Page 140 of The Dryad Storm

Love.

She follows that draw toward the center of her own full-to-bursting heart and careens out of the Forest’s darkness. Instantly dazed and disorientated, she finds herself on her hands and knees, palms to moist earth, a dense purple Forest with prism-edged foliage surrounding her.

She pulls in a euphoric breath in response to autumn’s power-amplifying surge of light magic, the sound of burbling water hooking her senses. She glances toward the stream rippling beside her, its crystal clear water throwing off sparks of reflected color and sunlight, her water lines straining toward it.

Tears stinging her bespectacled eyes, Lucretia takes in the early morning mist hanging suspended over the Forest’s ground like delicate gauze. Her Dryad’kin rootlines thrill to the sense of the water cradled in it. A sense of the watery pathways feeding the Forest’s entire root network is suddenly filling her mind and anchoring her rootlines to the ground, every sense alive, alight...connected.

Her awareness of that thread of love she followed to this place warms as she pushes herself to her feet, then turns and raises her hand to make contact with the pale lavender trunk of the Eastern Birch she emerged from.

Lucretia is flooded by a stronger sense of the tree’s connection towater, her strengthened water lines rippling to more potent life. Smiling, she closes her eyes,breathes in the water-cradling mist and drinks in her newfound awareness of the aquifer running deep beneath the Forest. She goes deeper, her rootlines linking to the vast network of the East’s streams, her lines lit up by the Forest and Water’s interwoven nature, the trees not only protecting and replenishing the aquifers by channeling water downward to them, but also stabilizing the very climate around them by drawing water up through their roots and sending it out as water vapor, the whole, swirling dance an intimate partnership.

To support Life and Love.

Joyful tears spill from Lucretia’s eyes as her rippling connection solidifies to the Forest aquifer beneath her feet.My kindred, she realizes, her newfound bond to the aquifers of the East locking around both her water aura and her heart.

A birch branch drops down before her. Swept up in the tide of the surrounding Forest’s affection, Lucretia reaches down to pick up the branch and is shocked anew not only at the feel of the living branch’s reestablished connection to the surrounding trees through her rootlines, but also to find her skin has turned a deeper, richer shade of green, its glimmer intensified, a mark of the Great Tree, III, whom the Forest revealed to her, emblazoned on her palm.

The Nature Anchoring Tree murdered by the Shadow.

Grief clenches Lucretia’s throat, and she has to swallow it back as she sheathes her living branch, her focus drawn to a lingering stretching sensation along her ears. She reaches up to find subtle points there, a resurgent shock eddying through her.

Home, she realizes.I’ve finally come home.

Yes, she’s finding home when it’s on the brink of being lost to everyone forever, but still, she’s finally found her true place. Not as a Mage at all.

But as a Dryad’kin of the East.

Her tugging sense of that thread of Love tightens, the rustle of approaching footsteps sounding.

Lucretia straightens and peers into the Forest to find Jules in the distance, striding closer, peering into the woods to their left.

Her heart leaps into a tight, impassioned rhythm, every nerve coming alive.

Jules looks as worn-out and fierce willed as she’s ever seen him, his clothing mussed, hair a tousled mess, his spectacles a spiderweb of cracks and bent to a slight tilt on his nose.

“Jules, I’m here!” she calls out to him, then gasps, shocked to find herself speaking a whole new language, flowing dry and leafy over her lips, the wordsseeming like the truer, richer names for things.

Coming to a halt, Jules lifts his gaze to meet hers. His eyes widen.

He breaks into a sprint over the brush, rapidly closing the distance between them, then catches her up in a passionate embrace, an emotional sound bursting from his throat.

A joyful cry escapes Lucretia, love for Jules rushing through her in a euphoric tide so strong that she fears her magic might leap clear through her rootlines and straight into magic-free Jules in a drowning rush of water. Her wave of feeling breaks out into dense, visible mist, swirling around them, as she’s inundated with a sense of the surrounding birch grove sending out embracing energy to encircle them both.

“My love,” Lucretia cries against Jules’s warm cheek, her knees almost buckling at the feel of his perennially tousled brown hair under her fingers, her invisible, Forest-linked water power streaming around him.

He brings both hands up to cradle her face as they draw slightly back from each other, tears streaming down her cheeks, her deep-green face mirrored in his bespectacled eyes, his own tears splotching his glasses, his lovestruck look expanding her heart with an ache that’s almost too joyful to bear.

And then his lips are on hers, desperate and devouring, and she kisses him back just as intensely, wanting to flow straight into him and never let go.

Breaking the kiss, Jules huffs a soft sound as he takes hold of her hands and draws back a fraction, his gaze raking over her from head to toe, taking in her transformation. “Lu... look at you.”

“Join with us,” she offers in the Common Tongue, reaching out to grip his arm. She holds her palm up, displaying its mark of III.

Jules’s brow knots as he studies the Forest’s defiant imprint then tenderly takes hold of her hand. He meets her eyes once more, and heat ripples over her skin, that searching warmth in his gaze able to undo herevery single time.

“This connection to the Natural World,” she tremulously enthuses, “it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.” It’s almost too joyous to bear, the power of the Natural Matrix thrumming through her lines, strong as spring rapids. Fluid with rejuvenation. Withconnection. “Being joined to the Forest,” she says, “it’s like connecting to the intricate center ofeverything.”

Jules lifts her hand and kisses her palm right over III’s image, and Lucretia’s pulse quickens in response to the level of passion in that kiss. But then Jules’s eyes tighten, an expression of intense chagrin in them. “Lucretia, I can’t.”

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