Lukas’s warning cuts off as I’m hit by a sudden pulse of power so strong it rattles my teeth. Vogel’s dark tree shivers to life in my mind, luminous gray magic seeping through my lines in a twining stream. Lukas forcibly tenses, and the whorling fastline power around us contracts, pulling my essence into his misty body and the cavern once more.

“He’s coming,” Lukas murmurs, his mouth moving against the essence of mine as we peer into the massive cave. “Can you feel him?”

And I can, the gray power’s incoming flow directional. Lukas looks toward its source, and a tighter dread shudders through me as I spot Marcus Vogel emerging from the sea of soldiers. His priest attire is inexplicably gone, his black garb that of a soldier. He’s gripping his Shadow Wand, his form bracketed by the same demonic Mage envoys that were with him in the Agolith Desert, their eyes smoldering red, spiral horns made of smoke rising from their heads.

Vogel raises his Wand, and the sea of gray-eyed soldiers turns to him and stills.

Horror sears through me as Lukas flexes his power against mine. I rasp out a breath as I’m blasted back onto Or’myr’s balcony, the shadowy fastline-ropes once more streaming around us. Heart thundering, I meet Lukas’s gaze.

“Elloren,” he says, a look of brutal finality overtaking his expression. “Align yourself with Yvan Guryev. Align yourself with anyone powerful enough to help you fight Vogel’s forces.”

Confusion ignites over his mention of Yvan. “Lukas...”

“I saw you with him.”

Pain spears through me, straight through my center. “What do you mean?”

“Vogel can mindlink to you off and on,” Lukas says, voice strained. “He forced the images of you and Yvan on me, trying to turn me against you.”

Remorse drives into me with ravaging strength, like a bolt through my chest. I can tell from the tension on Lukas’s face that he saw Yvan kissing me. That he saw it all. “I’m sorry,” I choke out, stripped raw.

He shakes his head, his mouth tightening into a harder line. “Don’t be.” And then a heat enters his gaze that’s so saturated in love for me, my heart can barely hold it. “Elloren,” he says, “I know you chose me.” As if forgetting himself, he reaches for me and...

...his hand closes around my arm, his grip real and firm, his form no longer translucent.

We both freeze, the entire world suspended in this one moment of terrifying realization. And then Lukas’s look of dawning horror is subsumed into something fierce as his gaze rises to meet mine.

“I love you,” he says, voice guttural. “I’ll love you forever.”

And then he grabs hold of me, pulls me close and brings his mouth passionately down onto mine.