Page 108 of The Demon Tide

Fyon gives her a wry look. “Good with calligraphy, that one.”

“And thank goodness for it,” Mora returns before pouring them both tea.

Fyon leans back against the cramped kitchen’s counter, cradling the teacup in his hands as if it’s a precious thing. Lavender steam rises from it, the tea’s rich, floral scent wafting around them both. He glances out the open cliffside door, toward the Vo Mountains, his brow tensing.

“Mora, the Mages are threatening an imminent invasion of Amazakaraan,” he says, setting his weighted gaze back on her. “It’s taken a few days for the message to get to the East. I just learned of it.”

Mora pulls in a wavering breath. “Oh, Fyon...”

“They’ve also invaded Issan’o,” he adds, naming the Issani outpost village in the western Agolith Desert. “Some of the survivors are sitting outside Noilaan’s runic border. They’ve just arrived.”

“How many?” Mora throws a worried glance toward Olilly and Ghor’li—so many people in dire straits as the nightmare of the West bears down.

“Well over two hundred Issani,” he answers, his expresson grim. “Trapped behind the border. Ra’Ven Za’Nor is petitioning the Noi Conclave to allow them passage into the sublands. But more than half the Smaragdalfar are set against this. The Noi Conclave is too.”

“But...where else can they go?” Mora asks. “If the Gardnerians destroyed their whole village...”

He shakes his head. “There’s no clear plan—just this idea that the East should stop absorbing the West’s problems. And many of our own people feel that the sublands should be exclusively for the Smaragdalfar.”

Mora stiffens. “The future is diverse, Fyon.”

“Mora, it’s complicated—”

“Is it? Should our people start hanging Smaragdalfar flags everywhere? Touting the Smaragdalfar faith as the only true religion? Pushing everyone who isn’t Smaragdalfar out of the sublands?” She sweeps her hand toward the restaurant across the street. “Why not? It’s what they’re starting to do here. It’s what they’ve already done in the West.”

Fyon gives her a level look. “You know it’s not the same for our people. Not with most of our Smaragdalfar’kin still trapped in the Western Sublands. Most come here and have freedom for the very first time in their lives, and they’re ready to fight for a Smaragdalfar homeland. You can’t compare that to the Noi. Or the Gardnerians.”

“I know that, Fyon. I do,” Mora says, growing more impassioned. “But don’t you see? It’s our chance to take a different path. To show that there could beanother way. I support Ra’Ven Za’Nor in this. I believe his path is the better way forward.”

Mora considers Ra’Ven Za’Nor, the young Smaragdalfar monarch. The only surviving member of the Smaragdalfar royal line. With his wildly controversial ideas about a sublands for everyone, including his Mage partner, Sagellyn.

“Ra’Ven’s path could lead to chaos,” Fyon cautions. “I don’t see a way around that.”

Mora holds his stare, unflinching. “We’ll have chaos no matter what. So we might as well go down in flames loving instead of hating each other.”

A sudden spark leaps between them that has Mora’s heartbeat deepening.

Am I imagining it?she wonders. He’s so formal and austere, Fyon. Her friend since her young teen years. Always so courageous. Willing to risk his life again and again in the West, using his runic sorcery and skills with metallurgie to smuggle their people to safety in the East. Not intimidated by anything, save, perhaps, by this thing growing between them.

We both are.

When he returned to Noilaan a few weeks ago after living for several years in the West, Mora was stunned he had survived so many missions to save the Smaragdalfar. Last she saw Fyon, he was a tall skinny teenager. Hells-bent on revolution. Hells-bent on fighting for their people, risks be damned.Come with me, Mora, he’d urged. Seventeen to her fifteen.

But there was no way she could leave her family and her apprenticeship with a rune-ship pilot, her rune-crafting talent firmly oriented toward the nautical, whereas Fyon’s potent varg sorcery and metallurgie expertise endowed him with weapons-crafting power that was sorely needed by their people in the West.

And so she said goodbye to her brilliant, courageous friend. Her budding teenage crush.

Mora does a quick, bold scan of Fyon the man. He’s so startlingly altered. Taller. Broader shouldered. The planes of his face elongated and chiseled. A powerful grace to his movements, all gangliness gone. When he suddenly showed up at her doorstep a few weeks back, he fair took her breath away. And she sensed, for the glimmer of an instant, that he felt the same. But his manner rapidly shifted to his familiar reticent demeanor. As reserved as he is courageous.

His friendship was one of the most precious things in Mora’s life. She still vividly remembers that night she bade him farewell, tears streaking down her cheeks. Imagining that he would be lost to her forever. And now, miraculously, here he is. Back in her life. In her rune-ship kitchen, drinking tea. And Xishlon tea, no less.

For the love festival of Vo.

The kissing festival.

Heat lights on Mora’s neck as she considers how much she wouldn’t mind kissing Fyon.

No, I wouldn’t mind that one bit.

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