I jolt awake, desperate for Lukas and gasping for breath, my Wand’s energy buzzing against my calf. A spider-tattooed man is jostling my shoulder in a night-darkened bedroom. Another man, tall and point-eared, looms, sapphire light pulsing over them both.

On instinct, I draw my Ash’rion blade and bring it to the spidery-man’s throat, my fingers sliding over the hilt’s runes, ready to stab him and blast off his damned head just as my dream-fog clears enough for me to realize where I am and who is before me.

My uncle Wrenfir is frozen in place, an astonished smile forming on his blackened lips as if he didn’t know I had it in me to fight so viciously and is vastly pleased that I do. I swiftly draw back my knife, heart hammering, and meet Or’myr’s urgent glare over Wrenfir’s shoulder. I move to speak, but they both cut me off with emphatic fingers to their lips. Or’myr points toward the bedroom window.

A riot of changeable sapphire light is flashing through it, cast up from the terrace below, and alarm seizes hold of my chest.

They motion for me to get up and I catch sight of three military rune skiffs landed there as I do, four more flying in. Heavily armed Vu Trin soldiers are disembarking, Fain striding out to meet them. Firming my grip on my blade, Or’myr hastily makes my bed as Wrenfir tugs me toward the bedroom’s door.

“Zhi Lo,” Fain’s pleasant voice chimes up from the terrace as we cross the room. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“This isn’t a social call,” a woman’s voice sharply returns. “We’re searching the premises.”

“For what?” Fain asks, sounding convincingly confused as we exit the room.

“Set up a runic net around the entire area,” the woman’s voice commands as I’m led down a curving hallway at a fast clip, both Wrenfir and Or’myr pulling wands as we go.

A door slams shut a story below and I flinch as boot heels sound, running through a hall then clomping up the stairs to this floor. Or’myr pauses before the purple-veined, obsidian wall, pulls a Noi rune stone from his tunic’s pocket, and presses it to the wall.

The doorway just past the hallway’s bend slams open just as an archway of glowing purple runes bursts into being beneath Or’myr’s stone. Or’myr pushes against the archway’s interior and the stone dissolves, revealing a spiral staircase cut into the mountain.