“I won’t let them take you,” he says, just as a door at the foyer’s opposite end flies open. An elegantly featured Mage of about Professor Kristian’s age emerges. He strides toward us with urgency, green eyes blazing.

Confusion tightens inside me like a fist.

He’s dressed in conservative Gardnerian blacks, an Erthia orb necklace around his neck.

His deep-ocean aura of power rolls over me and for a moment, the whole foyer ripples as if we’ve all been cast underwater.

“Trystan,” the Mage says, his tone one of immense relief as his vast water power encircles my brother with protective force. “Lucretia just brought word of the kraken attack. They said you didn’t report to Vothe, so...” His dazzling gaze slides toward me and catches hold. “Who’s this...” His eyes flick to the runic blade in my hand, then toward the outside terrace and the incoming military skiffs, then back to me as if rapidly piecing it all together.

Another wave of his ocean aura slams into me.

I gasp and recoil back, his magic inundating my lines with titanic force.

His eyes widen, and then, just like that, his power aura vanishes. I double over, catching my breath, realizing, with vast surprise, that he must be a power empath, like me.

The Mage turns toward Trystan and smiles, catlike. “Sheathe your wand, Trys,” he directs as my brother’s aura spits out a discordant array of invisible lightning. “You’re going to go out there and report to them,” he directs, smooth as satin. “I’ll come with you.”

“Who are you?” I rasp while Trystan slowly and carefully resheathes his wand, my brother’s gaze pinned on the outside.

“Fain Quillen, my dear,” the Mage says with that same exaggerated calm. “And I suggest that you stay right where you are. Or war will break out on this very terrace. And we’ll all be killed. Do you understand me, love?”

I nod jerkily as Fain and Trystan exchange one piercing look, my brother’s throat bobbing as he swallows before his expression goes carefully blank. Fain nods, opens the door, and they stride onto the terrace together.

I wait, feeling suspended in time, as muffled voices sound in the Noi language, dampened by the stone walls and thick windows—a woman’s authoritative tone, stern and staccato; Fain’s convivial response followed by Trystan’s matter-of-fact one and Vothe’s emphatic deep bass; Fain’s amused laugh. The woman’s reply, edged in sarcasm, then amusement as Fain laughs again, and then the motion of the blue rune light arcing and leaping on the walls turns even more frenetic as the roar of magically consolidated wind blasts through the stone and glass. The frenzied sapphire light shifts and slants...then rapidly fades to nothing.

Fain strides back into the foyer, and in one graceful movement eases to one knee before me with a look of piercing concern.