Page 217 of The Demon Tide

“And since Vogel will come after his Black Witch,” Tierney adds, challenge in her tone, “we’d best link Elloren to the things that defend against Shadow, andfast.Along with everyone else.”

Yvan turns to me, eyes suddenly burning. “I know of one way,” he says, arcing his wings around us, a line of tension running through his fire. “Elloren,” he says, voice low, “our Wyvernfire bond—I think we should restore it.”

My own fire rears hot in response to the passion firing in his eyes and his flame. Conflict shudders through me. I shake my head. “Your fire bond...it’s not just some defensive ward. I know what it means to you—”

“It means Iloveyou,” he insists, voice rough with feeling, his grip on my hand firming. “I’veneverstopped loving you. And I’m allied with you.Forever.”

Tears sheen my vision, grief rising as fierce love for both Yvan and Lukas blazes through my rootlines, shattering my heart and reforging it at the same time.

I can barely make sense of the turmoil storming through me. But I’m heart-wrenchingly certain of one thing that I know Lukas was certain of too—there’s no more time foranythingbut this fight and the fierce, unbreakable love in all our hearts.

I give Yvan a small kindred smile as our fires whip around each other with the full force of our emotions, the two of us having been through hell and back, over and over. And yet, here he still is, this Icaral I’m only just starting to know and understand, his love and friendship as blazingly fixed as a guiding star.

“Ariel told me we should subvert the Prophecy,” I confide, voice ragged.

His hand comes up to caress my cheek and I shiver from the warm contact, my breath quavering as I lean into his palm. “I don’t just want to subvert it,” he says, a rebellious glint flaring in his eyes. “I want to burn it toash.”

I nod, my warrior resolve rising hot around his own. I’m certain, too, that Lukas would want this for me. He would want me to rise as a warrior, as strong as possible, with every advantage possible.

In defiance of all the prophecies of all the lands.

“All right,” I say as I open my power and my heart to it all. “Let’s burn the Prophecy to ash.”

A collective sense of the momentous ripples through our magic as Yvan draws me closer, his wings arcing tighter around us. He leans down, eyes molten, and brings his lips to mine.

We ignite like wildfire and I gasp against his kiss as his fire bond bolts through me, the intensity overtaking us both. My body arches against his, our powers fusing and blasting into a conflagration of Dryadfire and Wyvernfire combined, his hard body shivering against mine from the sheer strength of the heated rush.

I tremble against him as we send a spiraling inferno of flame through each other, my Dryad and hordefire heightening his blaze as the defiant heat of our rebellious, unquenchable alliance strengthens the conflagration, the two of us once more linked, bound.

Wyvernbonded.

But in a whole new way.

Icaral and Dryad Witch.

Ready to set the whole damned Prophecy on fire.

EPILOGUE

MIGRATION

THEKESTREL

Voloi, over the Vo River

Xishlon night, twenty-first hour

Verdyllion.

The name of the Forest Wand sounds like a beacon in the indigo kestrel’s mind. It veers west over the Vo River, the Wand gripped in its talons—the Wand dropped by the green woman with gray-glowing eyes who was allwrong, the Shadow Thing twisting inside her.

But the bonding with this Wand was immediate, enough to override the bird’s fear of the Shadow Thing, its migratory draw suffusing the kestrel’s senses in a constant, satisfying rush.

Sweet migration. Sweet current of direction.

The kestrel swoops upward, led over the Vo Forest and Vo Mountain Range, flying unharmed through the storm band atop it, the Wyvern-crafted band magicked to allow nature’s children through.

The bird soars over the Zonor River and Dyoi Mountain Range, an expansive plain opening up below, Vu Trin soldiers and their military base spread across it. Swooping low over lines of rune-marked tents, the kestrel flies toward a central building hewn from purple wood.

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