Page 159 of The Demon Tide

Silence.

“You know, don’t you,” Heelyn hisses. Her hostile gaze swings to Vothe. “Do you know, as well? Have you become that much of a traitor to your own people?”

Vothe’s horns spiral up from his head with a tight sting, his teeth elongating. “I stand with the Eastern Realm,” he says, low and dangerous. “So does Trystan.”

Heelyn leans toward Vothe. “We don’t need Crows standing with the Realm.” She jabs her finger toward Vothe’s chest for emphasis. “And you need to startguardinghim like the enemy that he is! Notflirtingwith him. Every shape-shifter who gets within ten feet of the two of you knows what’s going on!”

“Leave. Him. Be.”

Vothe turns along with everyone else, all of them collectively surprised by the deep, resonant female voice, an undercurrent of lethal threat in it.

Sylla Vuul is standing a few tables away, the petite Death Fae’s dark-clad form resonating the pause before an attack, an additional six eyes sprouting around the two dark ones she has pinned on Heelyn. Elegant Death Fae Vesper is seated beside her, his gleaming black cane in hand, his eerily attractive eyes pooling to a solid black.

Heelyn attempts not to wither under Sylla’s spider-shifter stare, but Vothe can sense her flash of fear. Justified fear.

A swarm of spiders flows down from the hem of Sylla’s dark pants and scuttles toward Heelyn, some of the other patrons letting out sounds of alarm as they get up and move away from their tables, away from the Death Fae.

“No one wants your kind here either,” Heelyn snarls at Sylla recklessly, but Vothe notices Heelyn’s voice wavers as she glances at the tide of spiders closing in.

“Death is always an unwelcome visitor,” Sylla states. Her multi-eyed, frightening stare is mirrored in its strange intensity by Vesper’s, and Vothe can sense Heelyn’s courage shriveling.

Heelyn shoots Trystan a hostile look and leaves with her silent, equally hostile uniformed companions before the spiders can reach her. Sylla and Trystan exchange a glance and Sylla nods to him, then sits back down with Vesper, her spiders scuttling back.

As Heelyn and her cohorts disappear into the Xishloncrowd, Vothe can feel some of Trystan’s control over his lines fracturing, can sense how much Heelyn’s hatred has affected him by the violent turbulence crashing through his lines. Trystan lifts his head and eyes Vothe with blistering resignation.

“Trys...” Vothe says.

Trystan shakes his head. “Don’t,” he insists, lifting his palm, his voice hard.

Vothe grows silent, realizing it’s all too much at the moment, the desire mounting to leap over the table and embrace him. And show him that he belongs here.

That he belongs with me.

Instead, Vothe holds himself back, inwardly cursing all the people who are making Trystan feel like an outcast.

Which used to include you.

He inwardly winces, remembering how he fought against Trystan’s inclusion, bent on hating this grandson of the last Black Witch. Now it’s hard to even look at Trystan without it triggering a pang of want so fierce it threatens to undo him. Because Vothe sees the truth. Trystan Gardner is as decent and courageous and kind as he is staggeringly beautiful. And if his sister is anything like him, then the risk he’s taking to help protect her is well worth it.

Trystan looks over the water, toward the mountains and the Xishlon moon hanging above it all. “I’m scared for Elloren,” he admits. “If they treatmelike this...”

Vothe doesn’t have to hear the rest of the sentence.

They’ll treat her far worse. Even if Vang Troi agrees to an alliance, other soldiers might band together to defy orders and kill her.

“She’s with one of the most powerful sorcerers on Erthia right now,” Vothe says in a whisper. “She’s safe. And, like I said, there’s nothing to be done at the moment but wait.”

Trystan keeps his gaze focused on the moon, but Vothe can sense his effect on him in the way Trystan’s water aura is now rippling through his, threads of blue lightning crackling that set Vothe’s skin prickling with a heightened desire to cancel out all the hatred here.

And kiss him.

A memory slides in. That contentious night when Trystan stood in the doorway of his Wyvernguard room, his eyes newly and shockingly lined with Noi kohl, soft runic lantern light dancing over his tall, slender frame. Trystan was so stunning that Vothe felt frozen by the sight of him—his eyes blazing in contrast to the midnight kohl that transformed their deep green into a fierce shining emerald.

And the tattoo. Sweet Holy Vo.

How furious most of the military apprentices were and still are about that tattoo—that this Gardnerian dared to cast off Gardnerian ways with the rapidity of someone throwing off something that was slowly strangling him.

Vothe remembers hesitating outside Trystan’s bedroom that night. He remembers the heated look Trystan gave him as he watched Vothe noticing his tattoo, watched the slow slide of his gaze.

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