Page 259 of The Dryad Storm

Smiling, Or’myr lifts her hand and kisses it. “I love you, Asrai.”

The ardent sincerity in his words catches Tierney up short, her throat tightening with emotion, affectionate amusement riding in close on its heels. “I love you, too, you ridiculously smug Dryad-y person.”

“I also love being able to stay underwater with you,” he enthuses. “To breathe in the whole River.” A devious gleam enters his gaze. “You know, my lightning gives me quite a bit of... energy. I could pull you down to the very bottom of the Vo and—”

“No metaphors this time,” Tierney insists.

Or’myr pauses, a heartfelt gravity entering his expression. “And make love to you with the arms of the Vo around us.”

Tears are suddenly glistening in Tierney’s eyes, her voice rough with feeling when it comes. “Spoken like a true Asrai’khin.”

“No,” Or’myr gently but firmly rejoins. “Spoken like a man deeply in love with an Asrai. And ready to love and defend her River too.”

And then he catches her in a kiss that Tierney eagerly returns, giving herself up to the bright, purple love in it.

That night, Tierney falls asleep at the bottom of the Vo River, Or’myr’s arms and body wrapped around her.

As she spirals into a dream.

She’s suddenly perched on a ledge jutting out from what she quickly realizes is the pinnacle of the Dyoi Mountain Range, a shocking nightmare scene laid out before her, dream-wavy at its edges.

Viger sitting beside her.

Tierney’s heart lurches toward Viger, emotion surging. His full-Dark eyes are looking out over the Shadow wasteland that covers more than half the continent, the distant Unbalancing Void storms spitting dark lightning as they gather power.

A reflexive terror for her River rising, Tierney turns and glances back east.

She can just make out the prismatic glint of the dome cast over the East, just past the destroyed Zonor River, a strip of muddy gray filth where the majestic River once flowed, and her heart twists at the sight. The Great Tree IV’s canopy juts out above the clouds, the surviving East a tenuous stretch of Natural Life amidst leagues and leagues of Shadow corruption.

She turns back toward the West, toward the dense storms that churn steel gray in the distance, Viger’s Death thrall reaching out to encircle her in floating, ropy tendrils.

His bone-deep stillness descends.

Viger is still staring west with those abyss eyes of his. Horns out, claws in, his two black vipers draped around his shoulders.

He turns and sets his night-deep eyes on her. “Fight this with him,” he says. His words have the feel of a solemn charge, shot through with both Deathkin rebellion and grief.

Tierney’s heart constricts, everything left unsaid between them rushing in.

“I will,” she promises, voice catching, knowing he can feel her every emotion in her magic’s flow through their bond. “Viger, I want you to know that... I love Or’myr. But I love you too.”

A dart of pain lashes through their linkage. “I know,” he says.

“But you were right,” she admits. “It’s not our time.”

He draws in a deep breath, his eyes and thrall locked on her. “Someday,” he says in that subterranean voice that’s always sent a tight trill through Tierney’s power.

They go quiet as unnatural Shadow thunder churns in the distance.

Finally, Viger speaks without moving, his voice seeming to emanate from her very core.

I’ll be there in the soil. In Nature’s Darkness. Waiting for you. Heal the Balance, Asrai’kin. And someday, I’ll come back to claim you.

Her heart in her throat, Tierney wrenches her gaze from his, and studies the vast, gathering Shadow power, barely held back. She’s all too aware, via the tension filling her Deathkin line, that the Great Death Reckoning is still struggling to break free if a Rebalancing does not take solid root.

And soon.

Viger, Sylla, her kelpies, and all the other Deathkin the only things holding back the horrors of the Reckoning.

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