Page 12 of The Demon Tide

The Zalyn’or necklace tightens and Wynter’s head arches back, a strangled cry torn from her throat. She shudders as she’s swept up in a new, overpowering Zalyn’or yearning, the old yearning to be purely Alfsigr stripped away. Yes, she still wishes with everything in her for her demonic wings to be torn from her back. But there’s a staggeringly fierce, new longing in her now—to have black hair, glimmering green skin, and black clothing. And to follow the one true path. Not the path of the Alfsigr faith at all, but the Mage religion.

The only path to purity and righteousness.

The only path to salvation.

Realization hits Wynter like a tide.

I’m readinghim. I’m somehow reading Vogel through the Zalyn’or.

Galvanized, she manages a steadying breath, summons her courage and closes her eyes.

Thick smoke flows into her empathic mind as she follows her connection to Vogel, all of his Shadow power oriented toward the Wand gripped in his hand. Battling her fear, Wynter follows his tether...straight into the Wand.

Her sense of the plaza’s tiles beneath her knees disappears.

Her body drops and she cries out as she plummets into a bottomless abyss, limbs flailing. Shadow eyes surround her, streaking past as she falls. Cruel, demonic eyes. Some red. Some full of roiling smoke as Wynter is assaulted by the presence of unending malice and fracture.

What have you done?she cries out to Vogel.Do you realize what you’ve aligned yourself with?

A blast of power slams against her empathic senses, and Wynter’s connection to Vogel breaks.Filthy Icaral!screams through her as her link to him funnels away.

Wynter’s consciousness is hurled back onto the red-lit Amaz plaza, palms and knees pressed to the stone as she pants and wheezes.

“Wynter, what happened?”

She lifts her head and meets Freyja’s hazel eyes. Unable to speak, she reaches up with quavering hands and yanks the collar of her tunic down so hard that the fabric tears open.

The Amaz soldiers facing her, including Freyja, draw back in horror.

Wynter looks down and sways. Dark lines of Shadow are spreading out from her Zalyn’or imprint, burrowing under her skin like a veiny sickness.

Wynter looks to Queen Alkaia, feeling like a netted sparrow as she struggles to keep the free sliver of her mind from being dragged into the Zalyn’or chasm. “Get your people East,” she rasps through Vogel’s choke hold. “There’s no stopping him now. He’s going to control all of Alfsigroth. And he can hear and see us. Throughme.”

Queen Alkaia’s gaze turns lethal. “Let him hear us, then,” she seethes. “Let him hear that an Icaral raises her fist to the Magedom and beats her wings against its demon tide. And let Marcus Vogel hear that we, the Free People of the Caledonian Mountains, bend the knee to no one, save our chosen Queen and the Great Goddess on High.”

Wynter’s sense of Vogel lights again. But he’s small and sly this time. Lurking just behind her eyes as the slimmest trace of Shadow ripples over her vision and she’s suddenly seeing through his eyes, looking down at Amazakaraan’s shadowed dome.

Looking down with his army.

The urge to warn the queen of his intent strikes through Wynter, the words straining for release.Get your people East, now! He’s linked the Magedom to demonic power, and it’s about to be unleashed!

But, try as she might, Wynter can’t speak. She draws her wings in painfully tight, struggling to scream out the vital message as a wave of nausea rises. Unable to fight it, she lurches forward, mouth forced open. Vomit bursts from her in a splatter of dark filth and spreads over the tiled plaza, sounds of alarm surging to life as Shadow rises from it.

The soldiers surrounding Wynter, save Freyja, draw weapons, arrows nocked, eyes fierce on Wynter’s crumpled form. She peers helplessly up at Queen Alkaia’s horrified face and struggles for breath. Struggles for her voice.

“Don’t shoot!” Freyja pleads, throwing herself in front of Wynter’s prone form. She casts her a fraught look. “Wynter...what did you see—?”

Freyja’s words are cut off by a silver flash from the Amaz dome’s crimson runes, the valley momentarily brightening.

Everyone looks up in confusion.

And then, like stars blotting out, every scarlet rune on the dome blinks out of sight.

Wynter’s gut clenches. “He’s here,” she manages before an ear-punching blast detonates and the protective dome over Cyme explodes in a spray of Shadow.

CHAPTER FOUR

DEMONHIVE

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