Ice power crackles to life throughout her body as she sounds out a spell, the surrounding air cooling as countless silver-gray spears form alongside her, ready to wreak vengeance on the terrified women and bleating children and their pathetic soldiers. Practice, she gloats to herself.

For what they’re about to do to the Eastern Realm.

Imbued with righteous purpose, Fallon arcs back her arm and thrusts her wand forward, screaming out her order with bezerker rage.

“Fire!”

Part Two

PART TWO

The Black Witch

CHAPTER ONE

EAST

Elloren Grey

The Dyoi Forest
Eastern Realm
Seventh Month, two days prior to Xishlon

Black Witch.

I scan the purple forest surrounding me with urgency as I tend to little Tibryl. She hacks out a cough, but I manage to keep the flat side of my Ash’rion blade against her neck to cool her fever, my fingers on the runic combination for ice power, the weapon stinging cold against my hand.

My temples ache, the trees pounding their ceaseless tide of hatred into me as they have throughout the day and into the encroaching twilight. But the forest be damned—I’m determined to get farther east to find my family and allies.

To find Trystan.

I tighten my fist around the Ash’rion’s glacial hilt, struggling to keep my thoughts from scattering into worry for Lukas. His name sounds in the back of my mind with every beat of my heart, my nerves alight with the yearning to find him. Even as the heated echo of what felt like Yvan’s Wyvernfire shimmers through my lines.

The shocking possibility that they could both be alive is an agonizing yet hopeful pull on my heart from opposing directions. I can’t get the dual images out of my mind—the devastated look on Lukas’s face as he threw me into the portal, his green eyes blazing with passion as I screamed his name. And Yvan...his eyes searing gold in the subland cavern when we said our last farewell, his hands cupping my face after he sent his Wyvernfire through me with his intense, fiery kiss.

Wait for me, he said before we were separated. But I didn’t wait. I didn’t question the news of his death. I Sealed to Lukas and fell in love with him with equal fervor.

An ache swells in my chest over how much it will wound Yvan—if he’s truly alive—once he discovers that I’ve Sealed to Lukas in absolutely every way. And Lukas...how will he react to Yvan’s survival?

But there’s no time to resolve any of this, and it all pales in comparison to what I’m faced with.