shot through with blue lightning. The apprentices surrounding me retreat with cries of alarm as we’re hit with stray forks of the Mage’s stinging lightning and cyclonic side winds.

I can’t help myself. I step forward, the draw of the glorious maelstrom of power impossible to resist. My horns spiral up as I inhale deeply and draw in his energy before it can dissipate. Trystan turns and meets my gaze, an invisible spark passing between us as our power connects, just as multiple bolts of sapphire light suddenly slam into the center of his chest, punching him to the ground.

I whip my head toward the soldiers as every one of them, save Commander Ung Li, throws bolt after bolt of runic power from newly drawn weapons, their expressions turned vicious. The collective emotional energy on the air becomes volatile and murderous, my shifter senses able to pick up every last shred of the rising cloud of fury.

“Die, Crow!” one of the soldiers snarls as she draws back her arm and hurls a silver rune star at Trystan.

I move to throw lightning at the star just as Trystan flicks his wand and his own blue lightning shoots from its tip, deflecting the star into the Vo River.

“Halt!” Commander Ung Li orders as she tosses a rune stone between Trystan and the soldiers. A wall of translucent blue energy blasts from the stone. Two last bolts of runic sorcery slam into the wall and ray out in compact explosions of sparking sapphire light.

Ung Li steps in front of the wall to face the soldiers. She glares at them, her battle-hardened gaze sweeping over everyone assembled. “If you kill him,” she bites out, “we cannot learn how to subdue Level Five Mage power.”

The murderous energy of the crowd is undimmed. I can taste it in the back of my throat. Trystan Gardner remains on his knees, cradling his wand hand, head down, and I can read the intense pain he’s in from the way his power is chaotically flaring around his wand arm. There’s a large red bruise flaring on his forehead where someone threw a bolt of runic energy directly at his face that triggers a bolt of concern straight down my spine. Concern I’m unable to beat back.

“We’ll convene again tomorrow,” Ung Li says to the sorceresses with a resentful glance at the Mage on his knees.

Trystan picks up his wand with a shaking hand and rises. “No,” he says.

I stare at him, as does everyone else, surprise charging my power with crackling energy.

“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.”A cornered defiance rises, my invisible aura lashing out at Sylla. Unlike most of the Wyvernguard, I don’t mind the mysteriously powerful Death Fae and have formed something of an odd bond with Sylla Vuul, but sometimes her bizarre philosophizing is too much. “You think I fear him?” I snap. “My power equals his.”

Sylla smirks, which is a surprisingly disconcerting expression on that multi-eyed face of hers. “You forget that I can read you,” she chides, a forceful undercurrent entering her tone. “It’s not his magic you fear. It is something far more powerful.”

“All right, Sylla.” The pent-up storm of emotion surrounding this Mage breaks loose. “Go ahead and tell me,” I demand. “Tell me exactly what it is that I fear.”

Sylla narrows every last one of her eyes with the focus of the ultimate predator, her darkness pulling in around us both and sending a chill down my spine. But still, I stand firm in the face of it.

“You fear,” Sylla says, with the unflinching candor of the Death Fae, “that he’s telling the truth.”

Trystan

He likes men.

I realized this about my dragon-shifter guard, Vothendrile, straightaway.

It’s on full display right now as I watch Vothe brazenly flirt with stunningly handsome Basyl Hollen. These observations are trivial, I realize, compared with what I’m faced with. With what the East is faced with. But still, I can’t help being drawn in by these glimpses of Vothe’s private life.

Vothe and the Elfhollen soldier are reclining against a gleaming stone wall only a few handspans away from where I’m seated in the Wyvernguard’s black-walled dining chamber. Basyl’s storm-gray fingers stroke Vothe’s muscular arm, lingering a beat too long, a suggestive spark of lightning flashing in Vothe’s eyes—eyes that are locked on to Basyl’s arresting silver gaze.

Lightning forks chaotically through my lines, warmth blooming at the base of my neck. It’s stunning to witness, their sultry flirtation so recklessly out in the open—something that would have resulted in imprisonment in Gardneria.

I try not to let my gaze linger on the way Vothendrile idly fondles a long strand of Basyl’s pale slate hair. The way he looks at Basyl, the veins of white lightning that traverse Vothe’s skin forking with heated interest. I can practically feel the crackle of magic in his Wyvern gaze, and Basyl’s stare is just as thick with playful desire.

Why wouldn’t it be?

Vothe is a midnight storm come to life.

My affinity lines tighten as a melancholy longing sweeps in. Why did they have to assign me such an outrageously attractive guard? He’s so dauntingly beautiful, with his lightning-laced onyx skin, his silver-tipped black hair, and dark eyes with their dangerous Wyvern pupils. His perfect, angular features. His perfect, angular body.

And my power is drawn to Vothe’s with the force of a blasted tide. I struggle to avert my gaze and ignore the draw of his power, but it’s frustratingly impossible.

Basyl’s teasing laugh sounds as his palm slides down Vothe’s broad chest in a light caress, a harder spike of futile longing tightening my throat.

Vothe has no dearth of fawning admirers. All so cloyingly sympathetic that he has to guard the dangerous, reviled grandson of the Black Witch who they are intent on driving out. Even women moon over Vothe, many staring intently as he passes. Especially when he partially shifts, onyx horns spiraling up from his thick hair. And once, his black wings on full display, fanning out from his back. I momentarily lost the ability to breathe at the glorious sight.

The men who are so inclined are so open about their desire for him that it’s both shocking and fascinating, every playful touch and inviting look stunning to witness. Because there’s no danger in it here. No shame. Nothing in the dominant religion to condemn it.

And sometimes, I can’t help but hate them all for being so uncomplicated about who they are. Hate their sense of safety and privilege as they shut me firmly out. And despise their blaring ignorance about what my whole life has been like.

I let out a long sigh and meet the world-weary, black gaze of Viger Maul, the tall, pale Death Fae sitting across from me who has surprisingly become friends with Tierney Calix. I turn and meet the inky eyes of petite Sylla, who sits by my side, a weighty understanding in her spider-shifter gaze that has been, at times, a lifeline here. The silent Death Fae are the only apprentices willing to sit with me at meals, even though they never partake of any food.

It’s a quiet showing of solidarity, and it touches me deeply.

Even the poisonous black snake twining around my neck and the gentle brush of spiders’ legs along my ankles are bizarrely comforting, as I can sense my Death Fae companions’ intention.

Staunch acceptance, in defiance of a realm determined to mark me an outcast.

Okay guys...There will be a book 2# to this but i dont have time right now to finish ); Bye!