Page 144 of The Dryad Storm

“My great-aunt Sithendrile told me to go back to the Zonor,” Vothe confides in Trystan. They’re sitting on the upraised rocky embankment by the Zonor’s edge, their fingers interlaced. “Back when you had that first day’s leave from the Wyvernguard, and we went to Voloi,” he adds, glancing at Trystan, feeling both lovestruck and dazed as he slides his gaze back toward the river and takes in what they’ve wrought.

A paintbrush twilight has descended, large swaths of pastel hues brightening the western sky, their net-shield of blue-and-white lightning flashing across the Zonor and its forested banks.

“She told me,” Vothe continues, caressing the side of Trystan’s thumb with his own, “that’s where you’ll find your transformation.”

Trystan seems to ponder this before he draws Vothe into a close embrace and kisses him long and slow and deep, feeding lightning into Vothe in a way that speeds Vothe’s pulse and makes him want to pull Trystan down to the bottom of the Zonor once more.

“Do you feel transformed, Vothendrile?” Trystan asks, giving him a slight, wry smile, his eyes lit with blue-and-white lightning, with the sheer thrill of their combined power.

And their unleashed love.

Vothe bares his teeth in a hungry grin before an upswell of emotion clenches his heart—for this Mage he initially tried to drive away. This Mage who is now hiseverything.

“I do, Trystan,” Vothe confides. “Our power... it’s completely intermingled now. Can you feel it?”

Trystan draws in a deep breath before leaning in to touch his forehead to Vothe’s while caressing the side of his face.

“I can feel it,” Trystan hisses in Wyvern. He inhales fast, seeming just as shocked as Vothe is to hear the Wyvern tongue sliding through his lips. “I can draw on your power and language now,” Trystan marvels, curling his mouth around the sibilant Wyvern words, the motion of his pierced lip so sexy that Vothe wants to eat his words whole. “I feel...mergedto you,” Trystan admits.

An ardent spark ignites between them, and Vothe moves to draw him into a closer embrace just as the feel of an incoming storm aura barreling toward them from the East wrests his attention. Alarm crackling through their merged power, they bolt to their feet.

“What is it?” Trystan asks as he takes hold of the branch sheathed at his side, their merged power coiling and readying to strike.

A dark, winged figure soars out of the clouds jutting out over the half-leveled Vo Mountain Range in the distance. Surprise lights through Vothe as he reads the figure’s energy, recognizing his great-aunt’s power before she soars into closer view above their shielding, alarm forking through her magic.

“It’s my great-aunt,” Vothe cautions Trystan, his hand coming to Trystan’s wrist to halt a defensive attack. “We need to let her through.”

They open a gap in their lightning dome, and Sithendrile swoops through it and lands before them. Her dark eyes spit gold lightning, and her horns are up, her claws out, a look of urgency on her crimson-tattooed onyx face.

Her shrewd gaze slides over them, missing no detail, including the lightning-filled mating mark newly emblazoned on Trystan’s shoulder, their linked hands, and Trystan’s transformed state—his newly pointed ears, deep-green hue and Zonor-blue eyes and river-hued hair—as well as the blue-and-white lightning forking over Vothe’s onyx skin.

Sithendrile’s eyes meet Vothe’s, power zapping between them as her wings snap in. “Zhilaan is sending out a storm force of Zhilaan’whuur to take hold of the power of this river and the Dyoi Forest,” she warns.

Vothe gapes at her, rapidly comprehending the full gravity of this.

The Zhilaan’whuur—Elite Weather Forces of the Zhilaan military.

“I felt your energy from a full league away,” Sithendrile bites out, her eyes flicking toward Trystan with a conflicted look. “I soared ahead to warn you both to draw down your magic andget out of the way. The Zhilaan’whuur are going to send a huge storm band through here at dawn. The largest storm band they’ve ever created. To wrest hold of the elemental power of the Zonor River and Dyoi Forest and use it to battle back Vogel’s Shadow storms in the continent’s central lands.”

A charged ripple of shock flashes through Trystan and Vothe, the ramifications of this detonating like a runic explosive—to build a storm band that holds enough elemental energy to drive back Vogel’s Shadow storms... it will require drawingway too muchpower from the Natural World. Both the Zonor River and Dyoi Forest will be destroyed.

“How far away are they?” Trystan demands.

Vothe’s great-aunt narrows her eyes at Trystan, and every hackle in Vothe rises. Because he can sense, through the conflict streaking through her power, that she’s warring with herself, what she knows of Trystan pitted against what his Black Witch sister almost succeeded in doing to the entire East. But it’s whatVogelnearly did to the entire East.

“You’ve half a day at most,” Sithendrile bites out, baring her teeth at Trystan.“So get out of Zhilaan’s way.”

The storm churning to life inside both Vothe and Trystan surges. Without warning, Trystan grabs tight hold of Vothe’s empathic aunt’s wrist. Instantly comprehending Trystan’s intention, Vothe lunges forward to grab hold of her, as well.

She hisses, elongating teeth flashing at them both.

“Please!Listen!” Vothe implores, desperate for her to use her empathic powers to read them both.

Sithendrile’s brow furrows as her empathic senses connect and read every last thing the Forest showed Vothe and Trystan, as well as everything that’s happened to them and their allies since they flew west to find Elloren and Yvan.

Sithendrile’s eyes meet Vothe’s, a look of pure, unadulterated shock in them. “Holy Vo,” she hisses in Wyvern. “Can this all be true?”

Trystan nods emphatically. “If the Dyoi Forest and the Zonor fall, the Natural World falls apart,” he hisses back in Wyvern, Sithendrile visibly startling at Trystan’s new ability to speak their language fluently. “Destroy the Natural World, and there is no East,” Trystan continues to hiss. “No water. No crops. The descent of weather so violent even your Zhilaan’whuur willnotbe able to control it. Then, the complete breakdown of the Living World as the Shadow rolls in.”

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