Page 175 of The Dryad Storm

Wind bursts to life between Yvan and me, blowing him backward.

I swing around as he hits the ground, leveling my twig at him as he springs to his feet. He thrusts his glowing hands forward and blasts a wall of fire toward me while I deploy a bolt of storm shot through with prismatic lightning.

Yvan’s incoming wall of flame crashes into my tempest, our power pressed tight in crackling prismatic-and-violet walls, a backdraft of static energy sizzling over my skin. I dig my heels into the soil, holding my ground, teeth gritted, twig raised, as Yvan’s magic battles against mine, our bond’s heat intensifying the storm, a sudden desire for him gripping hold once again. My feet skid against earth along with Yvan’s as our storming walls enlarge, growing higher than the treetops, the two of us locked into a churning, roaring standoff.

A smile spreads across Yvan’s lips and I sense my foliage-fueled power gaining ground, even as I hold a portion back to keep from igniting the surrounding Forest.

Yvan abruptly surrenders, my wall of power crashing into him, its edges whipping back around me and skidding me forward. Carried by my magic’s momentum, I hurtle toward Yvan. He catches me and pulls me close, my prismatic lightning flashing around us as we fall to the ground.

He rolls me onto my back and brings his lips to mine, his impassioned kiss sending a charged thrill through my body, violet-hot, a triumphant energy coursing through me along with a shuddering flash of Yvan’s fire.

“You did it, Dryad,” he says as we break the kiss, his eyes afire, my compact storm still whipping around us. “You held your own against the Dread Icaral of Prophecy.”

A laugh bursts from me, a rush of love flooding our bond as he slides off me and rises to his feet with his usual grace then holds out his hand to me. I let him help me up before glancing around to find Yulan and Gwynn beaming at me and the others giving me sly looks of approval.

I turn back to Yvan, growing serious. “I held back,” I admit. “To keep from killing trees. Or kindred ones.”

“I sensed as much,” he confides, growing serious as he reaches up to caress the side of my face, the edge of his warm thumb trailing sparks.

“That’s our great weakness,” I worriedly say as I sheathe my twig through my vine belt, then turn and take in Oaklyyn’s wolverines, Yulan’s heron, Mavrik’s andGwynnifer’s Agolith Flame Hawks, my Errilor Ravens, and the other kindreds. Along with the beautiful, multihued Forest surrounding us.

“Wecare,” I rue to Yvan, “and Vogel will show no such weakness.” Unease shivers through me, and I unfurl the fingers of my branch hand, glancing at the image of III imprinted on my palm, a shimmer of the slain Tree’s rich energy humming through the mark, the sensation steadily gaining potency as we near peak foliage.

“This III mark,” I murmur, closing my fingers around it, before looking to Sylvan and the other Dryads, “there’s what feels like growing power in it.”

“I’m feeling it too,” Yvan affirms, balling his fist around his mark.

“As am I,” Gwynnifer concurs, to poignant nods all around.

“Perhaps it’s a call III left in the mark,” Yulan suggests. “Our call to unite with everyone in the East—the call that you all saw when you were inside the Forest, sent to you in visions of the peoples of every land gathered around III. We must hold on to our hope of this.”

A cautionary look enters Sylvan’s severe visage as he glances up at our shielding, Iris beside him, the two of them seeming increasingly inseparable. “Our shielding should hold enough power in a matter of days,” he notes, “as soon as peak foliage arrives. After which, we’ll be able to send it over the entire East. We’ll then have, at most, three or four days to travel to the Wyvernguard and bring the entire East to our side so we can all merge power and take down Vogel’s Shadow before foliage season recedes. And the Forest goes dormant along with our power.”

A weighted gravity descends, the odds so firmly stacked against us.

Against the entire Forest and Natural World.

Defiance fires up inside me, and I look pointedly at Yvan. “If you and I can become Wyvernbonded mates with anentire worldbent on us hating each other, then there’sgotto be a chance of uniting the East.”

My uncle Wrenfir spits out a jaded sound, and I turn, an expression of frustrated derision on his spider-marked face. “I want to believe this, Elloren, truly I do,” he says. “But do you honestly think there’s a chance in all the hells that theentire Eastwill immediately jump into the trees and radically change the way they think abouteverything?” He huffs out a bitter laugh. “We had quite the time of even unitingourselves.”

“Wren...” Hazel softly interjects.

“No, Hazel, no,” Wrenfir snarls, rounding on him, my uncle’s invisible fire-and-earth aura encircling Hazel with desperate, crackling intensity. “I’ll tell youwhat’s going to happen. The East will fracture, and you’ll be pulled into a Reckoning.Allthe Death Fae will.Everythinglost to us allforever. The Eastern Realm will tear itself toshreds, the Magedom’s Shadow winter will descend, the Natural World will fall and you will be forced to devastate it and then fall with it. And there will benothingleft butShadow.”

A fraught silence overtakes us, jagged energy shivering through Wrenfir’s power, my uncle trembling now, his body stiff with rage as he stares Hazel down, the whole world briefly pulsing with Hazel’s dread-stricken Darkness.

Hazel’s Darkness suddenly breaks free of the dread and pulses around Wrenfir in defiant, embracing coils. Wrenfir grimaces and looks away, pain slashing through his magic as a gust of cold blows in from the Shadow net beyond our shield.

Grayed frost shimmers to life along the edges of every prismatic leaf, the temperature dipping.

Alarm flares through the Forest and everyone’s power as I shiver, our kindreds growing agitated, my Errilor Ravens letting out loudCAWs.

“Holy gods,” Mavrik exclaims, his breath puffing fog into the air, “winter’s going to come faster than we thought.” He turns to Sylvan. “How much foliage time have we lost?”

Sylvan shakes his head, his brow furrowing. He half closes his eyes, and I’ve a sense of him hooking his empathic senses into the Forest’s power. “Perhaps a day?” he gravely states.

“Which now gives us only two or three days to unite the entire East once we expand our shielding over it,” Wrenfir seethes, his power cast into a desperate, fitful embrace around Hazel.

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