Page 99 of The Demon Tide

Two days prior to Xishlon

Amaz soldiers bracket a kneeling Wynter Eirllyn, weapons drawn at her head. Her threadbare wings flap chaotically, stinging veins of Shadow burrowing under her skin as she struggles against the Zalyn’or’s choke hold on her throat.

She sets her devastated gaze on the bottleneck of Amaz women and children waiting to enter the passage to the Queenhall’s subland cavern, its Smaragdalfar rune-marked doors near the hall’s central entrance thrown open, a frantic energy on the air as families rush to get to the underground military portals.

Just beyond the crowd of Amaz civilians, a thick band of Amaz soldiers surround the entire Queenhall, Queen Alkaia amongst them astride a black steed. Freyja Zyrr and the huge warrior Alcippe stand beside the monarch, axes in hand, expressions fierce. The outer ring of soldiers are down on one knee, bows in hand, arrows nocked, all of their weapons pointed toward the incoming Mage and Alfsigr Marfoir invaders.

Wynter notes that their weapons are almost uniformly stripped of power, save a smattering of glowing emerald runes that mark a few arrows, bows, and blades.

Smaragdalfar varg runes. The thought pings through Wynter’s despair.They’ve survived the Shadow’s onslaught.

A glassy green-tinted protective shield hangs over the archers, the civilians, and the entire Queenhall, tenuously held in place by Wynter’s part-Dryad friend Alder Xanthos and the Amaz’s sole Smaragdalfar rune sorceress, Vestylle Oona’rin.

The stances of the two young women brim with immovable defiance as Vestylle holds her emerald-glowing rune stylus aloft and Alder keeps her Silver Birch branch elevated, both stylus and branch pressed to the verdant shield’s inner surface, the women’s arms vibrating with magical tension. Vestylle’s emerald-patterned skin and Alder’s forest green glimmer have miraculously held on to their hues amidst the grotesquely grayed world.

Mage power is not completely invincible after all, Wynter considers.

Pressure tightens around Wynter’s skull, the Zalyn’or necklace clearly wanting to blot out the rebellious thought. Which makes that rebellious, surviving shard of Wynter’s free will hold on to it even tighter.

Gray slashes across Wynter’s vision as she meets the frightened, silver gaze of her Alfsigr soldier-friend Ysilldir, the young Amaz warrior stripped of her weapons and down on her knees as well, ringed by soldiers, arrows aimed at her head. Like Wynter, Shadow-vomit sullies the front of her tunic, her pale skin veined with gray.

A heartbreakingly color-stripped azure finch lands on Wynter’s shoulder, and she stills as the small bird sets its feathery head against her neck.

Monstrous warning fills Wynter’s mind—a woman of ice and hate on a broken dragon...

Wynter’s head jerks up just as Valasca Xanthrir rushes around a Shadow-tree trunk halfway across Cyme’s Central Plaza. Young Sylmire trails her, a sobbing gray-hued child in the Alfsigr teen’s arms. There’s a charged rune blade in one of Valasca’s pewter-tinted hands, its hilt haloed with Smaragdalfar rune glow.

“Wynter!” Valasca calls out as she spots her, breaking into a faster sprint.

Wynter raises a frantic palm.“Run! She’s coming!”

The giant Shadow tree beside Valasca abruptly contracts downward. Valasca skids to a halt as branches slam down around her and solidify into a cage. Smaller branches dart out, coiling and slapping around Valasca, her blades wrested away, her hands swiftly bound.

“Val!” Freyja shouts as she springs forward, seeming as if she might leap through the translucent green shield. Young Sylmire stumbles backward from the branch cage, staring at Valasca in abject horror as the little girl in her arms shrieks for her mother.

“Stay shielded!” Valasca bellows at Freyja before fixing her fierce pewter stare on Sylmire.“Go!”she snarls at the teen.

The teen sprints to the shield, where both she and the screaming child are hauled through by Freyja just as Fallon Bane emerges from the plaza’s misty Shadow forest on the back of a broken dragon. Fog swirls around Fallon’s commanding form, an army of black-clad Mages also on dragonback emerging from the mist behind her.

As Fallon closes in through the mist, the details of her military uniform sharpen—the white bird on black, five silver stripes marking her uniform’s edges, one thick silver Mage Commander stripe below them.

The finch on Wynter’s shoulder flies off in an explosion of terror. Wynter’s horror mounts, her wings contracting as Fallon’s sadistic brother Damion Bane lands his dragon beside Fallon’s and several Alfsigr Marfoir Elf assassins scuttle in behind them.

The Amaz archers aim their bows at the Mages, the line of soldiers behind them hoisting axes and blades and swords.

As one, the Marfoir turn to look at Wynter through grayed, insectile eyes.

A dizzying fright stiffens her wings. Because not only is Valasca in the grip of these fiends...each Marfoir is dragging a net filled with Shadow-gagged Amaz women and children, little Pyrgo, the Icaral child Wynter has grown close to, crammed in among them.

Pyrgo’s adoptive mother, the huge rose-hued warrior Alcippe, lets out a growling cry. Hoisting her axe, she lunges toward the shield, a murderous look on her rune-tattooed face. But she skids to a halt just inside its edge, and Wynter realizes that Alcippe must be rapidly assembling the same thought as Wynter’s own.

The Mages don’t realize they’ve caught an Icaral child.

Because if they did, her wings would have already been torn from her body.

A gut-clenching panic for Pyrgo grips Wynter as she notes the child is blessedly cloaked and sandwiched between two of Amazakaraan’s healers, the women’s arms protectively tight around her, her wings well hidden.

Wynter looks at Fallon, barely able to breathe as she forcibly pushes Pyrgo from her thoughts, terrified that Vogel might sense the child’s presence through his Zalyn’or link.

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