Her mother’s recollections flash through her mind—memories of how the heathens oppressed the Mages for generations. How they indentured some and murdered the rest, seeking to wipe them off the face of Erthia. How, during the Realm War, her own mother was herded with other young Mage women into a livestock pen while their families were imprisoned in a nearby barn that the heathens planned to burn to the ground.

Never again. Fallon raises her wand arm higher and readies herself to take her place as Erthia’s next Black Witch—that heathen’s whore, Elloren Gardner, be damned. And Lukas Grey will be hers, once his hands and wrists are stripped clean of his Sealing to that staen’en bitch.

Hoarfrost spikes through her lines in a glorious chill as she murmurs a spell, wind power rushing into her wand.

“Cloak them!” Fallon calls out to her horde, signaling with an upraised hand. She swipes her arm emphatically down.

As one, Fallon and the Mages flick out their arms. Dark fog shoots forth from every wand, the fog fanning out over the valley to form a new dome of wraithlike Shadow.

“Conjure the trees!” she orders, and they all lash out their wands once more, bolts of Shadow colliding with the dome.

The dome fragments, great columns of Shadow plunging down from its curved surface, thick as buildings. Explosions sound below, reverberating through Fallon’s body. She throws her head back and draws in an ecstatic breath as the columns rapidly branch out, a gigantic Shadow forest forming beneath her, the foggy dome swiftly morphing into a canopy of undulating gray limbs.

The panicked cries of civilians intensify as Fallon and her horde streak over the canopy-dome. Hunching over her dragon, Fallon gives the signal for descent. The Mages burst through the dome, the shield-safe runes on their forearms, allowing passage denied to the Amaz.

All of them trapped like penned livestock, Fallon vengefully gloats.

It’s dark inside the dome, the Shadow tide Vogel cast over the valley’s floor stripping Cyme of all color save the green glimmer of Mage skin, all of the Amaz heathens’ precious runes stripped of their power and scarlet color by the tide.

Fallon’s horde soars around the giant trees, a barrage of arrows flying toward them, the rune-stripped arrows like gnats glancing harmlessly off their gray shielding. There’s a legion of ridiculously fierce Amaz soldiers massing below, rune-stripped weapons aimed at Fallon’s horde as they bellow orders and women and children scatter, running toward their Queenhall.

Yes, run, Fallon crows as the children scream, reveling in the sound, remembering what her mother told her of Mage children’s terror.

“Ready yourself, Mages!” she orders, lit up by the Magedom’s overwhelming power advantage. She pulls back her wand, the other Mages following suit.