contact with a rocky shelf, and I scramble to find some purchase to lift myself out of the stream, almost slipping back in.
I finally manage to hoist myself onto the stone ledge, scraping my knee in the process. Trembling violently from the cold, I grab the towel to dry myself and glare hatefully at Valasca and Lukas, cursing under my breath.
Lukas is leaning against the cave’s wall, arms crossed, watching me unsympathetically with none of his usual heat.
“Are you done?” I cry at them both. “What is this accomplishing?”
Valasca shoves a clean undergarment at me. Noi garb. Loose black linen pantalets embroidered with a small white dragon.
“Just the dhunya for now,” Valasca orders, and I throw the undergarment on, cinching the drawstring tight, the embarrassment from being so undressed rapidly overtaken by angry resentment.
Valasca pulls out her rune stylus, all business as she surveys my form and I stand there shivering.
I look to Lukas, searching for something of who he was last night. The man I completely gave myself to and took as mine in return. But he’s all hard edges and closed off. Almost confrontational. On some level I understand his sudden harshness, even though it stings. This shift had to happen. My encounter with the wraith bats made it clear that I’m too emotional. Too quick to panic.
Too quick to cave in.
I pull in a wavering breath and rein in my anger.
They’re trying to help me.
Valasca surveys the tattoo-like rune chains that are draped all over my chest, as if checking on the source of my glamour. Then she touches her rune stylus to my abdomen.
Sage’s Smaragdalfar demon-sensing rune lights up a glowing emerald through my gray Elfhollen glamour.
“Amazing,” Valasca mutters with a pointed glance toward Lukas. “The potency of a Light Mage’s markings.” She shakes her head, as if in awe of Sage’s artistry, then lowers herself onto one knee beside me and begins drawing glowing blue Noi runes down the side of my leg, a harder, fleeting sting following her marks than when Sage drew her emerald runes.
“What are you marking on me?” I begrudgingly ask, my mortification over standing here topless rapidly dissipating.
“A series of runes that will draw on your affinity auras,” Valasca replies as she concentrates on forming the runes. “They’ll amplify the elemental power in all the Noi and Amaz weapon runes that resonate with your affinities.”
“Where’s Chi Nam?” I ask as Valasca painstakingly draws, wondering if Chi Nam knows about these harsh Amaz ways.
“Strengthening the shield around the Vonor,” Lukas replies.
A tense silence falls as Valasca draws lines of glowing sapphire runes down the sides of both my thighs and arms, her brow knotted in concentration, and I suppress a shiver from the cave’s cool air on my exposed and increasingly lit-up skin.
Seeming finished with the runes on my limbs, Valasca studies them appraisingly, then moves in front of me to draw a series of blue Noi runes all around Sage’s green demon-sensing rune. She then slips behind me to draw another row of runes straight down my spine.
My tangled firelines prickle to life, firing gold, my invisible earth power branching toward her stylus as Valasca continues to draw. My weaker water-and windlines stir under her sorcery, and surprisingly, I’ve the faintest awareness, for the first time ever, of a thread-slim line of light magic tangled with the rest of my lines.
A barely perceptible glowing green line.
Valasca strides back around to my front. “Splay your hands out,” she orders.
I comply, and Valasca proceeds to draw a luminous Noi rune in the center of my palms, just like the ones she and Chi Nam have on theirs.
“Are those weapon-retrieval runes?” I ask.
Valasca nods. “They are. Press their center after deploying your weapon, and the weapon will fly right back into your hand.”
I glance at Lukas, who opens his own palms to display identical glowing blue runes on his hands, his expression still dauntingly severe.
Finally done marking me, Valasca murmurs a runic spell and taps her stylus on the center of my chest.
All the runes pull in under the glamour, no longer visible under my false gray hue.
Valasca hands me the Vu Trin uniform, and I throw on the black fireproof battle tunic and pants. Then I sit down on a rocky outcropping and jerk on socks and my boots and weapons belt, taking out all my residual ire over Valasca’s roughness and Lukas’s emotional distance on my boots as I cinch the laces tight.
Valasca pulls out my newly green Wand from a