Page 51 of The Demon Tide

I hit the water, and everything comes crashing down on me with the force of a thousand storm bands—the look on the refugees’ faces, their justified hate, the drowned mother...the motherless child.

Crow. Roach.

Mage.

And suddenly, my magic comes untethered and I’m drowning in those words, my power churning with so much turmoil, I barely notice the river’s whirling chaos as it closes around me, the funneling undertow like some distant disturbance in the face of the riptide of anguish and magic lashing through my heart and my lines.

Vothendrile

Sweet Holy Vo, I think as Trystan disappears beneath the water’s surface, sucked down by the undertow.

I pull in my wings and dive after him.

Hitting the water like an arrow, I scythe down, sensing Trystan’s oceanic power through the funneling energy of the river, quickly spotting his long form being dragged rapidly into its depths.

I shoot toward him and throw my arms around his torso.

Trystan glares at me and struggles mightily against my grip, his power a fractured mess as air bubbles explode everywhere around us. And I know, in that instant as I sense his completely unstrung power, that Trystan has lost his way—fighting not against me saving him, but against all the pain of the world as well as all the pain he’s endured.

And I’ll be damned if I’ll let that pain destroy him.

You blazingly stupid idiot, I inwardly rage. I will not let you die!

I hold on relentlessly as our powers wage war and his lightning cracks violently against mine, visible bursts of it forking out through the water from us both.

Then, Trystan stops struggling, and there’s something devastating in that too. But there’s no time to feel it too deeply. I power up air behind us to propel us through the water’s surface, shield us both, and soar back east.

Trystan shatters.

I can feel his power coming untethered as Ung Li questions his unsanctioned use of wand magery and I stridently make a case for him. I brace myself for his immediate dismissal from the Wyvernguard, but Ung Li simply says she must “carefully consider the facts” and we’re miraculously allowed to leave without censure.

Trystan doesn’t speak to me as I bring him back to his barracks, his hair and clothing sodden, a dead look in his eyes that wrenches my heart.

“What happened?” Sylla Vuul asks from the hallway’s webs, concern in her voice. She quickly morphs from her giant spider form into that of a petite midnight-hued Death Fae girl and drops down from her webbing, her eight eyes pulling in to form two fully black ones.

Trystan opens his door, silently steps into his room, and shuts it.

For a moment I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can only stare after him.

“He scared the people we were trying to help,” I finally manage, feeling close to shattering myself. “And he was pushed into the Zonor. I think, for a moment, it all got to be too much for him, and the river...it pulled him under.” I’m suddenly not able to take an even breath and have to stop and fight the urge to break down myself.

I can’t get the image of the little girl hugging her dead mother out of my mind, one of so many drowned this day, four more bodies, recovered from the uncaring waters.

Footsteps round the hallway and Min Lo is suddenly striding toward us with Wyn Juun, the Wyvernguard’s elderly Vo priest who tends to the spiritual needs of the apprentices. Wyn Juun’s sapphire priest garb is marked with embroidered dragons rendered in a multitude of colors—the many manifestations of Vo. A necklace with a pendant depicting one of Vo’s sacred doves graces his neck.

The Noi priest looks at me, concern etched deep into his wizened brown face, his snowy hair pulled back in a knot, his long beard tied into a knot as well below his chin.

“He’s in here?” Wyn Juun asks, urgency in his tone as he gestures toward Trystan’s door.

“I told him everything,” Min Lo says to me, her clothing still soaked, her short hair sticking up in damp spikes.

“He’s not part of the Vo’lon religion,” I caution the priest. “He’s Gardnerian.”

“Is he?” Wyn Juun shoots back. He knocks on the door, his voice gentle when it comes. “Trystan Gardner. I am Wyn Juun of the Vo’lon faith. I come asking for you to speak with me.”

Silence.

And then the door opens, Trystan’s face wan and tearstained.

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