I haltingly tell Lukas, “that in time...I feel like I could care for you as more than a friend. Possibly a great deal. But right now...” Grief for Yvan constricts my chest, choking off the words.
Lukas’s eyes tighten, the pain in them edged with understanding. His arm drops to my shoulder, but his touch remains gentle and comforting, his thumb tracing a short line back and forth across the silk of my tunic.
My voice is throaty with tears when it comes. “I can’t seal to you purely for escape. Not if we’re going to consummate it. I know we’re both being forced into this, but...if I’m going to be sealed to you, I have to actually be sealed to you.”
Lukas stays quiet, and it feels like we can both sense the seismic emotional shift happening between us.
“I want to be sealed to you,” Lukas states unequivocally. “Truly sealed.”
Feeling like I’m quietly taking a dive off an impossibly high cliff, I press back my grief and meet his deep-green gaze steadily.
“All right, Lukas,” I say, holding his fervent stare. “Let’s truly seal this fasting.”
Lukas’s expression shifts, the gravity of this decision stark in it, stark in us both. “Tomorrow eve,” he finally says, his voice pitched low. “Mother will arrange things.”
My hackles rise, the mention of his mother reminding me of the dangers at hand and slicing through this moment of closeness between us. “Lukas, I’m certain your mother arranged for the Banes to attack me.”
Lukas frowns. “Damion Bane won’t be attacking anyone anytime soon,” he says, a hard glint forming in his eyes. “I won’t be killing Chi Nam, but he is on my list.”
Trepidation spikes. “Damion may be suspicious about me. He sensed my power when he attacked me.”
“We’ll be long gone before his suspicions are of any consequence.”
“But your mother...she’s a real threat. She wants to drive me out of the Realm. Or worse.”
“Well, she can’t drive you out,” he says shortly. “Not with Vogel presiding at the Sealing. And the minute there’s a possibility that I’ve got you with child, she’ll leave you alone.”
I cough and emphatically slice through the air with both hands. “No one is getting me with child.”
Lukas shoots me a look of incredulity. “Elloren, of course not. I’ve Sanjire root.”
I’m relieved to hear he has the pregnancy-preventing root, but still, anger churns hot over Evelyn and Lachlan Grey’s cruelty, particularly toward women. “Your family is vile,” I spit out at him.
Lukas’s face tenses and the anger and bottomless hurt that’s momentarily laid bare in his expression is so intense that I instantly regret saying this.
His mouth rearranges itself into a tight line. “Yes, Elloren. I know my family is vile.”
Instantly abashed, I hold Lukas’s intense gaze, trying to convey that I’m sorry for the harshness of my words even though the sentiment is true. Understanding seems to pass between us, his expression losing its severe edge. I bring my hand up to massage my newly aching forehead as my mind casts about, attempting to piece together this plan for escape.
“So...we’ll be sealed tomorrow night,” I say.
Lukas nods. “And leave the next morning.”
I cough out a laugh in response to his brazen level of understatement. “You mean we’ll run for our lives.”
Lukas’s confident aura doesn’t budge. “We’ll have to travel over the mountains to avoid the current hostilities at the Pass, but yes, we’ll need to get East as fast as we can. And from there to Noi lands, where I’ll train you in the use of your magic and organize an army.”
I eye him with disbelief. “The Vu Trin want me dead, Lukas.”
“We’ll win them over.”
“But...”
“We’ll convince them by force if necessary. We need their dragons.”
“You think we can make it through the desert all the way to Noi lands?”
“That’s the wild card in all this, but I believe we can get there. If we’re lucky. The Sealing might buy us enough time and enough of a lead to get to the Eastern Realm.” Lukas lets out a long breath. “We have to get out soon in any case because Vogel is rune warding the entire border.”
My heart twists as I think of Sparrow and Effrey and of all the Urisk and Smaragdalfar and Fae still trapped here in the Western Realm. Anyone who doesn’t make it out in time will be horrifically imprisoned by Vogel’s runes.
Imprisoned by that Shadow Wand.
But if he can imprison a whole country with his newfound power, what happens when he sets our Sealing spell with his Wand?
“Lukas,