My fastmate, he croons as he runs our eyes over the mammoth Northern Spine. Did you truly imagine you could run from the Ancient One’s Holy Will? This is your destiny, Elloren. Your army.

His focus on me sharpens, like a spike-strike straight between my eyes.

I know where you are.

CHAPTER SIX

DOWNFALL

Elloren Vogel

Vo Forest

Vogel abruptly releases his thrall over me and I snap back into myself.

I pant for air, down on my hands and knees, my grayed vision intensified, everything taking on a lurid, steely glow. Ariel is on one knee beside me, clasping my arm, her conjured ball of fire hovering above her shoulder as she jostles me, saying my name over and over.

Vogel’s attention inside me makes a raptor-hard turn toward every dead branch.

My wand hand flexes of its own accord and I wrench it toward my chest, stark terror snapping through me. I grasp hold of Ariel. “Kill me now! And warn Naga and the Vu Trin... Vogel’s filling the Spine, the entire Spine, with his Shadow hive army!”

“I know!” Ariel growls back, glancing toward the flock of ravens massed in the trees surrounding us, all of their gleaming midnight eyes set on me. “Wynter’s kindreds from the West told me. We need to go west to fight him and find Wynter!”

Before I can stage a protest, Vogel’s clawing branches impale me once more, a gasp torn through my throat by the explosive agony as Shadow floods my lines. A dazed hunger swirls through me as my gray-lit gaze sweeps over the clearing. Branches everywhere.

Wands everywhere.

Just one touch, Elloren, Vogel intones in my mind, as his power suffuses my lines with silvery heat, so potent it makes me shudder. Noi Birch. Plum Cedar, he gently whispers. One touch and you’ll sense the whole tree...

I clamp my teeth hard, staggering backward as I constrict my lines in an attempt to throw off his thrall. Because if I pick up any one of those branches, it will be over.

“He’s in my head, Ariel,” I say, a tremor kicking up all over my body. “He’s infiltrated my fasting and he’s in me. Don’t let me touch wood...”

Vogel’s presence rams through me. My eyes roll back in my head as I lose control over my body. He darts me forward with a rough growl, leaping toward a branch as I rage against his invasion. My fingers close around wood.

Ariel slams me to the ground and whips me onto my back, her elbow coming painfully down on my arm. She wrests the wood away and hurls it aside, then pins my hands against my chest, straddling me, her eyes scorching as Vogel forces me to struggle against her. I snap my teeth at her in a feral attempt to tear into her flesh. To bite those wings of hers clear off her back.