Page 227 of The Dryad Storm

“Are you dead?” I rasp out. “Please, Lukas, don’t be dead.”

He smiles.

I’m transformed, he says from inside me, from inside the wood.

My gaze darts toward the distant storm band, my empathic sense of Vogel’s approach intensifying, another pulse of Vogel’s silver-fire power coursing through me.

I look back at Lukas, the world surrounding us blurring, time seeming to pause, a tidal wave of emotion rushing in. “I miss you,” I choke out. “I love you, Lukas. I’msorry.”

Don’t be, he says, the words shot through with compassion. And love. Love I can feel searing straight through my heart, tears now streaming down my face.

“I never wanted you to end up alone,” I roughly choke out.

His loving smile is undimmed.I’m not, Elloren, he says from inside my heart as he gestures toward the East.I’m part ofeverythingnow.

My anguish burgeons. “Lukas, everything is about to bedestroyed.”

His expression turns blazingly serious.Then don’t let it be.

“How,” I cry, holding up my grayed hand. “Lukas,how?”

He raises his palm, the image of III marked on it, passion in his burning gaze.Everything you ever needed, Elloren, it’s all inside you. It always has been.

And then he and the Watchers vanish.

“No!”I cry, reaching toward where he just was and finding only air. The sliver of living wood turns gray, and the nightmare rushes back in.

“Lukas,don’t leave me!” I cry, despair crashing through me.

A slight sting on my palm has my gaze jerking downward.

Trembling, I turn my grayed palm up, and the image of III briefly seems to shimmer with Lukas’s verdant light just as the leading edge of the Mage forces on dragonback burst through the distant storm band.

Terror threatens to overwhelm me, but I battle it back, comprehension igniting,Lukas’s words striking through me with the force of a war hammer.

It’s all inside you.

On reckless instinct, I force my nails into the charred, smoking soil and swiftly dig a small hole then thrust my branch hand into it, burying the image of III.

A hard sting races over my palm. Rays of green light flare through the loosened soil, and the tendrils of Shadow disappear in a sizable circle around me, as if pushed back by a superior force.

I turn my submerged palm upward, and my eyes widen as a seedling breaks through the soil, springing from III’s mark, the small Ironwood sapling branching as it grows and sprouts vividly green leaves, its roots pushing my hand aside.

Stunned, I withdraw my hand from the soil as the small tree rises and branches, its love and support flooding through me in a brilliant green rush as its canopy thickens just above my head.

Dryad, the sapling sends through me as it drops one of its living branches into my lap.

“Bless you,” I gasp, grabbing hold of the living branch, resolve flooding through me as my rootlines link into the branch and the tree.

Glimmering Dryad green ripples over my skin’s grayed hue, the tree’s elemental power flooding through me as my rootlines shimmer back to strength with Black WitchDryadpower.

“Dryad Witch!” a man’s voice bellows, his tone unnaturally deep.

I bolt to my feet, about twenty soldiers soaring toward me, their wands raised, their broken dragons shrieking.

The sapling sends a series of spells to me, and I ready my branch, the two of us our own small Dryad army.

Our own small Dryadstorm.

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