Page 172 of The Dryad Storm

“Horde to me,” he says once more, fierce. “You arenotalone.”

Incredulity leaps through me, tightening my every muscle. I spring up at the same time he does in an otherworldly blur. Balling my fists, I lunge toward him, staring into those burning crimson eyes, not caring about the monumental Wyvern power I sense radiating from him.

Power that can incinerate trees.

That can destroy Forests.

“I am aDryad!” I cry, my voice splintering from the sheer force of my rage. “I am not aWyvern! I wish you were allDEAD!”

He doesn’t budge. His crimson eyes only burn hotter. “Horde to me, Fierce One,” he hisses, infuriatingly stubborn, everything surrounding us lit up by the flickering red glow of those eyes. “We will protect Erthia’s surviving Forests together. Asone.”

I spit out a sound of blistering fury. “You want to protectForests? You’re allfire.” I splay my arm out, gesturing around us, tears blurring my eyes. “How can you protectanyof this?”

He’s unmoved, his stare pierced through with ferocity. He leans in, teeth bared. “By protectingyou.”

I bare my own Dryad-sharp teeth at him. “I don’twantyour protection!”

Again, he doesn’t budge. “I was alone for a long time,” he growls, low and emphatic. “Unhorded. Imprisoned by runes. My fire... it couldn’tbreathe. I was like a lone tree without a Forest.”

My face twists with feral offense. “You dare to compare your horde to myForest?”

“Yes,” he snarls, flashing his canines. “A Forest offire.”

And then it’s all crashing in—the never-ending barrage of horrific images.

My beloved Forest, caught up in the Magedom’s Shadow conflagration, rapidlysinged to nothing. The wild innocents who trusted me as their protector alldecimated, my Dryad grief consuming me in the Shadowfire’s cruel wake.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!”I scream, readying every last shred of elemental power I can summon to deploy against him, even at the risk of fatally collapsing my rootlines.

He gives me an incinerating look, the understanding in it holding the power to destroy me. But before I can unleash my full rage against him, against the entire Forest-murdering world, he snaps out his wings, throws them down, and soars away.

I fall to my knees and scream out my despair, wanting to shatter the heavens, as the Forest gently sends multicolored leaves and fluttering kindreds and lovely, tendriling vines out to me, shattering what’s left of my heart.

Raz’zor is back again later that night, the Forest washed in violet light emanating from a line of purple moons that sprang up over the Dyoi Forest earlier this eve, an image of the moons sent to me through the trees, as if they should give me cause for hope.

There is no hope in this cruel, Nature-destroying world.

I look up, bleary-eyed, and spot Raz’zor’s pale human face in the trees, surreally illuminated red by his crimson-fire eyes. He’s perched on a low-lying branch, wings tucked tightly back, his unblinking Wyvern gaze set stolidly on me.Blazinglyon me.

“Don’t you ever give up?” I ask, my throat raw and tight.

“Horde to me, Fierce One,” he replies, steadfast and adamant.

I hold his gaze, too worn-out by grief to keep my defenses up.

“Raz’zor,” I say, startling myself with the intimate strangeness of his name on my tongue. I shake my head, a mournful sorrow tightening my throat. “You’re all fire. I’mDryad’kin. We can never be khin.”

In a pale blur he’s next to me, crouched down, stubborn fire in his otherworldly slit-pupiled eyes. His pale lip ticks up, defiance sparking in his gaze. “Your trees consume the sun, Fierce One. And that sun is made offlame. Your Forest and your power, it pulses with that connection. Pulses with the light power offire.Horde to me.”

I choke back a startled sob. Stunned by his idea—the Erthia-upending idea of a Wyvern-Dryad’kin horde bond able to support and defend the Forest rather than singe it to the ground.

The Dyoi Forest stills, as if holding its breath, as if it, too, senses the revolutionary power in his idea.

A hot tear rolls down my cheek. “It’s lost,” I choke out to him as images of leagues and leagues of my Forest burning with Shadowfire ricochet through my mind in eviscerating spasms. Combined with the root-deep awareness of ever-increasing leagues of Western and Southern Forests being murdered, all of it slicing clear through my soul. “The battle you seek,” I tell him, “it’s already lost.”

He draws even closer, bringing his fiery eyes level to mine, and I feel as if I’m staring into a never-ending inferno.

“Horde. To. Me,”he says again, baring his teeth. “We will fight for every last remaining tree.”

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