Page 186 of The Demon Tide

Thierren spells out another blast of wind, diverting the fire to explode the Wisteria grove beside them in a silver-sparking inferno as the dragon lands before Sparrow and Thierren with a concussive thud.

Sparrow is suddenly thrust to the side by Thierren’s insistent shove. “Go! Get under Effrey’s shield!” he growls.

She hesitates for a split second, then sprints toward Effrey and Mii Vun as more broken dragons stream in. Another blast of dark fire to her left sends Sparrow darting sideways and almost losing her footing in her shoes’ slim heels. A thick tide of smoke rolls through the trees, Sparrow’s eyes widening as it morphs the Wisterias’ purple coloration to gray and quickly overtakes the plaza as three more broken dragons zoom down from above. They land around Sparrow, their repeated impacts reverberating through her as the chest-high gray fog envelopes her body.

Her eyes meet those of the nearest Mage, his gray-glowing eyes burning into her through the thickening mist. Horror grips Sparrow’s chest as a chilling grin spreads over his mouth—

Tilor!

Her young tormentor from the Fae Islands—one of the main reasons Sparrow and Effrey risked death by kraken to escape to the continent.

Terror spiking, Sparrow scuttles backward.

“I found you!” Tilor sneers as he dismounts with otherworldly speed, his gaze raking lasciviously over Sparrow’s tight dress. “Look at you now, you little whore.”

Outrage rips through Sparrow and she lifts her blade only to find its runes blinked out, her hue shockingly grayed.

Tilor raises his wand arm, thrusts it forward, teeth gleaming. A tendriling whip made of Shadow snaps from his wand’s tip and lashes around her wrist, wresting the blade from her hand. Sparrow cries out as another whiplike binding lashes around her ankles and she topples, yanked to the plaza’s stone.

All sight cuts out as she hits the tile and the Shadow fog closes over her.

“Thierren!” she cries as the bindings encircle her body and she’s wrenched upward like a netted animal.

Tilor’s cruel face comes into view as she’s lifted from the fog tide with inhuman strength then thrown over the back of Tilor’s dragon. Her stomach collides with scaled, gray hide and Tilor swiftly tethers her there, belly down, Shadow rising all around.

“Thierren!” Sparrow shrieks against the multitude of explosions as she fights against her bindings, unable to see past the few, murky feet surrounding her.

Her head is wrenched up by her hair and Sparrow gasps, Tilor’s glowing gray eyes before her, his Mage face gloating.

“He spoiled you, didn’t he?” he sneers. “But I get you next. Vogel’s going to use you to draw Thierren Stone right to him. Like a beautiful little lure. Oh, Vogel knowsallabout what you and Thierren did in Valgard. He wants every last staen’en traitor—Thierren Stone, Mavrik Glass, the Gardner brothers, Gareth Keeler—to punish them. And I get to punishyou. You should have waited for me, Sparrow. Vogel’s granted me so much power. You should have come to me on the Islands.”

“Thierren!”Sparrow screams again through the cacophony of explosions and battle chaos as Tilor reaches over her to run his grasping hand over her body. Rage firing, Sparrow growls at him, violently wrestling against her bindings as Tilor laughs, swings himself astride the dragon and takes its dark reins in hand.

The dragon fans out gray wings and throws them down, the plaza’s ground falling away beneath Sparrow as her stomach lurches from vertigo and desperate fright.

A cyclonic blast of air from the plaza’s direction suddenly forces the Shadow fog away, the scene below Sparrow now visible, the plaza and gardens stripped of color, the surrounding trees alight with silvery Shadowfire.

Thierren is standing with three dead dragons surrounding him, several slain Mages splayed out on the plaza’s emptying center, Effrey and the others gone. Thierren’s head lifts to the skies, and his eyes meet Sparrow’s in mutual horror.

“It’s a trap!”Sparrow screams as he raises his wand and runs toward her, before the dark fog closes over him and he’s swallowed, once more, by the Shadow tide.

CHAPTER SIX

SMARAGDALFARBATTLESHIP

Mora’lee Starr’lyrion

Xishlon night, twenty-second hour

A huge explosion jostles Mora’s rune ship. She startles against Fyon’s chest, their arms wrapped around each other under the soft blankets of Mora’s narrow bed.

“Holy Vo,” she exclaims, drawing back to meet Fyon’s silver eyes, his skin flushed from their fevered coupling, emerald lips swollen from so much passionate kissing.

He throws back the blanket and jumps from the bed, yanking her circular window’s curtain aside as Mora grabs her Wisteria dress and wrestles it on, her alarm doubling as Vu Trin alarm horns begin to bray.

“Mora,” Fyon says, turning to her, the moment so fraught with unbearable tension his verdant nudity only half registers. “Are all of the children on board?”

“I think so,” Mora says, the words strained as she rushes to the window and takes in the gash across the mutilated mountains, the dark smoke pouring from it, pale fog rising up.

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