"You summoned me," said the Witch Queen of Vraven, the strongest elemental mage on Iskaris, five hundred years of mastery across seven elements, "to a place where magic does not exist."
"I did."
"Why."
"Why not. Aren't you my strongest slave?" Quinlan shrugged, quoting her earlier claim.
Morgana's left eye twitched.
"You gate-hopping, primordial son of a-"
"Silence," Vex demanded with a tone of pure menace.
The eruption strangled itself at the halfway point, and the rest of the sentence stayed in Morgana's eyes, at length.
Then her gaze snagged on the lintel. On the anchor-stones, quietly drinking a discipline she had spent five centuries perfecting, as if it were spilled water. The fury stayed exactly where it was. Underneath it, against her will, a research problem began unpacking its instruments.
