Page 127 of The Dryad Storm

Everything on Erthia worth fighting for.

Tierney stares up through the water for a long time, her eyes focused on Or’myr’s wavering purple moon orb until weariness begins to pull her under.Does Viger even sleep?she wonders as she sinks closer to a troubled slumber, her thoughts churning around Viger’s cold words. She has no idea where he sleeps, if he does. He’s the most solitary being she’s ever met.

Solitary as Death.

She closes her eyes and recklessly searches for the bond Viger laid down with his kiss, bristling with offense that even her dreams are no longer her own. But still, shecan’t get the image of him fighting off Shadow soldiers out of her mind, a terror and a wonder to behold as he drove off Mage and Marfoir power.

Helping her to save her River.

Despite Viger’s chilling words, she can’t help but remember that glimpse, through his kiss on Xishlon, of how his terrifying magic supports the entirety of the Natural Matrix, the decay and Death giving rise to all new Life, their kiss a mind-bending revelation, leaving her clear about his complexities. But his frightening words... she sensed truth there too.

Are you really so cruel, Viger?Tierney frets, remembering the edges of besotted tenderness in his Xishlon kiss. And suddenly, despite her ire, the desire to find him rises once more. Searching for their link to no avail, she starts a slow slide toward sleep... then abruptly finds it.

Jolted into wakefulness, she tenses, hyperaware of a thin Dark thread in the Deathbond’s center, bound to the deepest recess of her mind.

The dream tether.

It’s subtle as the pull of a single strand of spider silk, taut and firmly affixed.

Tierney runs her mind along it as it loosens... then slackens.

He’s going to sleep, Tierney realizes, astonished to be able to sense this so clearly through the tether. Pulse quickening, she slows her breathing and focuses on the slackening binding, then lets herself fall right into that slender strand, the surrounding world dissolving, Viger’s Darkness collapsing in...

Abruptly she’s on her feet and in another nighttime location, surrounded by green-leafed trees instead of purple.

The Western Realm.

Disoriented, she peers through foliage toward a clearing just beyond. There’s a cottage in its center, its windows glowing with amber light.

A tall youth garbed in black disembarks from a carriage and stalks purposefully toward the cottage, his cloak billowing dramatically behind him.

Tierney gives a hard start.

Because it’sViger. But... a much younger Viger. Perhaps around fourteen. Pale and skinny. But hints of the emerging man are there in the square lines of his jaw, his imposing height. The intensity in his Dark eyes.

A chill pricks at Tierney’s skin.I’m in his dream.

A fuller realization hits.The tether he set down in his kiss... it goes both ways.

The eerie Dark of Viger’s thrall ripples over her, but it’s not controlled andcontained. It pulses fitfully, triggering a jolt of fear and despair that tightens her chest. Stunned by the out-of-control potency of teenage Viger’s aura, she stands her ground and ignores the instinct to turn and run from him.

His dark form is trailed by a middle-aged Keltish couple—an emaciated brown-haired woman clinging to the arm of a broad bearded man. The bearded man’s face is set in a stern-approaching-furious expression, his gaze pinned on Viger’s back.

Tendrils of black smoke appear below the hem of Viger’s cloak, curling and undulating toward the couple, as if he’s trying to scare them into fleeing from him.

Tierney’s entire body breaks into gooseflesh as she’s hit by side-tendrils of Viger’s mist. The scene shudders, the edges of the sky momentarily contracting. Everything stills, no birds, no insects, no trace of a breeze, Viger’s ominous wall of quiet pressing down.

The cottage door opens, and a white-haired older Keltish woman appears in the lantern-lit entryway. Her calm, kind voice rings out. “This must be Viger. Come in, come in.” Her unflappable composure surprises Tierney. It’s as if the woman doesn’t notice Viger’s eerie black mist or his aura’s thrall of frightening doom.

Viger and the couple enter the cottage, Viger’s dark fog sucked in behind them as the door snaps shut.

Tierney lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding as slowly, tentatively, the normal night sounds resume—an owl hoots, followed by a chorus of peepers then the thrum of insects, the chill prickling Tierney’s skin receding as the night smooths out.

Tierney creeps toward the cottage and enters it through the back door, walking silently through a dim jarred-goods storeroom, fragrant herbs drying overhead. She nears the amber light spilling from the edges of a slightly open door and peers into a rustic kitchen. She immediately spots young Viger, now seated at the central wooden table, his hands clasped before him, pale face hood-shrouded as he stares fixedly at the oak table before him, his swirling black mist orbiting his straight-backed frame.

The older woman is leaning back against a wooden counter, her hands planted on it. A slender gray-haired Keltish man of about her same age stands beside her, his bespectacled visage intelligent and kindly, the couple’s gazes on the angry bearded man as he holds forth.

“You’ve got to take him back,” the bearded man insists with a swipe of his arm toward young Viger. “He’s no good. He’s got the demonic in him.”

---