Wandfasted. Laurie Forest

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      Our cottage is a single, bright flame.

      All the Gardnerian homesteads up and down the river have been torched and are burning bright. The ball of steadying magic inside me is snuffed out in one painful jolt.

      “My house!” I cry. My knees give way, and I stagger down to the rocky ground.

      “No,” Jules gasps, his eyes fixed on my cottage, face stricken.

      “Oh, Ancient One,” I cry, a great sob tearing from my chest, my palms clinging to the rock behind me. “Oh, Jules, do you think they’re alive?”

      He falls beside me as more dragons streak by, his hands coming up to grip my arms.

      “Ancient One, help me,” I wail, my chest heaving, sure I’m going to retch. I look to Jules with crippling despair. “Do you think they killed them?”

      He opens his mouth, but no words come out. The entire world seems to fall away, but he catches me as I crumble, his arms closing around me.

      “They’re dead, aren’t they?” I moan into his chest, rocking my head side to side in grief.

      “I don’t know,” he says, clutching me tight.

      “My mother’s gone. My father. Not Grandfather and Wren, too!” His hand comes up to cradle my hair. “Oh, Jules,” I sob, “Grandfather should have let me have the wand! He should have let us leave sooner!”

      “I know. I know it, Tessla.”

      “I could have saved them!” I let out a low, agonized wail as he holds me.

      Choking on tears, I pull away from Jules and stagger up to peer north.

      The horde of dragons is a dark splotch moving relentlessly over the Caledonian Mountains toward central Gardneria. The Kelts have turned the entirety of broad Crykes Field into a military staging area. Lines of dark tents and geometric rune-marked structures have been erected and hundreds of torches are lit. Some of the dragons are being flown down onto the field.

      Horrified, I turn south and spot a large mass of uniformed Keltic soldiers wearing russet military tunics over black pants. They’re riding in tight formation into Doveshire via the Southern Wayroad. Urisk soldiers flank them—powerful geomancers with pointed ears and the blue hair and sky-blue skin of their military class, their cobalt-blue armor marked with glowing georunes. Some of the Urisk are riding hydreenas, the terrible, boar-shaped beasts hunched and bristling, tusks gleaming in the dying light. Some are riding in their rune-powered horseless carriages with glowing runes for wheels.

      The Western Wayroad is clogged with Keltic families fleeing toward the coast, away from the fighting, their carts piled high with people and possessions and festooned with red flags bearing black Xs.

      “They’ve an Icaral demon!” I gasp as a black-winged soldier rides into view astride a hydreena, his eyes pinpoints of fire. He looks much like the blue Urisk soldiers, save for his glowing eyes and the feathered black wings that fan menacingly out from his back, not entirely unlike the dragons above us.

      An Evil One.

      I slump down, dizzy, my back to a broad rock as I teeter sideways, weeping.

      Jules crouches down and takes my arm. “Come away with me.” There’s steel in his voice. “I’ll find Keltic clothes for you. We’ll escape.”

      I thrust my arm out at him, my skin glimmering faintly emerald in the gathering darkness. “It’s no use, Jules. How could we hide this?”

      His jaw hardens. “I’ll smuggle you into Verpacia.”

      I’m shaking my head as the tears stream down my face. “They’ll catch us. I’m sure they’ve closed the border.”

      “I go to the University,” he insists. “I know people. People who could help us.”

      “But my family,” I keen in despair, wracked by sobs.

      “I’ll be your family.”

      He says this with such rock-hard conviction, the tears catch in my throat. I look to him, stunned.

      “I’ll marry you,” he insists. “Somehow, we’ll get to Verpacia, and I’ll marry you. We’ll get a cottage there. Somewhere remote. I’ll find work at the University and I’ll hide you.”

      “Gardnerians don’t marry,” I remind him, my voice choked with grief for my family, my people. “We wandfast. Then we seal the bond.” Anguish rises in me like a terrible wave. “Just leave me, Jules. I’m going to get you killed. You can’t help me.”

      “I can.”

      I take a deep, shuddering breath. Kind, foolish Jules. I touch his face. His jutting cheekbone. His infinitely intelligent eyes.

      “You can’t marry me, Jules,” I tell him, my mouth trembling. “I’m not a Kelt.”

      His expression turns fierce. “I don’t care! When have I ever cared?”

      “I will always be Gardnerian.”

      “Then be Gardnerian,” he stubbornly returns. “We’ll make a life in Verpacia. And when things calm down, we can wandfast if it’s possible. I don’t care. I’d bind myself to you.”

      I’ve known for some time that Jules fancies me. It’s been building in him over time. I’ve seen it in the heat lighting his gaze when he looks at me. In the new tension between us. But he’s always held back, polite and unsure of my feelings. To hear him speak so boldly stuns me into silence.

      “We’ll go up through the mountains,” he says. “You can stay here while I get a horse and supplies.”

      “What if they’re still alive?” My voice is small and weak, clinging to senseless hope. My crippled, doddering grandfather and my sickly eight-year-old brother. What are the chances they’ve escaped all this?

      He gives me a hard look. We both know the likely truth.

      “What would they want you to do?” Jules asks, his jaw set tight.

      A bitter laugh cuts through my tears. “Grandfather? He’d want me to push you clear off that cliff.” I start to weep anew at the thought of my gentle, staunchly religious grandfather and his overwhelming hatred of Kelts. Grandfather would be horrified at the bizarre prospect of Keltic Jules trying to wandfast to his granddaughter, for the same reasons that he foolishly, blindly heeded our religion’s strictures that barred women from wielding wands without first securing the Mage Council’s approval.

      “What would Wren want, then?” Jules asks, softer this time.

      I think of my brother’s wide, ready smile. Roughly, I wipe the tears from my eyes, steeling myself. “He’d want me to go with you.”

      “Will you do it?” Jules asks, his hand coming up to caress my face. “Will you come away with me?”

      I nod and let him pull me into a warm embrace.

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