Page 48 of The Demon Tide

Trystan Gardner’s voice rings out like a hammer strike to the room.

Minyl’s entire expression tightens, almost a flinch, and I can feel the apprentices and soldiers inwardly retreating from her. Heelyn sneers at Trystan, then turns to Min Lo with an unkind smile, as if to say,See? Point proven.

“I don’t need your help,” Min Lo tells Trystan as she glares at him, but as she holds his unflinching stare, I sense conflict igniting in her.

“I’ve just cleared flight training,” Trystan says, seeming unfazed by the collective dislike in the room, and it’s hard to not be impressed by his unflappable poise in this moment. “I want to help.”

“None of us need your help, Crow,” Heelyn growls, and I shoot her a look of censure.

“I’m a Level Five Water and Fire Mage,” Trystan says to Min Lo, pointedly ignoring Heelyn’s slur. “I can deal with storms and turbulent water. And I’ll bet I can blast kraken clear apart.”

Min Lo holds Trystan’s gaze, and I can scent the softening of her resolve to keep this Mage at arm’s length.

It’s not easy, is it, Minyl? He’s not going to make this easy for any of us, this Mage.Unsettled lightning sparks to life inside me as I take in Trystan’s recklessly courageous stance.This beautiful, determined, storming Mage.

“What gives you the right?” Heelyn sputters at Trystan, her face a mask of fury.

Trystan meets her incensed glare. “I’m a refugee too,” he says, calm as the eye of a hurricane.

“You’ve come here bychoice,” Heelyn seethes, her voice breaking under her fury. “Buttheyare all fleeing here becauseyou Roachesare destroying the entire Western Realm! And now we’re supposed to let the problems of the Western Realm—problemsyour kindcaused—into the Eastern Realm to destroy it too?”

I inwardly cringe in response to Heelyn’s scathing words. Because I’m clear now that there’s no actual choice in it for Trystan Gardner.

My inner storm whips higher, because Heelyn’s question also has validity to it—validity my own people are solidly behind, the Zhilon’ile Regency in my home country of Zhilaan having recently taken a firm stand against letting any more refugees into the Eastern Realm. Pressing for the formation of several layers of storm bands past the Vo Mountain Range to keep the West firmly in the West as well as repatriating most of the refugees back to the Western Realm.

The West on one side, the East on the other. Cleanly divided.

Problem solved.

“All right,” Min Lo suddenly says to Trystan, her whole body tensed. “I’ll accept your help, Trystan Gardner.”

Sounds of surprise and censure burst through the room, and through me as well, as I scent Trystan’s own surprise rolling through his water power.

Oh, Minyl, I rue as my power kicks into a storm, jostling just beneath my skin.What have you done?

“Be at the western dock at eighteenth hour,” she orders Trystan. I stiffen as Minyl’s eyes flick toward me, challenge in her gaze. “I suppose that volunteers you, too, Vothe.”

Trystan

“You’ve needed to see this with your own eyes for some time now, Vothe,” Min Lo says as she steers the rune skiff over the inky Vo River, the sapphire glow of the rune skiff’s whirring runes reflected in wavering lines on the water far below.

I glance back in the direction of the Wyvernguard. We’re trailed by the three other rune skiffs, piloted by some of the few apprentices sympathetic to Min Lo’s cause, as well as a single soldier.

I turn and look west. The imposing Vo Mountain Range’s peaks and forest are rendered a watercolor black and violet by the twilight, and a balmy wind has whipped up from the river, Vothe’s silver-tipped, black hair tousled by it.

“You’re unlikely to change my opinion,” Vothe says. He leans against the rail, sounding a trace apologetic.

As I listen to their debate, I realize that Vothe and Min Lo must have a long history of friendship, despite their political differences.

I also know that Min Lo courts women like Vothe courts men. Out in the open. With complete acceptance here. I’ve seen her with her partner, the lovely, willowy soldier Ru Sol, on more than one occasion, once on the terrace, caught up in a passionate kiss, Min Lo’s rune-marked hand threaded through Ru Sol’s cascading black tresses. I watched them for a split second, mesmerized, feeling almost dizzy from the cultural shift. As that familiar shock sliced through me over how much better things are here in that regard, my awareness grew of how arbitrary religious rules can be. And of how much of a nightmare religious rules can become.

But there’s more than one way of manufacturing nightmares for each other.

The disturbing thought rises in me as our rune skiff soars over the river’s western bank and the line of Vu Trin stationed there, and then over the sapphire-glowing runic border. Every rune on the skiff briefly rays out blue light as we are waved through a military checkpoint and pass through the translucent dome encasing Noilaan.

I’m gripped by a sudden feeling of vulnerability to be traveling beyond Noilaan’s sheltering dome for the first time in months.

West.

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