Page 43 of The Shadow Wand

Fyordin’s lips twist into a dominant sneer, his invisible water power swelling, no longer powerfully enticing, but churning with chaotic energy. “The Roaches have no place with us.”

“They’re called Gardnerians,” Tierney snipes back.

She can sense the combined water power all around her receding, and part of her wants to scramble to reclaim it, to reclaim the moment of belonging. Instead, she stands her cursed, obstinate, subversive ground.

This is your special talent, isn’t it?Tierney bitterly considers.Making yourself into an outsider everywhere you go.

The side of Tierney’s neck prickles as she senses attention homing in on her. Not the attention of the Asrai all around her, suffused with water magic. No. This is something foreign.

Something that briefly flickers her internal water power dark as night, turning its rippling blue to the murkier shades of a deeply submerged pool.

Her gaze is drawn like a compass needle to a dark, distant figure—a young man, tall and quiet, dressed all in black that matches his shock of night-black hair. His attention is wholly focused on her as he leans against the stone railing of the curving terrace just past the Lasair Fire Fae division, flames circling and rising above them.

Tierney is sure of it, even from this distance...

He’s one of the three Death Fae here at the Wyvernguard.

The Death Fae, she’s already ascertained from this morning’s conversations, are feared outcasts, here only because the maverick commander of the Vu Trin forces, Vang Troi, wants to make use of their unique magical abilities, just as she wants to use Trystan’s.

Thrown by the dark Fae’s presence, Tierney turns back to Fyordin to find him giving her a blistering look.

“Half of everyone here,” he snarls, his invisible water power rearing as he loses all trace of welcome, “half of all of us were glamoured and raised by Kelts. Sheltered by Kelts in the West. Kelts who saved our people from being killed by theGardnerians. The other half of us were smuggled East and raised by the Noi. Who saved us from being killed by theGardnerians.”

Tierney’s hackles rise. “My adoptive family isGardnerian,” she acidly refutes. “Who saved me from being killed by theGardnerians. Some of my closest friends areGardnerian. All of them ready to fight Vogel.”

Fyordin’s narrow look tightens. “I heard you came here with Trystan Gardner.”

“I did,” Tierney replies with an air of confrontation that Fyordin instantly meets.

“The Roaches don’t belong here,” he seethes, low and threatening. “And the grandson of the Black Witch, most of all, does not belong here. If he won’t leave on his own, he’ll need to be driven out.”

Tierney holds Fyordin’s formidable gaze without flinching. “Trystan Gardner is my friend.”

A deeper hush falls, the former air of welcome and acceptance whisked clear away.

“Then maybe you don’t belong here either,” Fyordin states coldly.

His words are like a knife straight through her. Jaggedly painful. But Tierney will be damned if she shows this arrogant Fae how much he’s hurt her.

She stifles the pain and shoots Fyordin a potent glare, the storm cloud above her head gaining strength. “What ever happened toAsrai’il?” she snarls. “Or does that only apply when I don’t speak my own mind?” She takes a step toward him, incensed beyond reason. “I hear you’ve claimed the Vo, Fyordin.”

“I have,” he shoots back, a storm flashing in his eyes.

Tierney gives a mirthless smile. “I challenge that claim.”

A collective gasp of astonishment goes up as Fyordin takes his time looking her up and down, his lips twisting with disdain, but Tierney can feel the storm in him battering against his skin. “You don’t realize what you’re dealing with,” he warns with a threatening smile. “You’d need an army to best me.”

Tierney steps back, lowers her head, and throws out her arms, palms up, as she sounds out an Asrai call in her mind.

A call straight out to the Vo River.

HerVo.

Water explodes over the terrace’s edge. Shrieks sound out as more than twenty kelpies leap from the river and military apprentices all over the terrace draw back in surprise. The kelpies’ bodies roil with dark water, sharp teeth forming from ice as they flow in to converge around Tierney. Her beloved kelpie, Es’tryl’lyan, comes to Tierney’s side as Tierney notes the alarmed expressions of the Asrai surrounding her.

Tierney knows that her kelpies exist outside of an alliance with any Fae. And that they are aligned with the power of water to cause death, straddling the line between Asrai magic and primordial forces.

Death forces.

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