Page 13 of The Dryad Storm

He pauses, and Gwynn can feel the righteous fury of the crowd rising around her, her pulse ratcheting up to a gallop.

“We are nothing but Crows and Roaches to them,” Vogel seethes. “They live to see us cower before them. They live to blot out the Ancient One’s own Holy Light. But the Reaping Times, my Blessed brethren, arehere.”

Vogel thrusts up the Shadow Wand, and the crowd’s fury explodes, their roar of vicious support battering through Gwynn’s ears. She stiffens, horror streaking through her lines. Because there’s no protection from this nightmare. Or from Vogel’s Shadow Wand.

But she’ll go down fighting the Magedom witheverythingin her.

“We will use their own heathen power to smite them,” Vogel snarls, raising the smoking gray Wand. “And make use of our sanctified Shadow power to slay the Great Icaral demon and his Dryad Fae beasts, thenfree our Black Witch!”

The crowd goes wild just as Gwynn spots her parents at the edge of the mob. A surge of agony almost buckles her legs as she takes in the way her stout, jovial mother and wandmaster father are cheering.

“Pray with me, Mages,” Vogel croons, and the crowd settles. “Let us pray for our Blessed fallen in the East.”

Gwynn slides in beside her parents as they bow their heads, close their eyes, and bring fists to their chests. The zealous tension that tightens their beloved faces strikes like a blade through Gwynn’s heart.

Hand quivering, Gwynn reaches out to touch her father’s arm, her gut twisting anew at the sight of the white armbands wrapped around his and her mother’s arms. White bird pins are affixed to their shoulders, depicting the Ancient One’s holy messenger clutching a bouquet of Ironflowers, the decorations a tribute to Gardneria’s “Blessed fallen Mages,” so “cruelly cut down” by the Eastern Realm’s “heathen” forces.

Lies, Gwynn wants to scream at her parents while she shakes them until theysee.You’re being fed lies upon lies upon lies!

But Gwynn knows from the beatific reverence in her parents’ expressions that they’re hopelessly immersed in their collective sacred story like the rest of the crowd—like she, herself, once was. Certain they’re living in the Reaping Times that will cleanse Erthia of all Evil Ones and usher in a perfect Magedom.

Her father opens his eyes and turns to her, just as a tear streams down Gwynn’s face. A look of kind concern tightens his gray-bearded, bespectacled face, and he brings one hand to her shoulder, gutting Gwynn anew.

Heart constricting with misery, Gwynn gives her father a false, wavering smile and reverently makes the sign of the Blessing Star on her chest. His expression relaxes into relieved approval, and Gwynn knows he imagines her to be emotionally caught up in Vogel’s holy words, his daughter securely on the One True Path.

The prayer concluded, Gwynn’s mother opens her eyes, spots Gwynn and breaks into a warm, happy smile, which sends another clutch of agony shuddering through Gwynn’s chest. She forces a happy return smile, her heart fracturing over her wildly traitorous path.

But what she’s set in motion this eveningmustbe brought to completion.

Gwynn remembers the moment everything changed for her, the horror of it branded on her soul. Her family is Styvian, part of the very strictest sect of Gardnerians, and they never mingle with non-Mages. But one night several months ago, at a rally much like this one, her connection to the Wand of Myth revealed the true nature of Vogel’s Shadow magic. She fled the rally and took a wrong turn in her panic, accidentally venturing outside of her sheltered Styvian world.

Halted in her tracks by the sound of children screaming, she shifted course and ran toward the screams, certain that Evil Ones had taken hold of Mage children, as all the stories warned they were wont to do. Full of the Ancient One’s own fury, Gwynn swiped a rock from the ground then raced into the dark alley...

... and the sight she was met with exploded her entire world view.

A mob of six Gardnerian men, some wearing strict Styvian garb, were holding down two Urisk girls—a blue-hued child who looked no more than six years old, and a pale rose-hued child with pink braids who was, at most, eleven. Horror speared through Gwynn as she registered the men digging knives into the tops of the screaming children’s ears and swiping off the points, blood streaking down the girls’ terrified faces.

At that moment, something in Gwynn broke, like glass shattering.

Screaming, she leaped at the Mages and, with her stone, beat whichever of theirheads she could reach, so full of outrage she barely heard their snarls of “Get back, you staen’en bitch!” and barely felt it when they shoved her to the ground and fled, yelling parting threats—“Your family will hear of this, heathen lover!”

Her heart thundering, Gwynn scrabbled toward the sobbing children. They screamed and recoiled from her at first before fearfully allowing her ministrations, the little one vomiting all over Gwynn’s tunic as she ripped cloth from her underskirts and bandaged their bloody ears the best she could with shaking hands, then rushed the children back to the non-Styvian home where they worked as indentured maids. In hushed tones, she vowed to help them get out of Gardneria, the translucent image of two Watcher birds of the Ancient One briefly shimmering into view, perched on the girls’ shoulders, the sight streaking a bolt of religious upheaval through her.

“Rise up, Holy Mages,” Vogel charges, yanking Gwynn from the horrific, life-changing memory. “We will break through the Dryad Fae wards surrounding the Northern Forest,” Vogel seethes, “and burn the wilds there to ash for the Magedom’s reapingplow!”

Rigorous cheers rise, fists thrust into the air, her parents enthusiastically looking at Gwynn as bile rises in her throat. She forces another emotional smile, close to retching all over the plaza’s polished tile.

She’s tried—tried—to make her parents and fastmate, Geoffrey, see the horrific truth.

That night, after she aided the Urisk girls, she ran home and told her parents and fastmateeverythingin a tangled rush, desperate to keep Geoffrey from deploying to be part of something so monstrous. Desperate to enlist her family’s help in fighting this nightmare. She breathlessly revealed to them how the Gardnerians were torturing children, and how Vogel had aligned himself with something wicked and Erthia-destroying.

And she told them that she saw the Ancient One’s Watcher birds perched on the Urisk children’s shoulders.

Geoffrey and her parents exchanged dire looks and listened intently as Gwynn pleaded with them to turn against the Magedom. Geoffrey embraced her tenderly, and Gwynn burst into relieved tears, hope swelling in her rattled heart. Her mother warmed up a bowl of her favorite chicken dumpling soup and her father handed her a mug of soothing honeyed tea, and they all murmured words of comfort and support, promising to carefully consider her revelations.

The next morning, Gwynn entered the kitchen with a spark of hope burning in her chest. The spark was immediately snuffed out when she found not only her parents and Geoffrey there, but her family’s stern-faced religious leader, Priest Orioth, bracketed by several church acolytes, who glowered at her just as condemningly as the Styvian priest.

The acolytes’ wands drawn.

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