Ra’Ven brings his stylus’s tip to the tattoo imprint of each of the six runic chains marked around my neck in turn, my skin prickling as each chain morphs from a flat tattoo to a three-dimensional linkage of Smaragdalfar varg runes. He gently takes hold of one of the chains and lifts it off me.

Tension releases along the top of my ears as they lose their points, a portentous feeling sizzling through me. He lifts off another chain, and a sweep of energy courses over my scalp and I glance down to find my pale gray hair morphed back to black. Another chain off, and green sparks light in my vision, the glamour lifting as the remaining chains come off one by one, and I know, as Ra’Ven straightens, that I look like the Black Witch again.

I raise my green-glimmering wand hand and take in the curling fastlines once more visible on my hands and wrists, and my heart constricts. It was so difficult to feel anything past Yvan’s Wyvernbond when he was so near, but now, with him gone, the memory of finding Lukas in his dream rushes in like a tide. I clench my fists around my fastlines as if desperately grasping hold of what will soon be my path back to Lukas.

Sage and Rivyr’el take Ra’Ven’s place before me as I slide my tunic back on. Lowering herself to one knee, Sage motions for me to raise my tunic’s hem, then brings her purple wand’s tip to the demon-sensing rune on my abdomen just as Sparrow Trillium and Thierren Stone slip into the cavern.

“You’re here,” I say, astonished to be reunited with my former Valgard lady’s maid and Lukas’s Level Five Mage ally, Thierren’s uniform now that of a Vu Trin soldier. “I’m so glad you made it East,” I say, swept up in the remembrance of our escape from Valgard while Sage removes a section of the rune she marked on me in Amazakaraan with a stretching sting that has me wincing.

“Aislinn sent for my aid,” Thierren explains. “She said wind power was needed.”

“We want to help you, Elloren,” Sparrow adds, “and Lukas too. Any way we can.”

I nod, grateful, as I take in the astonishingly transformed Sparrow—resplendently garbed in an opulent lilac dress embroidered with irises, her pointed ears adorned with delicate looping chains festooned with glittering purple gems.

“You look so different,” I marvel.

“I’ve found success quickly here as a seamstress and designer,” she tells me before a startlingly painful series of jabs ripple over the rune. I wince harder and Sparrow’s gaze darts toward my abdomen with evident concern.

“There’s about to be quite a bit of power flying around this room,” Or’myr says before quietly directing Sparrow out for her safety, Thierren remaining. The demon-sensing rune finally gone, Sage straightens and looks to Rivyr’el.