Page 201 of The Dryad Storm

Vogel smiles. “You’ll tell them what I want you to tell them.” His smile morphs into a burning look of hunger as his gray-fire eyes rake over her form. “And your ice will be my salvation.”

Fallon screams as he lunges toward her, his mouth clamping down on the base of her neck. She cries out as teeth bite through her skin, Shadowfire races through her lines... and the whole world turns gray.

Chapter Seven

Dryad’khin Army

Elloren Guryev

Zhilaan Forest Vu Trin military base

“Vogel has absorbed the storm band the Eastern forces sent against him,” Vothe’s father, Hizar’drile, grimly informs us. His lightning-limned onyx face is stern, his black Noi Fire Hawk kindred perched on his shoulder. “We just received word of this from our most elite unit of Wyvern-shifters, who followed the East’s storm band west.”

Troubled murmurs rise amongst our Dryad’khin, all of us assembled on the Zhilaan Forest military base’s huge terrace. It’s built into the apex of the spiky mountain it sits on, a panoramic twilight view of the Nightwood Pine Forest surrounding us, knots of multicolored deciduous trees scattered throughout its expanse. Torches set on black metal stands spit white lightning, the East’s storms a distant roar against Valasca and the Zhilaan Forest’s shielding of the country of Zhilaan.

Hizar’drile, Sylvan, Yulan, Oaklyyn, and Alder are grouped in the center of a curved obsidian command table, Iris beside Sylvan, and Raz’zor in his pale human form by Oaklyyn’s side, their invisible power blazing around each other. Multiple high-ranking Vu Trin Dryad’khin soldiers, including Vang Troi and Ung Li, bracket the group.

Yvan and I are seated beside each other at one end of the table, a large crowd of our Dryad’khin forces massed on the expansive terrace before us. Yvan’s restless energy mirrors my own, his fingers interlaced with mine under the table’s stone edge, our invisible fire powers embracing with a mounting fervor that has us palpably fighting off the wild urge to take tighter hold of each other.

I can still feel the hot brand of Yvan’s kiss in the Zhilaan Forest’s canopy. The tingle of his tongue’s hungered motion lingers on my own, like a scorching tetherset down between us. The Zhilaan Forest’s fiery energy encircles us both in a warm rush, as if the Forest itself is drawing us together.

“Our combined magic will never be stronger than it will be in two days’ time,” Sylvan warns, expression severe, his link to some unknown kindred reestablished, like an invisible elemental cord I can track toward a spot deep in the Zhilaan Forest. “Peak foliage will behere,” Sylvan stresses, glancing toward a large section of decidous trees, their mosaic of color evident even in twilight’s deep blue dimness.

“After the color falls,” Yulan chimes in, “our magic will rapidly slide into dormancy. After which, the Magedom will likely sweep into the Unbalanced East with their Shadow winter, blast down our last remaining shields, and overtake the rest of Erthia.”

Yvan’s fire rears. “So we deploy against the Magedom before it comes to that,” he charges, molten steel in his tone.

Yvan meets my gaze in a look of ardent alliance, sparks igniting through our bond with such force that my thoughts scatter, the Forest’s fire aura coursing around us intensifying, enhancing our pull to each other, as if our claiming each other as full mates holds some vital importance to the trees themselves, both Yvan’s gaze and mine drawn in question toward the surrounding Nightwood Pines.

I’m suddenly overly aware of the strength of Yvan’s grip, the feel of his warm wrist and forearm pressed against mine, the sustained contact sending a swirling blaze of heat through my body that’s so fervid I don’t dare look at him again, and he makes no move to look at me, eye contact having triggered too muchwant.

When we need to be focused on the battle at hand—our coming war with the Magedom.

And Yvan’s prophesied battle with the Black Witch.

Fear for Yvan is suddenly lancing through me, and I have to stamp it back. The possibility of never having an extended chance to build a life with Yvan... it’s almost too much to bear. And I can tell, by the way his grip is firming around mine, that we’re both stamping down that fear while fiercely holding on to our love for each other.

Both of us ready to fight.

“The way Vogel gained power from our storm band is of dire concern,” Vang Troi warns. “He siphoned it into an army of storm spiders and a creature we’ve encountered only in myth. A primordial V’yexwraith demon.”

Rivyr’el and others let out sounds of shock, and I blink at Vang Troi, a hard dartof fear jabbing into me. I’ve read about this demon in Jules Kristian’s books on religious lore. I glance toward the table’s other end, where Jules and Lucretia are seated, and meet Jules’s gaze, the dire light in his brown eyes mirrored by both Lucretia and the silver kestrel perched on Jules’s shoulder.

“I never imagined that demon could be real,” Rivyr’el blurts out, his prismatic eyes two beacons of dread. “When it comes into its full power, its horror is world-ending. It was last seen during the ancient Elfin Wars.”

“The V’yexwraith was the most feared demon-weapon of the Elfin Conflict,” Jules grimly interjects. “The Alfsigr religious texts speak about it as a vicious parasite, able to consume limitless amounts of elemental power and transform it into Shadow might. It is said to be an actual physical manifestion of the Shadow Wand-Stylus.”

More dread-filled murmuring rises as my thoughts spin.

“Does the Verdyllion Wand-Stylus have a manifestation?” I ask.

Everyone quiets as we all look to the Dryads.

“A tree,” Yulan quietly states.

An explosion of protest breaks out.

“It’s not enough!” the Noi soldier Hee Muur cries.

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