Page 65 of The Dryad Storm

The Dryad portal she and Viger traveled through with the flock of giant ravenscontained a huge lag. And then, not long after they arrived in the Northern Forest on the heels of Elloren and Yvan, Or’myr and Fyordin figured out a way to pull her back to the East through the Vo River bond she shares with Fyordin.

And Viger was drawn back with me, she pieces together,through some Death-magic binding in his kiss.

“Why did you pull me back?” Tierney shakily demands of Or’myr and Fyordin, her anger sliding into overwhelming concern in response to the tidal energy running through Fyordin’s aura.

“Vogel is going after the East’s waterways,” Fyordin growls. “He attacked the Salish Ocean with a huge mass of Shadow that’s making contact with the Southern Vo River, and the shielding you set down won’t hold for long against it.” He glances south, eyes storming. “I need to more powerfully shield our River to protect its southern waters. But I can’t cast spells into the Vo because you warded it against all magical incursion. Working withhim.” He shoots Viger another furious look, maelstrom intense.

Her alarm exploding, Tierney abandons them all and rushes into her Vo, water sloshing around her legs. She throws out her arms and dives headfirst into the River, her beloved Vo’s cool waters closing around her in an impassioned embrace, a school of silvery fish affectionately brushing by.

Tierney glides toward her River’s center and arrows down to the Vo’s bed, immediately sensing that the River’s power is braced defensively against an incoming threat. She splays out her arms, closes her eyes and meets with the riverbed, pressing her body against its soft, wet earth.

Flashes of images accost her mind.

A Void sea.

The dark, raised mass of it looming at the Vo River’s southern base. Multi-eyed kraken and other grotesque, Shadow-elongated sea animals and flying Shadow sea demons ready to rush in with the sea to terrorize Noilaan.

But then... the rise of a wall of monumental, storming water magic, battling back the Shadow sea to hold it at bay. The water magic linked to a young man who is part Selkie, part Mage...

Gareth Keeler.

Shock flashes through Tierney, her focus suddenly whiplashed away from the South and toward the North by some other force, the images not coming from her River this time...

... but from herkelpies.

Tierney’s every muscle goes taut, her bond to her kelpies abruptly shot through with vivid alarm as Tierney is filled with the awareness of them bound in the North somehow, sending out flare upon flare of distress to her fordays, desperately searching for her to no avail.

Her throat tightens as images of what her kelpies are witnessing in the Vo River’s northernmost reaches blast through her mind...

Gray Shadow curling above the Vo’s northern waters. Ready to choke the life out of water and fish and plants and surrounding trees as it siphons up the Vo’s elemental power, the Vo-protecting wards she and Viger extended there encased in Shadow and rapidly graying...

Terror spikes through Tierney, and she thrusts herself up from the riverbed, breathing in gulp after heaving gulp of water. She’s sensed this Shadow power before, when Elfin Marfoir assassins came for Wynter Eirllyn.

But now it’s coming for herRiver.

A scream straining to tear from her throat, Tierney darts up toward the Vo’s surface and breaks through. Water power surging, she swims rapidly back to shore, another storm cloud bursting from her and expanding overhead, rain spitting over this entire swath of Vo and riverbank.

“Vogel’s forces are about to break through our Vo warding!” she cries out as her feet meet land and she looks to Viger’s, Or’myr’s, and Fyordin’s rain-slicked forms. Pausing waist-deep in the Vo, she meets Viger’s solid black gaze. “Our wards are decaying. Vogel’s forces are getting ready to send a Shadow mass into my River’s northernmost reaches. What’s happening in the South... it’s part of a two-pronged attack on the Vo. We need to getNorth. We need to strike this magic down!”

Viger bursts into dark mist and Fyordin morphs into water, and then the two of them are suddenly right there, beside her, waist deep in the Vo as Or’myr launches himself toward her, splashing through the water until he, too, stands by her side.

“Read my fears!”Tierney cries to Viger, gripping his pale wrist.

Viger stiffens at the contact, an unsettling shiver of his Darkness passing through her.

Undaunted, she tightens her grip on him. “Read themall!”

Viger’s brow tenses, his eyes going half-lidded as a shudder passes through his body. His eyes snap fully open, and his otherworldly gaze turns knowing. Tierney almost draws back from the way he’s looking at her as he brushes her fear, his purple tongue flickering out, forked, as if tasting it on the very air. He grimaces, stretchingblack lips over elongating teeth that he snaps once, as if he’s seeking to bite the fear out of her.

“Yousee?” Tierney implores, her heart thundering with fear for her Vo.

I see, Asrai, he answers in her mind, dread lacing his words.

Tierney lets go of Viger and rounds on Fyordin, her urgency reaching a fever pitch. “We need to flash through the waters and get to the Northern Vo.Now!”

“Not alone, Asrai,”Viger hisses, grabbing hold ofherthis time, claws digging in.

Furious lightning flashes through Tierney’s storm above. “Unhand me, Viger,” she growls, ready to throw her full tempest at him.

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