Page 196 of The Demon Tide

Tightening my lines to the near-breaking point, I struggle to draw my power back from Vogel as my dragon advances toward the ledge’s cliff. Dread racing through my veins, the dragons fan out shard-scaled wings, accelerate across the ledge and leap off it, vertigo assaulting me as the horde takes to the sky along with a swarm of wraith bats. Wings slam down in a unified, powerfulwhooshas I’m launched forward out toward the Shadow-covered dome and river, everything within me screaming—

Take me down, Yvan!

CHAPTER THREE

NOI’KHINSTORM

Trystan Gardner

Voloi, Noilaan

I lean over Vothe’s scaled back as he soars down toward the Vu Trin massed across the First Tier’s Voling Plaza, keeping tight hold of one of his shoulder spikes as lightning scythes through us both. Outrage sizzling through me, I take in the tide of Shadow rolling across the plaza, all color cut out save my blaringly Mage green skin.

The plaza rising beneath us is a temporary oasis, tenuously controlled by Vu Trin forces. Wyvern Vu Trin are positioned around it, two of them casting a lightning spitting shield over its expanse.

Vothe and I easily penetrate the shield, our joint magic briefly pushing back the dense lightning. I take in the heaps of Mage and Shadow dragon corpses. But the Mages keep coming in seemingly endless waves, and even though Vothe and I took out scores of them as we flew in, it’s clear we’re disastrously outnumbered.

Columns of smoke billow from the city’s tiers, blue lightning spitting in my vision as I take in the decimation, broken dragons lording over the skies, battling the sparse Vu Trin forces stationed on this side of the Vo Mountains.

Vothe lands and I leap off his back while he shifts to human, drawing black-scaled armor over his still winged and horned form. Our battalion’s captain, Heelyn, meets my gaze, a rune-stripped sword gripped in her fist, a slash of blood across her hawkish face. We rush toward her through the Shadow smoke.

Heelyn raises her palm in a halting gesture as the Vu Trin surrounding her nock arrows and ready blades and stars in lethal unison, all their rune-stripped weapons aimed at me.

I skid to a stop.

“Heelyn, there’s no time for this!” Vothe thunders, lightning crackling through his power.

“Don’t make a move for that wand, Crow!” she orders me, ignoring him.

“No, Hee Muur,” I emphatically return, careful to use her formal name. “I reallyshouldmake a move toward this wand!”

“Hear him out!” Vothe insists before she can spit out a protest. She knifes a murderous look at him.

“During our weapons training,” I call out over the surrounding din, paying no heed to the weapons aimed at my chest, “do you remember how my magic knocked the sorcery out of your weapons and filled them with my power?”

The hate in her eyes intensifies. “So, you’re looking to overtake us with your magery? Is that it, Crow? Was that the plan all along?”

“No,”I level back at her, just as vehement, “but it should be the plan now!”

Confusion twists Hee Muur’s features as Vothe steps toward her. “Heelyn, let him link his power to yours and charge it so you can set up a runic barrier!”

Her eyes swing toward his. “Are youmad?”

Jules Kristian and Lucretia Quillen shoulder through the surrounding Vu Trin, the two of them surprisingly holding hands, but there’s no time to wonder at the sight.

“There’s historical precedent,” Jules calls out to Heelyn, holding up a text. “Accounts of Dryad power being linked to a variety of magics during the Elfin wars to form barriers against demonic power. And Trystan’s power is, essentially, Dryad power.”

Heelyn meets this with an outraged look at Jules’s hand, linked with green-glimmering Lucretia’s.

Lucretia calmly meets Heelyn’s glare. “Trystan has enough of a storm in him to draw everyone’s power into any framework of a barrier you can create,” she offers.

“And any Smaragdalfar varg power you get hold of,” Jules adds.

“Help me wall off the city!” I press Heelyn, emboldened by the support.

Heelyn’s acid glare swings back to Vothe. “He’slying!” she snarls. “They all are!”

“Have you completely forgotten that I’m a power empath?” Vothe snarls back in glaring disbelief. “They’renotlying!”

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