Page 71 of The Demon Tide

I meet her gaze, incredulous. “We don’t need your dragon goddess,” I spit out. I glance toward Emberlyyn and Tibryl, who are caught up in another round of spasmodic coughing. “We need Norfure tincture and warm beds.”

And I need to prevent the imminent destruction of your entire realm!

“I’m sorry,” she says again before they take their leave. Ru Sol gives me one last devastated look over her shoulder before they step into the woods and slip out of sight.

I turn to find tears streaking down Nym’ellia’s face. “What do we do now?” the teen asks me, her voice tremulous.

Steel rises in me, hard and implacable. “We go east,” I tell her as I fist the hilt of my Ash’rion blade. “And we get past that border.”

CHAPTER TWO

THEZONOR

Elloren Grey

The Zonor River

Eastern Realm

Two days prior to Xishlon

The Zonor River is a shock to the senses.

A stiff wind whips my gray hair against my face in stinging lashes as Nym’ellia, Emberlyyn, Tibryl, and I stare at its vast expanse in the twilight, its steel gray waters churning southward. It smells like cold energy. Like raw power licking the air. And I wonder what monstrous things could be lurking in its depths.

I look toward the black mountains beyond, their peaks almost as high as the Northern and Southern Spines. A lightning-charged line of storms tops its entire length.Wyvern-crafted storms.Deadly and impassible to all but the Noi military.

Don’t think on the odds, I urge myself.Just keep moving east.

I turn to Nym’ellia and find the young teen eyeing the Zonor with a look of serious trepidation as she carries little Tibryl, hugging her close. Lightning forks across the darkening sky.

“Is this the spot?” I ask.

Nym’ellia tenses her brow and holds out her intricate gold compass for my perusal. All of the compass’s arrows are pointing inward toward this exact spot.

“The Kelts we arranged passage with in Issaan told us to wait and the boat would come,” Emberlyyn says. We turn to her. Her frail body is propped against one of the cove’s purple willow trees, their cascading fronds surrounding us.

The trees have gone eerily silent, a buzz of muggy energy on the air, birdsong nonexistent as the storm to our north draws nearer.

Emberlyyn fishes a black coin from her pocket and hands it to me, a world-weary look on her face. I turn it over, its gleaming surface embossed with the image of a trout. “We paid everything we had for this passage,” she admits weakly.

Risky.I palm the coin then hand it back to her.Paying for something back in the West, trusting it to actually be here in the East.But it’s clear that this is just one more choice in a long stream of dangerous choices for this small family. It’s also clear that Emberlyyn is nearing the end of her road. All the choices from here on in need to be good ones if she and her daughters are going to survive.

Please let their alliance with me be one choice they won’t regret.

I tug my sleeves low and then my tunic’s hem, my weapons well hidden, as Lukas and Valasca taught me. An ache tightens my heart the moment my thoughts slide to Lukas and Valasca, too, the need to find both of them like a fire burning deep in my core.

A rustling in the brush has my hands flying toward my blades. But it’s not scorpios or wraith bats or Vu Trin that emerge. It’s a Keltish man, ducking under the willow’s purple fronds as he moves purposefully toward us. He’s big and muscular with a rangy, weather-beaten look about him, his blond hair dirty and mussed.

His gaze meets mine, and my hackles go up. There’s a shifty look in his blue eyes, and I’ve the sense of being quickly and coldly appraised. One side of his mouth ticks up as his gaze roams quickly over me with disturbing interest. I keep my palm near the hilt of my Ash’rion blade, noticing that the Kelt has a rather large knife of his own sheathed at his waist.

No runes on it, though.

He leans down, fishes a dark rope from the dense violet brush, and gives it a tug.

A hidden craft slides from under the brambles by the shoreline’s edge, the small rowboat’s dark gray hue blending in seamlessly with the steely water.

“Looking for a boat?” His gaze catches on Nym’ellia and roves over her in a way that further spikes my unease.

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