“You had so much potential.” Vogel shakes his head. “I should have known you’d be a problem from your casual blasphemy, but I believed your loyalties to be true. Instead, you’ve done everything in your power to turn my Black Witch into a staen’en whore set against everything pure and good. And now, you will atone for it.”

Vogel raises his Wand, and Lukas gasps as his Shadow bindings briefly turn razor-sharp, cutting into his skin like curved knives. He battles back the cry threatening to rip from his throat.

Instead, he forces a chiding laugh. “Elloren has more power than you. And she’s going to crush you with it.”

Vogel’s lips lift. “Did you know the Icaral, Yvan Guryev, survived?”

A bolt of jealousy darts through Lukas’s power.

Vogel’s smile widens. “Oh, I felt that.”

Alarm strikes. “How?” Lukas rasps, rattled by Vogel’s reveal of power-empath abilities.

Vogel slides onto one knee, a calculating glint in his eyes as he lifts his Shadow Wand and presses its tip to the palm of Lukas’s wand hand.

Lukas shivers as tendrils of Shadow course from the Wand to flow over his fastlines. “What are you doing?” he demands, his composure breached.

Vogel eyes him slyly, as if to say, Ah, got you. “Infiltrating the spell,” he states. “To connect to my Black Witch.”

White flashes through Lukas’s vision, a growl escaping his throat as he hurls every ounce of his formidable strength against his bindings. “I’ll kill you,” he lashes out, mind storming. “I will kill you if you touch her.”

Vogel’s voice is low and mocking when it comes. “Does it bother you that the only reason you survived my fire is that the Icaral’s taint is all over her? Because of his deep, serpentine kiss?”

Another blaze of jealousy commingled with hatred for Vogel overtakes Lukas as the reason for his survival falls into place—Elloren’s Wyvernfire. From her bond to Yvan Guryev.

“Join with me,” Vogel challenges, serious, his eyes flashing. “Together we can smite Yvan Guryev and raise Elloren to great power.”

Lukas lunges for Vogel’s Wand through a loose binding, but Vogel flinches back, viper fast. He flicks his Wand, Shadow vines flying from its tip, and Lukas grunts as his wand arm is wrenched outward. He glares murderously at Vogel as the gray cast to his vision intensifies and he stiffens, hit by what that means.

“You’re going to join me by choice or by force,” Vogel calmly imparts. He tilts his head, his expression turning almost sympathetic. “As will my Black Witch. She’s lost her way, but I’m going to help her redeem her very soul. Elloren is going to fulfill the Prophecy, slay the Icaral demon, and cleanse the East.”