Our eyes lock, our magical auras burgeoning as a storm of emotion gives way, my ribs feeling as if they might burst from it.

We surge toward each other, Trystan coming down onto one knee before me as we fall into a protective embrace and everything I’ve been holding so tightly inside fractures wide-open. I’m unable to fight back the tears, my beloved brother’s back so solid and real beneath my palms.

“How did you ever find me?” I rasp into his shoulder.

“Spiders,” Trystan rasps back, surprising me. “There’s a Fae...she got word of incoming refugees from the spiders, only I didn’t know one of them was you...because of the glamour...”

“I feared I’d never see you again.” I can barely breathe through my relief.

“I feared I’d never see you.”

I draw a fraction away, my brother’s sapphire-lit face blurred by my tears. “Where’s Rafe? Is he all right?”

Trystan nods, his voice choked. “He’s fine. Everyone’s fine.” He cups the sides of my face, his cheeks streaked with tears. “The Vu Trin told us you were likely dead. But I didn’t believe it.”

My heart tightens. “Trystan, Vogel has Lukas.”

His brow furrows. “Lukas Grey?”

The words come in an impassioned rush. “He’s on our side. I thought he died saving me, getting me east through a portal, but I saw him through a rune. Vogel has him. I have to get my power unbound so I can go after him.”

Trystan pulls in a deep breath, then takes firm hold of my hand, an expression of calm descending as his power consolidates around me. “Tell me everything that’s happened.”

Tripping over the words, I tell him all of it. How I was separated from Yvan and brought to the desert to train. How I created a river of fire with the candle lighting spell, and a faction of the Vu Trin turned against me and tried to kill me. How I had to flee to Gardneria and seek Lukas’s protection to keep Noilaan’s Vu Trin army from slaying me, and then...how Lukas revealed himself to be on the side of the Resistance and we escaped from Vogel via the only means possible—a Sealing ceremony.

And how, thinking Yvan dead, I fell in love with Lukas Grey.

I tell him how Lukas, Valasca, and Chi Nam brought me to the Agolith Desert and taught me to fight, willing to sacrifice their lives to save me and send me East.

To be a weapon for the East.

“Vogel can destroy high-level Noi military runes. Easily,” I stress. “Which means he can strike down the runic domes of both Amazakaraan and Noilaan and march right into both countries.”