“Vothendrile Xanthile’s work,” Jules supplies, casting a shrewd look toward me. My thoughts fly to Trystan’s love with no small amount of gratitude.

“Where are you taking us?” Yvan asks Jules, our dim space partly illuminated by his fiery eyes.

“To a strongly warded location in the sublands,” Lucretia answers from Jules’s side. “Where we can free up Elloren’s magic.” Her gaze sharpens on Yvan. “And buy you time so we can all plan the best way to negotiate an alliance between Elloren and the Vu Trin.”

“Since there’s a rather large Prophecy standing in the way of that,” Jules archly notes.

Magic burns a rebellious path through the space between Yvan and me, its rush of heat sweeping through my body, and for a moment, I’m lost to it, pained memories surfacing of everything Yvan and I have been through together and what we were starting to be to each other in the West. Yvan’s face colors, his fire shivering more intently around me as the fog thickens.

I look away, acutely aware of Yvan’s warmth radiating through his clothes with the force of a smith’s furnace, our power whipping around each other in seeking flares. A remembrance of Lukas’s similarly embracing magic overtakes me and remorse unfurls, raw in my chest.

Kam Vin takes a seat by Lucretia as Ni Vin pilots us through the shifting clouds of fog, all of us silent and tense, a sliver of Lucretia’s water power slipping loose to flow around Jules. I’ve the sense of our collective breath suspended as I fight off the powerful urge to grasp hold of Yvan’s hand, the side of my finger touching the heated side of his as I’m overcome, anew, by the shock of having him so abruptly back in my life. Alive.

I catch Yvan’s glance and know he’s sensing my emotional whorl of fire.

He slides his warm hand over mine in what I can tell is an attempt at chaste support, but there’s nothing restrained about the way his fire spirals up through our hands and over my skin, his heat so impassioned a flush sears through my cheeks, my pulse quickening.

He draws his hand from mine and we both look sharply away.

“Elloren,” he breathes, a marked strain to his voice as his molten eyes find mine, his aura intensifying as it varnishes my skin with wanton flame. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m finding it difficult to contain the Wyvern draw. Since we’re bonded—”

“Keep silent,” Kam Vin whispers. “That search dragon could be within hearing range.”

“I’d sense the dragon,” Yvan says, nostrils flaring, and Kam Vin nods, her hand resting on the hilt of her rune sword.