Page 122 of The Dryad Storm

“Not just her,” Vang Troi returns, a serious look in her eyes. She turns back to the Dryads, import flashing through her gaze. “The Tree Fae, as well.”

Sylvan wrenches himself from Yvan’s and Wrenfir’s grips and rises, devastation writ hard on his face as he looks toward the destroyed Shadow lands beyond the dome-shield. “It’s too late,” he rasps, tears streaking down his greening face. “It’s over.”

Oaklyyn remains slumped on the ground, violently sobbing.

Sylvan levels his tortured gaze on Vang Troi. “Our people aredead. Our kindreds aredead. And your infighting will soon destroy what’s left of the Natural World. It’sover.”

“Your people are alive,” Thierren raggedly states.

Sylvan’s head jerks toward him.

“The Forest showed me a vision of them,” Thierren explains. “The Verdyllion... it was able to blast open a small path for your people into the Sublands below the Northern Forest.”

Confusion gutters through Gwynn and Mavrik’s twinned power. “I sense no break in our Subland shielding,” Mavrik says.

“If this is so,” Gwynn postulates, “it must have happened when Mavrik and I were semiconscious.”

“Our people willdiewithout a Forest connection,” Oaklyyn lashes out, choking on her tears. Her misery-tight gaze swings to Hazel, blistering hate overtaking it. “Like you should have letusdie!”

“We need to find them,” Yulan cuts in, the petite Dryad’s melodic voice frayed, her breathing labored, her lichen-lashed eyes stricken. “We need to find them and tether them to the surviving Forest.”

“There can be no true tether!” Oaklyyn snarls at Yulan. “Your kindred isdead! As ismine!” She breaks into more furious tears, glaring at all of us with a fury so potent, it slices straight through my heart as she glares damningly at us all. “Our wild onesburnedin the fire of your discord!”

“You are not the only one grieving,” Yulan chokes out. “The Shadowed ones blasted my beautiful kindredapart. I willneverrecover, but, perhaps, some of our peoplemight.”

A sting ripples across the III-imprint on my palm as the Forest pulses out what feels like a wordless plea. My heart in my throat, I turn toward the tree line, along with Yvan and all my other III-marked Dryad’khin, as an injured creature emerges from it.

I draw in a tight breath as the Tricolored Heron limps toward us, its normally blue, lavender, and white feathers stripped of color and covered in Shadow ash. The grayed heron drags a limp, broken wing, picking its way toward Yulan before stilling before her.

Yulan lets out a strangled sob as she brings her trembling hand to the bird’s slender back, and I have to fight off my own tears, the whole world seeming shattered beyond repair.

But then, the unexpected happens.

Ariel breaks away from our horde’s defensive line and strides toward Yulan, eyesset on the crumpled Dryad and the heron before her. Gentler than I ever imagined she could be, Ariel comes down on one knee beside them, her wings fanning out in a protective arc, Yulan and the heron recoiling slightly.

“Don’t be afraid,” Ariel croons. “I can heal wings.”

Yulan raises her trauma-stricken eyes to Ariel’s and looks at her deeply. Seeming to gather herself, she nods and gently prods the heron forward.

The bird lets out a frightened squawk as Ariel leans in and sets her hand on the heron’s singed feathers with exquisite gentleness. The bird goes stock-still, its grayed eyes now riveted to Ariel’s, as if mentally conveying horrors endured. Ariel’s expression tenses with a look of outraged understanding before she makes a low shushing sound, and the slender bird takes a stumbling step toward her. Murmuring to the winged, Ariel gently strokes the bird’s back, then traces her fingers along its wing, crooning softly the whole time as she carefully assesses it.

And then, as if Ariel’s gesture was the spark needed to shift the hopeless tide, a deep-purple vine ripples out from the Forest toward Yulan and flows around her, delicate lavender flowers blooming to life all over it and forming blossoming tresses on Yulan’s flower-stripped head to replace the gray, withered vines. I can sense the Dyoi Forest’s fragility in the gesture. Its need for Dryad’khin protection.

Its need for usall.

Yvan’s invisible aura of fire is suddenly blazing toward his mother. “Mav’ya,” he says, “please, hear us out.”

Soleiya simply glares at him, her power rife with outrage and hurt. She turns and walks away from us, along with Iris and almost all the Vu Trin and Amaz, save for Vang Troi, Freyja Zyrr, and the young, muscular Vu Trin runic sorceress with a dragon design shorn into her close-cropped hair.

Vang Troi lets out a Noi curse under her breath and narrows her eyes at all of us before looking straight at me and Yvan. “Well, you have my attention. So...explain.”

Night falls before we finish our story. Vang Troi, Freyja, and the young Vu Trin sorceress have been permitted onto our walled-off side of the ledge, grouped now with my allies and me around a central crackling bonfire. The multicolored runes marking our Dyoi Forest’s shielding shimmer against the star-flecked sky, Vogel’s Shadow net a faint, ominous presence against the shield’s runes. There’s another distant bonfire glowing in the center of the ledge’s northern edge, Vang Troi’s forcesgrouped around it, all of them encased in a small, emerald-glowing dome-shield.

I lean back against the arm and wing Yvan has wrapped around me. I’m trembling, my grief for Lukas a dredged-up ache after conveying everything that happened, from Yvan’s mock death at Mavrik’s glamoured hands to Lukas’s Realm-saving sacrifice. All the way to my abduction by the Dryads and merging into III.

“We align with the Forest, or we die,” I roughly state to Vang Troi. Yvan’s fire encircles me in a steady caress as I briefly meet Sylvan’s grief-stricken gaze.

“Those are our choices,” Yvan agrees. “Our only choices.”

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