Page 156 of The Dryad Storm

Fallon’s smile widens as she nods and then pulls in a deep breath, tugging on the Shadow tether she’s welcomed, drawing the Shadow Wand’s gray power into her dominant icelines and windlines.

Vogel shivers in response to her power’s connection to his, thrills to the feel of Fallon consuming as much Shadow as she can, the frosty mountaintop air chilling even further.

Raising her wand, Fallon begins to murmur a series of spells.

A compact, icy wind kicks up, whipping around her lower legs before consolidating into thick gray mist. And then, Fallon simply steps up onto the mist and effortlessly glides through the air toward one of the multi-eyed, multilegged dragons.

Fire races through Vogel’s lines at the sight of Fallon’s magic coming into its own as she and her lieutenants mount dragons, and she sends out a shock wave of mental commands through all the dragons’ Shadow tethers.

The Shadow beasts fan out their powerful wings and throw them down, taking flight with Fallon in the lead. Hundreds of Mages on dragonback positioned on the surrounding ledges take to the air as well and converge around her, all of them soaring toward Southern Ishkartaan.

Fallon thrusts her wand forward, and a thick bolt of ice spears toward the ocean-surrounded peninsula, landing in Southern Ishkartaan’s distant center in a small explosion of gray.

Vogel’s pulse quickens as huge trees made of ice burst upward from the huge peninsula’s middle, an icy gray spreading out from the trees’ bases and rapidly overtaking the land’s every gold or green expanse as Vogel lifts his Shadow Wand and aims it toward the distant Salish Ocean.

His Shadow sea rolls toward the country’s eastern coast, the dark mass riding the water’s surface like a floating tidal wave. A roaring sound rises from the peninsula,and a deeper thrill shoots through Vogel’s fire power. It’s a sound he feels the urge to bite his teeth into and devour whole as his Shadow sea crashes over Ishkartaan’s coast and Fallon’s giant ice trees throw their branches down, detonating explosions of ice that can’t completely cut out the thrilling sound.

The soul-expanding sound of thousands upon thousands of heathens...screaming.

Vogel is there when Fallon returns to the torchlit ledge, a steely twilight descending. She dismounts from her multilegged dragon, strides up to Vogel and stills before him, a wild, victorious look in her Shadow-rimmed eyes.

A cleansed country lies in the distance, even the mountain range’s stone stripped of its heathen gold. Vogel’s Shadow sea has overtaken the coast, gray-black waters now encompassing the huge peninsula, the coastline submerged. Dark clouds roil in the sky above Southern Ishkartaan, silver-black lightning arcing through them with muffledboomafterboom. Every speck of natural Forest has been frozen to death, Fallon’s mountain-high Shadow ice trees spread out over Ishkartaan’s expanse. Vogel sets his sights East with burning anticipation, only Noilaan and Zhilaan left to be cleansed to bring the Ancient One’s Reaping Times to their fullest fruition.

Fallon strides up to Vogel and holds her Shadowed wand out to him.

Curious, Vogel’s hand closes around it. He moves to draw it away from her, but Fallon doesn’t let go. Instead, she moves closer, her Shadow-tinged ice power flowing through her wand to coil around Vogel’s hand then crackle through his internal fire in icy tendrils that emit steam against his fire, his breath hitching in response to the intimate collision of their powers.

“It was you all along,” he breathes, silver sparks igniting in his vision. His fire rears against her ice, the skin of his back twitching, the hot steam breaking out to encircle them.

Fallon draws nearer and tilts her head up, her full lipsso close...

Vogel is swept up in a remembrance of how it felt to devour Elloren Gardner’s mouth. How it felt toburnthat Wyvernbond straight through her body. He heatedly wonders what it would feel like to set down the same type of binding in Fallon Bane. What it would feel like to devour his new Black Witch’s mouth instead.

And sink his teeth into her.

“It was always you as well, Marcus,” she whispers, waiting, lips tilted, her breath chilly against his heat.

He can sense it, how his fire could so easily dominate her ice. And oh, how hewould enjoy that exercise in domination. But he needs to wait. Needs to bring the Reaping Times to their completion before he takes hold of her in that way. Needs the purification of his body and soul that the Reaping Times will bring. His eyes flick toward the cleansed country. Toward the dark line of refugee filth moving slowly and relentlessly east.

“My Black Witch,” he croons, meeting her excited gaze, clear that the coming Mage world istheirs. “You were always the one destined to kill the Icaral and bring the Prophecy to fruition.”

Fallon reaches up and dares to run her fingertips along the edge of his cheek before threading them through his hair.

Vogel’s fire rears, Shadow claws threatening to break through, his teeth stinging as his neck arches and silver fire flashes across his vision. He wants to spring at her. To bite into her and bring her to heel. She has no idea what she’s toying with.

“Careful, witch,” he croons, flashing teeth.

Fallon’s lips curve into a sultry smile, the hand she’s threaded through his hair tightening to a fist, his scalp stinging. A shock of fiery lust bolts through Vogel, and he lets go of her wand and grabs her wrist, nails digging into her skin. Fallon’s breath hitches, her pupils dilating.

“Come with me, Black Witch,” he snarls as he draws his Wand.

Vogel sweeps his Wand’s tip out in a wide arc. A thin bolt of Shadow jets from it to form an arc of misty gray portal runes. The air inside the arc turns silvery as it blurs and wavers, like translucent water.

Vogel takes hold of Fallon’s arm and guides her through it.

The world flashes silver before they emerge on the apex of one of the Eastern Dyoi Desert’s huge stone arches.

Fallon glances over her shoulder at the Magedom’s towering Shadow storm band to their rear, spread out over the night-darkened Shadowed lands as far as the eye can see, north to south. She turns her gaze back east and takes in the huge dome-shield cast over the entire Dyoi Mountain Range, multicolored lightning and a cacophony of runes marked all over it, Vogel’s imprisoning Shadow net clinging to the dome-shield like a second skin.

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