“I’m ready,” Trystan tells Ung Li before setting his hardened gaze back on the sorceresses and readying his wand. “You’ll be dealing with an army of Mages just like me when Vogel comes for the East. You need faster runic resonance and better counter-shielding. Because my power flew right into your runes.” He looks to Ung Li, stark warning in his tone when the words come. “I threw out only a small portion of my power.”

A tremor of fear flashes through the crowd, and I gape at the Gardnerian.

Ung Li frowns at Trystan. “Recalibrate your runes, Noi’khin,” she orders the soldiers, not taking her eyes off him. “Prepare for Mage attack.”

It’s late when I escort Trystan to his Wyvernguard room.

He’s silent the entire walk back, and I struggle to ignore the way he’s clutching his wand arm. The guttering blue rune-fire torches that line the corridor’s obsidian stone walls highlight his bruised face, his expression rigid with pain.

“What happened to you?” Sylla Vuul the Death Fae asks from the thick webs hanging above the hallway outside their rooms. I glance up to find Sylla’s dark-hued and multi-eyed human face peering down at us from atop a large black spider body, concern in every one of her many eyes.

The Death Fae are somewhat recent arrivals themselves, Ung Li’s housing of Trystan near one of them a blatant attempt to frighten him away.

Trystan meets Sylla’s gaze briefly, as if only half seeing her through his haze of intense pain. Pain I sense lashing through his power, Trystan’s wand arm in agony. I uneasily imagine that it’s covered in one solid, flaming bruise.

“It’s nothing,” Trystan says before opening the door to his room, slipping inside, and closing it, his storming energy palpable through the door, flaring to tempestuous heights.

My throat goes dry as the backflow of Trystan’s power cyclones through my own. I turn to Sylla, who has morphed back to full spider, accusation in her dark eyes. I have trouble holding that level stare. I look back toward Trystan’s door.

“He fights for the East,” she says, her deep tone resonating through me.

I swallow, my own power flaring into a tempest to match Trystan’s as I fight against her words. Against the ramifications of those words. Everyone I’m close to here is dead set against Trystan Gardner’s presence in the Realm, much less the Wyvernguard. My whole family, including my Zhilon’ile Regent father and most of the people in Zhilaan are dead set against both.

It should be an easy choice to continue to shun him.

My magic roiling, I turn back to Sylla, who has morphed fully to human save her eight eyes. The censure leaves her gaze and her expression turns deeply mournful. “Oh, Vothendrile. You fear him so.”