Page 221 of The Dryad Storm

“Our bond,” I say. “It’s yanking us back toward the Zhilaan Forest.”

“I feel it too,” he says, seeming equally thrown as he peers in the direction from which we came. “It’s as if the Forest holds our bond instead of us.” He sets his gaze back on me. “Are you armed?”

I hold up the branch in my hand. “I am.”

“Do you have any other weapons?” he presses.

“No,” I say, confused. “Why?”

Yvan darts forward in a blur, wrests the branch from my hand and hurls it away. Before I can fully register my shock, he pulls swiftly back, a dark wand suddenly in his hand. He thrusts it toward me.

Confusion explodes into alarm as vines shoot from his wand’s tip and slap around my wrists and ankles, binding them tight and yanking me to the ground, my backcolliding painfully with stone. Yvan’s eyes erupt into silver flame, his fire aura releasing from his tight hold on it.

A shock of terror lances through me as a dark Void tree punches into the back of my mind, an aura of steel-bright flame burning against my rootlines. I’ve felt this fire before. In a horrific binding kiss...

My horror turns cataclysmic as Ariel’s raven lights on Yvan’s shoulder and morphs into a Shadow-rune-marked raven with multiple eyes. Yvan’s silver-burning eyes narrow on me as he draws a rune-marked stone from his tunic’s pocket, murmurs a spell... and his glamour drops away.

Revealing Vogel’s green-glimmering, black-haired, shockingly shirtless form.

The Shadow Wand is gripped in his hand,dark wingsfanning out from his back and black horns rising from his head, unfamiliar Shadow fastlines marking his hands and wrists.

The world-upending truth slams through me with planetary force.

“You’re anIcaral,” I gasp.

Vogel hisses and lunges for me, the multi-eyed raven winging away as he falls on me. Dark-clawed fingers slap onto the stone beside my arms as he bares sharpened teeth and snaps them close to my face.

“I’m aMage,” he snarls. “Not an Icaral demon. And mytrueBlack Witch is going tofreezethis winged corruptionout of me.”

My heart thunders against my ribs, the whole Forest echoing my overwhelming alarm.

He’s mad. He’s completely and utterly mad.

Straddling me, Vogel leers at my Wyvernbond mark before he bares elongating teeth and grabs cruel hold of my jaw. “I’m going to draw your power out of you,Fae whore,” he growls, eyes burning, “and siphon itallinto my Black Witch. And then the Magedom’s prophesied Black Witch willriseand your cursed Fae Wilds and Icaral beast willfall!”

I gape at him in horror as the shattering comprehension slams down.

Yvan was never the Icaral of Prophecy.

Vogelis.

And Fallon isn’t the Black Witch, no matter how much Vogel wants to try to turn her into one.

Iam.

It all falls into horrifying place—the Void tree image that assaulted my mindwhen I first met Vogel, the two of us on a Forest-prophesied collision course from that very first moment onward. My eyes flick toward the Wand in his hand—the Shadow counterforce to the Verdyllion. The Wand that took down III.

Panic rising, I grit my teeth and summon every ounce of magical aura in my Wyvernbond, horde bond, and rootlines. Letting loose a rage-filled scream, I blast my aura out toward Yvan and my entire horde.

Vogel snarls and flicks the Shadow Wand’s tip forward. A gag flies around my mouth just as I’m hit by the sudden, burning sense of not only Yvan’s fire scalding through our bond, but my entire horde’s fire blasting toward me, a blaze of returning alarm in it.

“Oh, I can feel their fire too,” Vogel sneers with a vicious grin as he rises and steps away from me, drawing his wings in tight behind his back. He grabs hold of a military tunic lying on a boulder beside us and throws it on, hiding his wings, before thrusting his hand into the tunic’s pocket. Withdrawing it, he drops a rune-marked stone to the ground.

A line of rotating Shadow runes fly up from the stone then arc down to form a portal arch, its interior rippling silvery black.

Holy Ancient One, no.I gasp, my alarm sliding into primal horror.

I blast urgency through my bonds once more, Yvan’s fire blazing searing-hot through our Wyvernbond as he bursts into view in the distance, soaring toward us, my entire horde flying behind him, including Raz’zor’s pale dragon form. Yvan’s full storm of fire power is zeroed in on Vogel, a feral rage slashing through it.

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