Page 11 of The Demon Tide

Protests erupt as the message is conveyed across the plaza.

Queen Alkaia bears down on her cane and raises one green, rune-marked palm to her people. “Free People of Amazakaraan.” Her ancient voice booms out, amplified by the scarlet rune hovering in the air just below her mouth. “The Goddess’s Prophecy ishere.” She glances up at the Shadow-coated dome, her emerald eyes narrowing as if sizing it up for battle. Then she sets her fierce gaze back on her people.

“The Mages think they can terrorize us with their Shadow power. Place bonds around our throats. They falsely imagine that the Goddess’s Own True Daughters can be brought to heel.” She straightens, and Wynter can sense the collective will of the people rising around her as the monarch crushes the missive in her fist. “Blessed Daughters. Who here will raise weapons to journey beyond our dome and smite these invaders with theGoddess’s own fury?”

A tremendous roar sounds as every Amaz from thirteen up draws runic weapons and raises them in the air, the weapons’ scarlet runes burning bright as those that mark the city’s dome.

Wynter’s throat suddenly tightens, and it’s not a normal tightening.

It’s a Zalyn’or tightening.

Scared that she’ll lose the ability to speak if she waits a second longer, Wynter fans out her ragged wings and steps forward.

Queen Alkaia and Freyja both meet her gaze in evident surprise. The queen raises a hand for silence, and the cries of defiance settle into a thrum of gathering runic power.

“I seek to send a message!” Wynter croaks out, her wings flapping against the Zalyn’or’s suffocating grip on her voice.

Queen Alkaia’s gaze sharpens. “What message do you seek to send, Wynter Eirllyn?”

“I seek to send my wingeds!” Wynter rasps before she’s choked off. She motions emphatically toward the Shadow-covered dome.

A subversive gleam enters Queen Alkaia’s eyes. “Send your message, then, winged friend of the Amaz,” she says, voice blazing with revolution. “Let the first true volley in this war be sent by a Zalyn’or-marked Icaral.”

Wynter drops to one knee and lowers her head, her ragged wings fanning out to their full breadth as the Amaz step back to give her space. Burrowing into her minuscule surviving ember of Icaral power, Wynter drags in a breath, then forces her invisible sterling aura out.

The incoming rain-sound of wings beats on the air, birds closing in from all directions, some soaring through the shadowed dome: black-throated warblers, silver-crowned sparrows. Crimson tanagers. A host of hawks and owls, eagles and falcons. Flock upon flock circles down, their panicked tweets and caws overtaking the plaza as they descend toward one single target.

Wynter.

The Amaz surrounding Wynter draw back in astonishment as birds land in a thick mass around her winged form.

Foreboding swells in Wynter as she realizes that some of these birds are from the Agolith Desert, their normally vivid coloration torn away. Red desert hawks rendered to shades of gray. Cactus wrens and gilded flicker birds stripped of their gold. Sand-colored eagles with eyes that normally glow saffron, now pewter with eyes of white fire.

What’s been done to you?

The birds crowd in, the ones in the forefront pressing tilted heads to Wynter. Her empathic heart tightens from their rush of love—love that she returns a thousandfold. She touches her hands to feathers and closes her eyes.

The birds’ collective warning hits Wynter like a thousand bolts, her body shuddering from the onslaught.

SHADOW, SHADOW, SHADOW!

Beloved ones!Wynter counters, hurling the desperate, empathic thought out through the Zalyn’or’s strangling grip.

The birds still, an almost reverent silence overtaking the plaza and Wynter draws on that silence for courage.

My loved ones, she sends out even as pain strafes her skull, her thoughts threatening to collapse into oblivion if she waits a moment longer.Fly forth and pierce the Shadow! Find Naga the Unbroken and appeal for aid!

The Zalyn’or clamps down and Wynter wheezes, her empathic thoughts cut off as the birds lift as one. Their wingbeats are a storm, a roar against Wynter’s ears as they rise and rise then soar straight through the dome. The Shadow coating the dome briefly fragments, the Amaz battle cry rising as Wynter gapes up at what she’s wrought, heart hammering.

A sudden wave of hate slashes through her mind.

She stiffens, wings shivering, swept up in the feeling that she’s a butterfly caught at the end of a pointed stick. The plaza blinks out of sight, replaced by a vision of Shadow forest—undulating tree trunks and limbs of dark smoke tendriling upward from charred ground.

Thrust into panicked disorientation, Wynter glances frantically around.

Marcus Vogel strides toward her through the trees, a gray wand trailing Shadow in his hand. Wynter recoils, her trembling intensifying as Vogel fixes his pale green eyes on her.

Icaral, he says.

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