I scan the river from the bedroom’s circular window, the small room softly green-lit by a single Smaragdalfar rune lamp and the varg wards marking the walls. Perched on the slim bed abutting the outer wall, I lean into the window, my cheek to its warm glass, and wait, my thoughts repeatedly circling back to Lukas then Yvan with a dual yearning that’s impossible to fully suppress. Both of them out there, somewhere...

Exhaustion blurs the river’s spots of rune-ship light, the emotions surrounding my feelings for the two of them impossible to navigate, capsizing me again and again. Minutes pass, bleeding into what feels like hours, my eyelids fluttering and soon closing as the conflict and longing fragment into exhaustion and I fade to sleep.

At first, everything is a dense, blessed black. But then the black gives way to an infiltrating gray mist that morphs and twists into tendrils of Shadow. I’m standing in it, fingers of gray rising to twine around my legs and weapons. Around my Wand.

A figure emerges from the wraithlike gloom. A hooded man, his head tipped down and darkened by the fog. He slowly lifts his head, and Vogel’s pale green eyes meet mine.

I recoil, fear knifing down my spine.

Vogel’s mouth lifts in a serpentine grin and I watch, frozen in horror, as an additional eye appears on his forehead, then on his temple, then on his cheek, one eye after another, until his entire head and neck are nothing but a grotesque mass of eyes and a grinning mouth.

He opens his lips, teeth elongating, and lunges for me.

I cry out as I bolt awake and yank my cheek from the window, fire roaring through my tangled lines as my Wand vibrates urgently against my calf, my hands stinging like someone dragged a knife over my fastlines.

I glance down and fright lances through me. My fastlines are visible and no longer black. They’re made of twisting smoke, twining through the glamour like steam.

I let out a strangled gasp. “No... Ancient One, help me...”

The smoke abruptly vanishes, along with the pain, but the scalding heat roaring through my lines intensifies, flashing gold against my vision and sweeping me into its blaze. I immediately recognize the unique golden quality of this burgeoning flame as I’m overtaken by a want so vast I feel as if it will burst through my ribs.

Wyvernfire.

And there’s nothing vague about it. No sensation of vast distance to temper this fire. It’s blasting toward me like a furnace from the direct north and as familiar to me as my own heart, my own lines. Yvan’s fire bond. Sweet Ancient One.

A light-headed swoop rushes through me.

He’s alive.

And he’s found me.

CHAPTER SIX

WYVERNFIRE

Elloren Grey

Voloi, Noilaan
Eastern Realm
The night before Xishlon

I rush out of the bedroom, Wyvernfire scorching through my lines.