“Where’s Trystan?” I anxiously ask.

He cuts me off by patting the air, as if attempting to assuage my worries. “Reporting in with Vothe. He’s fine. It’s a formality.” His gaze turns a bit liquid as he peers more closely at me. “Ancient One... Elloren, you look just like your father.”

The door across the foyer swings open, and Lucretia Quillen bursts into the room along with a swooshing rush of her Level Four water aura. “I saw the rune light,” she says to Fain, tone shot through with urgency. “Is Trystan all right...”

Her gaze slides to me and holds there, her water power stilling as she scrutinizes my grayed features and I gape at her change in appearance. It’s almost as extreme as Trystan’s in how wildly she’s veered away from Gardnerian. Her conservative Styvian Mage sect blacks are gone, replaced by an emerald Noi tunic over dark green pants. A large indigo dragon is embroidered down her garb’s side, a wand fashioned from purple wood sheathed at her hip. A series of sapphire metallic hoops edge her ears and her long black hair is pulled back into a more Noi style of coiled braids. Her gold-rimmed spectacles the only thing left unchanged.

Her water power eddies toward me. “Elloren?” she breathes out.

“Vogel can break down runes,” I blurt out to them both with no preamble. “All runes. He has the Shadow Wand of Myth. And its power...it’s devastating. He knows where I am and what I am and I think he’s tracking me through my fastlines. He’s coming for me. He’s coming for the entire Eastern Realm.” My bone-deep exhaustion suddenly breaks over me and I wrestle against it. “I have what I think is the Zhilin...the Wand of Myth. And it’s given me true aim. But my power...it’s been bound up by the forest.” My voice splinters with a wrathful frustration. “I need my magic unbound, and quickly. So I can fight Vogel and rescue my fastmate. He’s been taken prisoner by the Mages.”

Fain and Lucretia exchange a look as the remembrance of Lukas bound and beaten opens up the ground beneath me, no solid purchase anywhere.

“When did you last eat or sleep?” Fain asks.

“There’s no time for it,” I insist, fisting my blade’s hilt, every muscle battered and bruised. “Vogel is coming—”