Page 166 of The Dryad Storm

“Vogel’s Black Witch is about to shorten foliage season,” she warns.

Resolve rips through me. “We need everyone under this shield to uniteright now.”

She gives me a concerned look. “Which means we need your Icaral’s mother on our sideright now.”

I inwardly curse that impossible task. Soleiya Guryev’s campaign against me has only intensified.

“Yvan is meeting with her to plead for an alliance,” I say. I focus in on my link to Yvan’s fire, engaging fully with his power, and am almost blasted off-balance by the frustration sputtering through it. I cast a fierce look at Alder. “Warn the others that Fallon’s magic has been woven into Vogel’s Shadow net.” I start down the trunk as I send out a mental call to my ravens to remain on watch.

“Where are you going?” she presses.

“I’m going to find Yvan,” I return, “and get his damned mother on our side.”

I rush through the Forest’s upper reaches, leaping from branch to branch, drawing foliage-amplified light power into my vision to allow sight as I follow the furious thread of Yvan’s fire. Before long Yvan’s burning aura is blazing over my skin... along with the scorching Fire Fae aura of his mother, their angry voices audible just ahead.

I drop silently to the ground, my heartbeat quickening as Soleiya’s incensed voice rings out clear. “We are open to an alliance, but the Black Witch must beslain!”

I halt in response to the level of vitriol in Soleiya’s voice, Yvan and his mother now visible through the branches before me, the two of them facing off inside a small clearing. Their figures are illuminated by the blaze of their eyes, their magics’ violet and gold auras flaring to wildfire heights.

“Elloren is on our side,” comes Yvan’s seething reply. “And we’ve run out of time for anything but alliance withevery single person under this dome!”

“Even if what you say is true—” Soleiya hisses.

“Itistrue.” Yvan cuts her off. “I’m anIcaral. I can sense the truth of Elloren’severyintention.”

Soleiya spits out a mocking sound, her mouth twisting with derision. “Oh, such keen powers of perception. You thought you knew her every intention in Voloi. And then she came close to leveling theentire city! And don’t tell me that it was Vogel controlling her!”

“Even though he was, in fact, controlling her?” Yvan counters.

“I don’t believe it!” Soleiya’s face takes on a look of sheer desperation. “Her grandmother killed yourfather. Her family is evil to thecore. My son, how can youpossiblyally with her?”

“She is myWyvernbonded mate,” Yvan snarls, eyes incandescent.

Yvan’s fire roars toward me through our bond, a startled flare momentarily overtaking its heat as he senses me so close. He immediately regains his bearings, catching me up in a blazing aura embrace so full of defiant love it brings the sting of tears to my eyes.

Yvan jabs his finger toward the ground, as if there’s a burning line in the sand between himself and his mother, his molten eyes severe. “Stop judging Elloren for her lineage. For herface.”

“You asktoo muchof me!” Soleiya cries.

“No, I askfairnessof you,” he lashes back. “Elloren has the right to be judged based on herownactions,nother grandmother’s. Stop actively undermining her. You’re sowing division, and it’s playing right into Vogel’s hands!”

Emotion surging, I’m about to step out of the shadows to join Yvan in facing Soleiya but am halted by the sudden sense of her invisible, fiery onslaught falling into sparking disarray, my heart twisting in response to the misery crackling through it as she gives Yvan a look of pure devastation.

“You can’t be in love with theBlack Witch!” she practically screams, her voice breaking. “There is nothing butpainfor you there!”

They abruptly quiet, as if their combined violent storm has been reined in, their twin gazes blazing white-hot, both of them breathing hard, their fiery auras pulsing around them with out-of-control emotion, my own aura swept up in their firestorm of pain.

“Do you wish you’d never been with Father?” Yvan finally asks her, his voice low and harsh.

Soleiya’s face tenses with what looks like vast, shattering hurt. “How can you evenaskthat?” she hisses, mouth trembling.

“Yet choosing him brought you great pain.”

“Your father didn’t bring me pain!” she counters. “The cursedMagesdid!”

Yvan steps forward, wings fanning out, refusing to back down. “But your relationship, with an Icaral, in the Western Realm. It broughtpaininto your life.”

“Yes,” Soleiya cries, tears falling as she thumps her chest with her fist. “It ripped my heart right out of my body when that witchmurderedhim.”

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