Page 142 of The Dryad Storm

He nods, his gaze grown a bit liquid. “Lu... Ican. I can feel what your power is like to possess. And your kindred link to the Water Matrix... the aquifer beneath us...”

“I can sense an edge of your true power, as well,” she enthuses, overcome by a glimpse of his mind opening up, the whole history of the Forest clicking into it, straining to merge with her too. A tracery of images flash through the edges of her mind, everything this Forest has witnessed throughout time imprinted in its very wood, shimmering through every internal ring.

A blazing look enters Jules’s gaze. Lucretia has witnessed this fire-struck look only a few times over the years, when she caught him reading something truly illuminating—something that vastly increased his understanding, shattering everything he thought he knew.

“I want to read every tree on Erthia,” Jules states.

A smile lifts Lucretia’s lips, and she places his palm over her own heart. “You can start by reading me, Tree’khin.”

The feel of Jules’s warm palm has her senses careening back toward his connection to the Forest’s library, and she realizes, more fully, how powerful Jules has always been in his own magic-free way.

And then he’s pulling her close and kissing her, and she can feel him reading the Waters of Erthia in her as he deepens the kiss and Lucretia connects more strongly with his mind, reading how the Natural World’s Waters have figured into all of history.

How they’vedrivenhistory.

And how the world truly needs anewhistory.

AnErthia-based history.

“You know...” Lucretia groans as Jules moves to trail kisses down her neck, her body arching against his with the growing, all-consuming desire tomerge. “Vo mystics believe that the truth is like a light at the center of a circle,” she says. “We all see a piece of it. But we needallof us to have a grasp of its full illumination.” She draws back, and their eyes lock. “I want you to see my light,” she offers, her breath hitching with desire, every swirl of her magic intuitively sensing that joining with him fully will create a stronger link. Thatthisis part of Erthia’s power too. “Jules, let mefullyconnect you to my waters.”

Clearly grasping what she’s offering, Jules flicks his tea-hued eyes over her, a molten light seeping into them. His lips quirk, a stronger spark of want lighting his gaze and sending a strong ripple through Lucretia’s water power. “You’re bold, Dryad’kin,” he teases. “It seems you imagine me an easy mark.”

Lucretia smiles and runs her hand over his chest, thrilling to how his gaze on her has deepened, growing half-lidded with desire. “All those years of solitude?” she purrs, teasing back. “With that pent-up ability to kiss so well that you buckle my knees? Yes, Jules, I imagine you’re an easy mark.”

Jules laughs as he embraces her, Lucretia laughing as well as he nuzzles her neck and traces a kiss along its base before glancing at the misty grove surrounding them. “Here?” he asks, voice a bit ragged.

Lucretia answers by lowering herself to pluck some Sanjire root, the Forest floor thick with the small, purple-leafed plants. “Where else?” she purrs. “We’re Dryad’khin now.”

A huff of a laugh escapes Jules. “So very un-Gardnerian.”

Lucretia’s smile broadens. “So completely un-Gardnerian. But so completely Dryad’khin.”

His expression takes a turn for the ardent as he draws her into a deeper, thought-scattering kiss, Lucretia’s chest rising and falling against his, her water power circling tighter and tighter, low in her center and his.

“All right, Lu,” he rasps, his lips tracing the edge of her jaw.

She can feel the heat of that contact flowing straight down to her toes. Straight through the low, sensual vibration kicking up through her Forest-bonded lines.

“Root me,” he offers in an enticing whisper before kissing her in a way that makes her want to join him to her power’s flow. “Root me to your Forest and pull me clear under your Waters.”

Chapter Seven

Zonor Transformation

Vothendrile Xanthile

Northern Zonor River

Light blasts into being around Vothe as he’s thrust from the Forest’s inner darkness in a rush of elemental power, sure he’s been pulled a distance away from where he entered the trees. He looks around, finding himself on the bank of the Zonor River, the leaves of the riverbank trees edged in a mosaic of every color in the rainbow, everything washed in late afternoon’s amber light.

The waves of the Zonor shimmer before Vothe, the river’s aura of water power flowing out to him in a powerful wave before catching him up in a kindred embrace that has Vothe gasping from a returning upswell of joy. He can sense how much magic it took for the Forest to bring him here, knows deep in his core that the trees must have some compelling reason for marshalling so much might to bring him this distance.

A sense of power crackling into being to his south draws Vothe’s gaze just as Trystan emerges from the broad trunk of a Dyoi River Oak a short span away. Vothe is instantly overtaken by a sense of the Zonor River sweeping Trystan into the same kindred embrace. An embrace that’s pulling them joyfully toward each other.

Trystan’s eyes meet his in a shock of lightning, a jolt of forking energy leaping between the two of them that sizzles over Vothe’s skin, his breath catching tight over Trystan’s altered appearance and the feel of his foliage-amplified power.

Holding Vothe’s gaze, Trystan throws off his tunic, his lean, muscular chest glimmering a deeper, brighter forest green than ever before, a branching purple pattern tracing over it, his Vo’lon faith necklace looped around his neck, the starlight Vo dragon goddess in its center. Trystan’s sapphire dragon tattoo seems lit up by theamplified magic racing across his form in forking threads of blue lightning. And Trystan’seyes and hair—they’re darkened to a deep-river blue, his ears now coming to points like Vothe’s.

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