Page 49 of The Shadow Wand

And then he again morphs into black smoke, twining up into the night sky.

“I think he’s besotted,” Fyordin teases as he pulls the globe of water back into his palm.

Tierney glowers at Fyordin as she struggles to ignore how blastedly good-looking he is, but it’s impossible. At least he’s not half-naked anymore, blessedly garbed in his sapphire Wyvernguard tunic. Tierney forces aside the memory of how gorgeous his muscular body looks underneath it.

“I’m glad you put some clothes on, Fyordin,” she tosses out in an attempt to seem unfazed by him even as her heart hammers and her water magic strains toward his, a prickling flush heating her cheeks.

Fyordin cocks a dark brow in question, and even that is dauntingly entrancing.

Tierney sighs, irritated by his powerful draw.“Men don’t go around shirtless in the Western Realm,” she explains in a barbed tone. “And I have very Gardnerian sensibilities. Since I was raised byGardnerians. I’m quite polluted, you’ll find.”

Fyordin’s eyes flash, his lips tightening as his vast water magic grows as unsettled as hers, and Tierney notices, once again, that they’re both a visual mirror of the Vo.

“What do you want, Fyordin?” Tierney finally snaps, struggling not to stare at his matching night-river skin in beguiled fascination. “I thought I was shunned.”

Fyordin turns and leans over the stone railing and surveys the Vo, which seems to be watching them both.

Which seems to have claimed them both.

“I don’t seek to shun you.”He sets his piercing dark blue eyes back on Tierney with a fervid gaze that she can feel eddying straight through her power.

Hurt flares inside her, intensified by his magical pull. “I thought I don’t belong,” she challenges, her cursed voice breaking as she pointedly speaks in the Western Realm’s Common Tongue.

Fyordin’s jaw ticks, a flash of what looks like reluctant chagrin momentarily tightening his dominant gaze. He glances back over the Vo, clearly unsettled by her, as well. Tierney can feel it in the jostled currents of his power. “You belong,” he states in clipped, almost impatient Asrai, as if apology is something foreign to him and this is as close as he’ll edge up to it.

Tierney glares at him, and he begrudgingly meets her stare as she’s swept up in the fierce, sudden urge to grab hold of his arm like before—not in Asrai-greeting this time, but to really show him the storm inside her.

Roiling with hurt, Tierney is tempted to not give this arrogant Asrai one second more of her time. To jump off the railing and spend the night at the bottom of the Vo, surrounded by the river’s all-encompassing embrace.

“There’s great power in you,” Fyordin notes in that deep-current voice of his that seems accentuated by the night. Tierney reluctantly glances at him as he peers up at the star-blasted sky. “Enough power to control the weather, I’d wager.” He gives her a significant look.

Tierney inhales, her ability to affect the weather so chaotic and linked to her storming emotions that the wordcontrolseems a laughable stretch.

“I can change the weather,” she finally admits. “But...the power is...volatile.” She stops for a moment, her throat growing tight. “My weather power put me and my family in so much danger. So many times.” Memories of losing control scrape at the edges of her mind—storm clouds forming at wildly inopportune times, isolated rainstorms, small blizzards. And always, the Gardnerians lurking somewhere near, ready to swoop down.

She struggles to force the horrible memories back down.

Go ahead. Push it all down.Stifle your fear instead of facing it.

An unbidden image of Viger’s horned head enters her mind. His dark lips and black, unfathomable gaze.

Fyordin is watching her closely now, turned fully to face her as he leans against the railing, the hard arrogance from just a moment ago now gone. Tierney is struck anew by his unglamoured Asrai-ness. His pointed ears and rippling Fae hue. Out in the open. Unafraid. Rune blades strapped to his arms. It’s a heady rush just looking at his unhidden Asrai form.

“Were you raised in the West?” Tierney asks him, wondering how long it will take her to shake off the lingering spikes of terror that flash through her whenever she releases her magic. The panicked reflex to force down her power and run for cover.

Even her kelpies stay submerged most of the time, wary of coming to shore.

In hiding.

Still.

“I didn’t grow up over there,” Fyordin admits with a tight look toward the storm-limned Vo Mountain Range, lightning flashing above it. “My family managed to get out before the Realm War. They were the only ones in their band of Asrai to survive.” He meets Tierney’s gaze once more. “I grew up here with my parents and brother.”

Shock lights. “You have family here?” Tierney’s throat tightens at the memory of her mother screaming her Asrai name and being dragged away by several Asrai as Tierney was placed in the arms of her Gardnerian parents.

Gardnerian parents who risked their own lives to keep her safe from the Gardnerians’ Fae purge.

Her water power thrust into chaos, Tierney looks to the stone floor and furiously blinks back the wretched tears now brimming in her eyes. She can feel the storm cloud forming over her head, the crackle of lightning spitting in it as she struggles to pull it in, not wanting to bare herself to this arrogant Fae whose parents never died.

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