Page 126 of The Dryad Storm

Mortified by his effect on her, gnashing her teeth against it, she halts before him.

Viger’s gaze slowly rises to meet hers, the ravens and the surrounding trees washed in the purple glow of her runic stone. Keeping his midnight eyes fixed on her, Viger whispers a stream of words to the ravens in a language she doesn’t comprehend, his hiss like an insidious wind that she can feel winding around her ribs and everything surrounding them.

Viger quiets, and the ravens take off as one, their multitude of wings beating down on the air, while he remains low to the ground, palms to the soil.

Everything empties from Tierney’s head except one, churning thought.

“Is it true you set down a Death Fae mating bond between us?” she demands, condemnation swelling in a fierce tide. She slashes out a hand at him, like an axe leveled. “Be straight with me, Viger. Because I need to trust you completely if I’m going to fight for my River with you. And I will never trust you again if you’re not honest with me,right now.”

Viger rises, so quickly that Tierney recoils, one second on the Forest floor and the next, standing less than a breath away, the night’s darkness seeming to pull in around them both.

“We kissed,” he bites out, his pitch-black eyes narrowing. “A Deathbond has been formed.”

Tierney’s flare of ire crackles hotter. “So... that meanswhat? That you’ll devour my dreams now? That you’ll devourme?”

His lips curl with obvious disdain. “No.”

Tierney glares at him, incensed. “But youcould?”

Viger narrows his coal-dark stare on her as his horns rise and sharpen. “Yes, Asrai.” He flashes his teeth as his thrall pulses Darker, the whole world blackening, including the whites of his center-of-Erthia eyes, but Tierney is undaunted.

“Careful, Viger,” she snaps, drawing confrontationally nearer, “I might invade your dreams, as well. And we’ll have a little talk. A violentstormis likely to be involved!”

She’s suddenly swept up in a more intense blur of Dark and she gasps, gravity itself cutting out, Viger’s thrall swirling around them as the ground gives way.

“Then invade them, Asrai,”he challenges.

A shiver goes through Tierney, but she refuses to cower or give in to the urge to buckle and fall straight into him.

“You should have warned me,” she throws down, her voice breaking around the tide of her anger. “You should have told meexactlywhat kissing you meant. Now get your thrall off me andset me down.”

In an instant, she’s back on solid ground, teetering a bit from a rush of vertigo. Viger scowls, his sharpened teeth fully bared, his purple forked tongue flickering out in warning.

Intimidation fires inside Tierney, but she ignores it as an inexplicable hurt rises. “I thought we werefriends.” Her voice seems to split apart at the seams.

Viger gives her a mocking look. “You seek friendship withDeath?”

The hurt digs in deeper. “No, withyou,” she exclaims, voice breaking.

“You understandnothing,” he snarls, low and menacing, his elongated teeth snapping. “You do not understand what we Deathkin will be forced to do if Nature’s Balance gives way. What I’m already being drawn toward. Nature isupending. And we will bring theReckoning. The death of crops. Pestilence. Sickness. A tide of Death the world hasnever before seen.”

“Then work to keep it at bay,” she cries, “like you’re helping us keep the Shadow at bay!”

“If the Balance unravels, it cannot be kept at bay!” he hisses, eyes wild. “Death Faeare beings ofprimordial power. We do not fight for any alliance, no matter what this bond-linkage has wrought. We fight for NaturalDeath. And if the people of Erthia upend the Matrix,Natural Death will come. Our Reckoning will rise to fight both the Shadow Death and Nature’s Unbalancing, and you will be torn apart by our sickle!”

Tierney takes a stumbling step back, a shiver of intense fear coursing through her hurt and confusion. “But... we’reallied.”

Viger leans in, lip lifting in a snarl as multiple snakes appear and slither around his shoulders, all of them hissing at Tierney, fangs bared. “I amDeathkin,” he snarls, his voice vibrating straight through her. “I amcruel. I am every reality you are afraid to face. I am every cherished beliefdestroyed. Do not come to me if you seek comfort or consolation. Do not come to me for kindness or friendship or alliance. You will findnosolace here.”

And with that, he turns into mist and flows into the night, a tendril of his Darkness trailing behind him.

Distraught, Tierney stumbles back to her Vo a distance away fromeveryone. She dives into it, blasting away Fyordin’s then Or’myr’s incoming flashes of protective, questioning power, making it clear that she wants them tostay away.

The Vo enfolds her as she glides toward its bed, her emotions a tempestuous mess, her full fury whirling around Viger Maul’s unexpected cruelty.

Have I misjudged him all this time?

Fear rises that Viger is not truly aligned with her beautiful River but with Death above all, ready to send a wave of killing might over everything. Not in the way Vogel would, with demonic power and multi-eyed beasts, but by raining down sickness and famine and cruel natural Death, he and his fellow Deathkin scything through everything she and her allies are trying to salvage and protect.

---