.

A purple eagle with a charred wing perched on her shoulder.

“Do you remember me?”

Alder asks, tone harsh. A flock of giant eagles with saffron feathers emerge from the dense Forest, their golden eyes all pinned on him with looks of keen, predatory interest. “Do you remember Azion, my eagle kindred, whom you murdered?”

Alder inquires.

Damion takes a step back. “Aislinn,”

he says, cursing the tremor that’s entered his voice, his throat tightening against it as something new blurs in from the fog.

Diana Ulrich appears before him, standing beside Aislinn. Diana’s stance is casually powerful as she surveys his entire form, head to toe, with merciless Lupine eyes.

Like she’s sizing up a meal.

“So,”

Diana says as she raises her hand and flexes it. “I was told you hurt my sister.”

She flicks her claws out with audible snicks as she gives Damion a smile that’s so chilling, his insides turn to liquid.

“Aislinn,”

he pleads, taking another step back, “you can’t let them do this . . .”

Aislinn turns and walks away as Diana’s growl tears through the Forest, Naga’s roars shake the world, a ripping, slashing noise sounds . . . and Damion Bane begins to scream.