Ellery’s reverie shattered as she took in what she held.
Something impossible. Something terrible.
A Living Wand that belonged not to Summer, but to Winter.
XIDOMENICSUMMER
Domenic ran.
He felt delirious, feverish. In his right hand, he white-knuckled Valmordion, blood oozing down his wrist. Yet he barely felt the pain of its heat, its thorns. He barely felt anything except the panic snarling around his core.
It couldn’t be him. It should’ve been anyone but him.
Magicians followed him. One or two called his name. But Domenic didn’t dare stop. His magic detonated within him, every second growing larger and fiercer and more agonizing. As if his body contained the force of a star.
By the time he finally clambered outside, he’d lost his pursuers amidst the mazelike passages of the Citadel. The moment the cobblestones gave way to grass, he fell to his knees, his bloodied fingers digging into earth.
Then, like a creature dying, the earth went cold.
All at once, leaves fell, withering to gray before even brushing the ground. He squinted as his surroundings brightened, the barren branches exposing the auriferous blaze of sunset. Then abruptly, the daylight dimmed, as if a burial shroud draping over the world. And as the first wind of frost swept over Alderland, Domenic felt it like a breath down his neck. The very land seemed to shift beneath him. As if something seismic was breaking, something terrible was coming loose.
“Barrow?” a voice asked, and Domenic scrabbled backward, crushing decaying weeds beneath him. Valmordion burned hot in his hand.
Wildly, he locked eyes with Ellery Caldwell. She stood beneath the Citadel’s alban tree. In the strange, saturated filter of Valmordion’s magic, snowflakes shimmered in an iridescent crown upon her hair, and the blue of her irises had deepened into the azure of a descending storm. Yet she didn’t look distorted—she looked more beautiful than ever, strikingly so.
He dragged his gaze away to the desolate grove around them, bewildered that they should find themselves here, alone, beneath the very tree that had born Valmordion.
Caldwell took a cautious step toward him. Immediately, Valmordion’s golden core flared and hissed with smoke.
“Get back!” he barked, squeezing the wand tight. “I—I don’t want to hurt you.”
Only as Caldwell recoiled did Domenic notice the wand clutched in her own wounded hand. However, it was no training wand. Silver gleamed across its handle, and thin veins of bramble looped and twined up its shaft into a lethal point. It was the same white as the alban tree looming behind her, the same white as Valmordion.
Her eyes widened as she took inhiswand.
“It’s you,” she breathed—not with shock or pity, but with awe. “Valmordion Choseyou.”
Domenic couldn’t answer, straining so as not to cry out as Valmordion’s power surged violently in his chest. As though the wandwantedto hurt her. He tried to let go, but his fingers felt calcified to its wood. Inside, his magic was exploding, exploding, exploding, and he didn’t know when it would stop, if it would ever stop.
And so, with a gasping shudder, Domenic smothered Valmordion’s power. Pain thrashed against him, as if contorting his insides into an unnatural shape. Valmordion’s power, his own power—there was no difference, he realized. Already the two were intertwined, his own self unrecognizable. But he didn’t relent. He’d sooner perish than risk its power overwhelming him and repeating what had happened with Syarthis.
Within moments, the pain diminished, and his breaths steadied. Though he could still sense magic within him, it was buried deep.
Domenic heaved himself to his knees, his body shivering, his fingers dripping crimson.
“What wandisthat?” he asked.
Caldwell gripped her wand with both hands. Scarlet-tinged ice had crusted across her fingers, shackling them to the wand’s hilt. When she spoke, the terror in her voice echoed his own.
“Its name is Iskarius.”
XIIDOMENICWINTER
Two hours later, Domenic sipped a bland cup of tea. His stomach heaved. He set the cup back on the conference table, his bandaged hand trembling.
“Something else I can getcha, Dom?” Councilor Peak asked brightly. “Coffee? Water?”
Domenic shook his head.
