Page 31 of The Demon Tide

“See, he admits it,” Fyordin says, tossing Tierney a self-satisfied smirk. “No allegiance.” He turns back to Viger, resentful energy spitting through his power. “Why are you here, Viger, if you won’t state your alliance?” He pointedly surveys Viger’s black-tinted soldier-apprentice garb. “Wearing a Wyvernguard uniform—or some approximation of it.”

Silence. Not a ripple in it, only the flickering of Viger’s snakes’ tongues. Tierney can’t help but admire that deep-water stillness.

“War is here, Death Fae,” Fyordin goads, the muscles of his neck cording. “You need to decide which side you’re on.”

“The side of the natural world,” comes Viger’s calm reply.

Fyordin barks out a mocking laugh. “Which you want to kill.”

“Yes,” Viger says. “In balance.”

“How can you fight for something you want to kill?” Fyordin scoffs.

The very air around them darkens, Viger’s night-black eyes fixed on Fyordin. “This runs deeper than you can comprehend.”

“I’m Asrai, I understand the natural world, Deathkin.”

“You understand but one piece of it,” Viger counters, his lip curling aggressively. “You dwell in shallow waters, Fyordin Lir. Tierney Calix understands deep waters. The connections.”

“I understand deep waters, Deathling,” Fyordin throws down, an incensed energy whorling through his power. “I’ve claimed the Vo.”

A hard glint enters Viger’s eyes. “That doesn’t mean the Vo has fully claimed you.”

Shock flashes through Tierney. It’s a huge insult to question the Asrai bond to their kindred waters.

Fyordin’s eyes go dark as the Vo’s depths. “What would you understand of water?”

“I am primordial,” Viger fires back without hesitation. “We are intimately bound to the natural matrix.”

Anger rushes through Fyordin’s power. “Which you want to kill.”

Viger’s eyes black over, his horns curling up, his teeth elongating and turning black as his lips. He bares them at Fyordin, a vicious glint in his eyes that sends a chill through Tierney’s water power. “Wealign with Death. That is what we do.”

Fyordin steps toward Viger, and Tierney can sense his power rearing, ready to loose a cyclone straight at the Death Fae. “You seek to kill, and you won’t align with the East,” Fyordin snarls. “Which makes you a traitor to the natural matrix. And a traitor to Noilaan.” He looks at Tierney, storming ferocity in his gaze. “Careful who you align yourself with, Asrai.”

Tierney’s own power cyclones up, fierce as Fyordin’s.

Fiercer.

That’s it. Gloves off.

“Just because I won’t kiss you,” she says, “doesn’t make me a traitor,Fyordin.”

Fyordin’s nostrils flare, a jealous heat eddying through his power. “Tierney, you concern me. You spend your free time with Deathkin water horses and Death Fae. You were raised by a Gardnerian family and were spotted with them in Voloi wearingGardnerian clothing. And you have a Gardnerian alias that you refuse to give up. Even though you have an Asrai name.”

Pain slices through Tierney.A name I haven’t used since I was three years old. That makes me think of my mother screaming it every time I hear it. Or even think it.

And there’s the matter of how her newly immigrated Gardnerian family is being treated here in Voloi. Kindly by some, but cruel enough by others that Tierney is prompted to stand in blaring solidarity with them. Finding FILTHY ROACH scrawled over their dwelling’s outdoor wall whipped up Tierney’s defiance so high she threw on Gardnerian blacks and went to town with her adoptive kin.

One foot in the Asrai world, one foot in the Gardnerian.

Fyordin stares Tierney down, his power whipping up almost as tempestuously as hers. “And not only are you friends with Trystan Gardner, but also with his sister, Elloren Gardner. I worry, Tierney, if you’ve become more Gardnerian than Asrai. You look Fae, but are you a Crow deep down?”

Rage blasts through Tierney at the same time that she’s overcome by a heady sense of darkness flashing through her as Viger’s black smoke encircles her, his thrall pulsing to life.

“Careful,” Viger warns Fyordin, calm as Death, as his poisonous snakes bare their fangs and hiss.

Fyordin doesn’t take his eyes off Tierney, his mouth curling down with scorn. “So, you’ll have your Death Fae smite me? Because I speak the truth?”

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