Page 14 of The Dryad Storm

Panic surging, Gwynn launched into breathless pleas, imploring her fastmate and parents not to send her away, only to be met with their stoic, agonized refusals and her mother bursting into tears. And then, both Geoffrey and her father exchanged pained, knowing looks with Priest Orioth, who nodded solemnly, and Gwynn felt the abyss opening beneath her.

When Gwynn moved to flee the kitchen, wands flicked out, and her wrists were quickly tethered together and leashed to the acolytes.

“Didn’t you hear anything I told you?” she implored Geoffrey as she struggled against her bonds, tears streaming down her face. “They’re attackingchildren!”

“Heathenchildren!” Geoffrey snarled back at her, the level of zealous anger in his tone something new, the anguished look of agreement her parents gave him like a lance through her soul.

In that moment, as Gwynn was led away for “purification,” she realized that her parents and Geoffrey were irretrievably lost to her.

And so, during her church imprisonment, she readThe Book of the Ancientswithout ceasing. Nodded in emphatic agreement to every last thing the priests and their acolytes said. After a month, it was determined that she had been saved from the grip of Heathen Evil by the Ancient One’s Holy Grace, and her parents and Geoffrey joyously welcomed her back into the fold.

And Gwynnifer began planning her own strike against Vogel’s nightmare.

She began with whispered comments murmured near Urisk laborers in various shops, revealing her access to the Valgard armory and a whole host of grimoires and magical tools. One thing led to another, and when the Resistance connection flowed in like a stealthy tide, Gwynn opened her arms wide and dove in.

“I... I need to find Geoffrey,” Gwynn whispers to her parents as Vogel’s voice continues to sound out over the plaza and what she longs to say balls up in her throat.

I love you, Pappa and Mamma. I love you so much.

But thishasto be fought.

Her father gives her hand another warm, approving squeeze, which she returns, lips trembling. She reaches out and grasps her mother’s hand one last time, tears flowing, certain her parents are once more mistaking her show of emotion for zealous love of their Great High Mage.

Theirmonster.

“The heathens will fall, and the Magedom willrise!” Vogel booms.

Another thunderous roar bursts from the crowd as Gwynn turns her back on her parents... on her entire life.

She strides toward the rear of the plaza, her heart striking into a harder rhythm against her ribs as she spots her fastmate standing stiffly on duty amongst the soldiers lining the plaza, their uniforms all marked with the Ancient One’s Holy Bird, one of the flaming Blessing Stars encircling the plaza suspended in the air above Geoffrey.

Cold dread shivers through Gwynn, something she never thought she’d feel when faced with her formerly beloved fastmate.

When Geoffrey returned from clearing heathens from the forests of Northern Gardneria, there was an off-kilter harshness to him that was never there before as well as an odd gray glow ringing his eyes that only Gwynnifer can see. It made her retch into their privy’s washbasin, cementing the realization that her longtime love had given himself over to the monstrous.

Becoming a soldier of the Gardnerian nightmare.

Geoffrey turns his head and catches sight of Gwynn. She gives an inward jolt, the gray glow around his irises catapulting her out of her memories. Dread slithers through her as she takes in the animalistic way his nostrils flare, as if he’s scenting her approach. She fights the urge to recoil.

His stare eerily unblinking, Geoffrey lifts his lips in a slight smile, as if with emotion half-remembered. “What’s the matter?” he asks as she nears.

She takes his offered hands and kisses him on both cheeks, gutted anew by the familiarity of the intimacy and his warm scent. “It’s just...” She struggles to find the lie.

Geoffrey’s gaze turns piercing, as if he’s rooting for impurities the way the priest and his acolytes did that terrible morn she was taken away.

Forcing her lips into a quavering smile, Gwynn gestures all around. “It’s just sobeautifulto see the Magedom so united.”

The hard planes of Geoffrey’s face relax as Gwynn’s pulse hammers in her neck.“I’m going to find Echo and a few others,” she enthuses brightly, “to go hear the Valgard Choir straight after this. I might not see you until much later.”

Geoffrey nods, a more genuine smile now on his lips. “I’ll see you later, then,” he says, sounding so much like the old Geoffrey that a sob almost rips out of Gwynn’s throat. “I’ll volunteer for night guard.”

She struggles not to nod too enthusiastically. “Yes. You should. It’s a blessing to guard our most holy cathedral.”

Another genuine smile breaks through on Geoffrey’s face, and Gwynn has to beat back her anguish as he leans his tall frame down and kisses her.

Sure she’ll come apart at the seams if she hesitates a second longer, she forces one last smile, lets go of his familiar hands and walks away, leaving her devastated heart on the tiled ground behind her. Forgetting herself, she chances one sidelong look toward Vogel and his demons.

To find the sulfuric red-eyed gaze of one of them pinned directly on her.

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