Page 134 of The Demon Tide

“Your hands,” I say as I glance at the one he’s resting on his thigh, fighting the aching desire to take hold of it. “I was...surprised when they turned bright gold. And...you’ve claws. And horns...” The desire to see him shift again is suddenly warming my firelines. I want to embrace him as a shifter, to run my fingers back through his crimson hair and grab tight hold of his horns, to feel those claws tracing over my skin...

I look away, thrown by the rise of such tortured longing, my chest tightening against it. “I’m sorry,” I tell him as my fire aura brazenly sweeps over his skin. “Our fire draw...”

“You can’t help it,” he says roughly. “I can’t help it either. It’s our Wyvernbond. I think it’s quickened along with my power.” He pauses, voice strained. “I’m sorry, as well.”

“You best hold on,” Ni Vin directs, her voice piercing through Yvan’s and my private, agonized haze as our skiff’s runes light and the vessel tilts sharply down. She brings the skiff to a smooth landing on the water, the dimmed side runes churning through the river to drive us forward.

We stream into a sheltered rocky cove, then drift into a cave, its dark, glimmering walls closing in around us. Eventually, we reach a barrier made of solid-black opal, its bottom edge bridging the water streaming underneath it. Ni Vin pilots the skiff close to a prominent ledge, and Kam Vin hops onto it, striding to the opal wall. She reaches into her tunic’s pocket and pulls out a rune stone marked with a single, emerald rune, then presses it to the wall.

Bright green Smaragdalfar varg runes appear all over the wall’s surface in multiple, whirling circles before the opalescent wall vanishes. And there on the ledge, just past where the wall once stood, two figures stand before a heavily varg rune–lit cavern.

My heart leaps in my chest as I let out a sound of surprise.

Sagellyn Gaffney meets my gaze with an emotional look of recognition, her violet form resplendent in purple garb. She’s holding a lavender wand aloft, a small orb of lilac light hovering above its tip, her arm looped through that of the tall, young Smaragdalfar man by her side.

CHAPTER EIGHT

OPALSUBLANDS

Elloren Grey

Eastern Sublands

Eastern Realm

The night before Xishlon

“Elloren!” Sage calls from the black opal ledge. Her purple face is tense, and the expression of the man beside her—the man who I imagine is her Smaragdalfar love, Ra’Ven Za’Nor—mirrors her intensity. An awareness rises of the gray Elfhollen glamour cast over me by my Smaragdalfar runic necklace—the very same necklace once worn by Ra’Ven to glamour him Keltish so he could hide undetected in the West for years.

The turn of events is incredible.

Sage and Ra’Ven move toward our rune skiff as Ni Vin drifts it closer to the ledge. “We don’t have much time to get your power unbound,” Sage cautions, her words echoing off the cavern’s glistening black-opal walls.

“The Vu Trin have sent search parties into the sublands,” Ra’Ven warns, his words inflected with a flowing Smaragdalfar accent reminiscent of Professor Hawkyyn’s. I take note of Ra’Ven’s silver eyes, his Wyvern ancestry evident in his pupils, which are vertically slit like Yvan’s. He holds his tall, muscular form in a similar way as well, all contained, coiled power. His attire is the traditional emerald garb of the Smaragdalfar, his ears high points, green hair cut short, a green-glowing rune stylus sheathed at his hip.

“This location is cut off from the main Eastern Sublands,” Sage says as our skiff bumps against stone, inky water sloshing, “but it might not be safe for long.”

Tension rises in Yvan’s and my shared fire and I turn to him. His eyes flash gold as our gazes meet, a hot, upending shiver racing down my spine. His throat tightens and he looks away and rises, along with Jules and Lucretia and me, all of us aiding Kam Vin in holding the skiff flush with the rocky embankment so Ni Vin and Sage can secure it with chains of stone-fusing runes.

Ra’Ven extends his emerald-patterned hand to me and I take it, his grip strong as he hoists me onto the ledge, Yvan’s heat shimmering against my back as he follows close behind.

Finding my footing, I grip Sage’s shoulder in hasty greeting.

“I knew the Wand would lead you here,” Sage says to me, her tone suffused with the enormity of it all. “It came to me in dreams. Do you have it still?”

I nod, angling my head toward where the Wand is sheathed in my boot’s side. “I do,” I assure her. “It’s given me perfect aim with weaponry.”

“And soon, you’ll be able to wield it,” she states with calm authority.

“Were you told of Vogel’s ability to strike down most runes?” I ask, urgency rising. “And his incursion into my fastlines?”

“Trystan told us everything.” Her gaze flits from Yvan to me as I scan her intensely violet form—her tunic covered in a kaleidoscope of glowing, linked runes from a multitude of runic systems that have all taken on a purple tint, as if demurring to the potency of her light magery. Her wand is hewn from plum-hued wood like my cousin Or’myr’s, a series of slim runic styluses sheathed at her hip, along with a formidable-looking runic blade.

But herhands.

Piercing concern knifes through me to find Sage’s broken-fasting wounds still so very much present. If anything, they look worse than they did the last time I saw her. I note the delicate chains of what I assume are pain-dampening runes draped over her hands and wrists, and wonder if she’s still in constant agony but inured to it by now.

“Pull up the sleeve to your wand hand, Elloren,” Sage directs as she unsheathes a glowing green rune stylus. “I need to temporarily shut down the connection between your wand hand and your bound power. Or when we send unbinding spells through you, we could inadvertently explode both you and the sublands. This rune needs to be placedimmediately—it’s going to take close to an hour to charge.”

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