Page 33 of The Demon Tide

Viger moves toward her in one smooth, languid movement. He snaps his claws and the entire terrace blinks out of sight, the darkness lit only by a silver mist encasing them. He waits, silent, a slight edge to his hypnotic gaze. But Tierney can tell he’s setting aside his feelings for her, and she’s impressed by this.

And drawn in.

“I find you deeply alluring,” Tierney says. “I’m just going to flat out admit that.”

The mist blackens then abruptly silvers into suspended, ill-defined ropes encircling them both. Viger’s horns arc up, a wicked gleam entering his eyes. He reaches up, and Tierney draws in a shivering breath as he traces her cheek with one claw tip, light as a feather’s brush.

“I don’t want to spend Xishlon kissing,” Tierney says as she’s swept into his thrall, feeling as if the ground is giving way as she tilts toward his dark-clad form. “I want to spend it surveying the waterways.”

“I would survey them with you, Asrai,” Viger offers, his deep, beckoning voice seeming to come from everywhere at once.

Tierney nods. “I’m worried, Viger. I sense a bigger battle brewing underneath the obvious one.” She pauses, suddenly choked up by a swell of emotion for her river. “My bond to the Vo...it might have to come before my desire to fight with the Wyvernguard.” She pauses again, scared by her subversive flare of honesty.

Viger’s palm comes up and stills over her cheek, his claws a light, sharp pressure on her scalp that sends a blessedly distracting shiver down her spine. “You can tell me, Asrai,” he says, voice surprisingly compassionate.

“There’s something bigger at stake than dominion over the Realms,” Tierney manages as the sense of being suspended in his mist deepens. She takes hold of Viger’s arm to gain some sense of purchase, and he slides a hand around to the small of her back, steadying her as he floats her nearer, her body responding to his proximity with a flush of warmth, their lips so close...

What would it be like to kiss a Death Fae?

“Have we disappeared in the mist?” she asks, her breathing uneven.

“Yes, Asrai,” he says in a whisper that seems to shudder straight through her.

“Can anyone hear us?”

“No, Asrai,” he says, the wordAsraisounding delicious on his dark purple tongue.

He has a purple tongue like his snakes, Tierney distantly notes, a bit amused to be admitting her attraction to this surprising trait.And he smells like cool, summer shadows. In the dark of night...

“I don’t think Vogel can be fought in the obvious way,” she says, struggling for composure in the face of Viger’s mounting thrall. “And I think the threat he brings is different from anything Erthia has faced before.”

“I second this, Asrai,” Viger says, his mist darkening further as Tierney takes hold of his other arm, his grip firming on her. “Vogel brings a threat to Death,” Viger says, unease rippling through his power.

Tierney eyes him. “How can anything bring a ‘threat to Death’?”

He’s silent, their eyes locked as they float in the darkness in a loose embrace.

“I will try to show you,” he finally says. “On Xishlon. Before I deploy west to call on the desert serpents in defense of the East. I will find you, and I will show you.”

“I want that,” Tierney concedes, feeling an unexpected pang over his upcoming departure. “Show me what you mean on Xishlon. And then help me fight the deeper battle underneath the obvious one.”

The battle for the natural world, Viger thinks into her mind, reading her fear for the Vo. For all the rivers. For the natural matrix’s undoing.

“Yes, Viger,”she agrees as she holds his lulling, midnight stare. “The battle for the natural world.”

CHAPTER FIVE

REDDESERT

Sparrow Trillium

Agolith Desert

Central Desert lands

Sixth Month

“Be careful around the Crow,” Ulluwyn warns Sparrow, a grimace on the blue-hued soldier’s mouth as her sapphire eyes flick toward Thierren. “I see the way he looks at you.”

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