Page 249 of The Dryad Storm

Chapter Ten

Shadow Mage

Damion Bane

Vo Forest

Damion Bane glances at the smoking fastlines on his hands and wrists as he strides out of the Shadow portal he conjured into a foggy, grayed stretch of Noilaan’s Vo Forest, following the pull of the Shadow Wand.

A pull toward Voloi.

Shadowed thunderbooms overhead, and Damion glances up at the Shadow storms battering against the shielding the heathens cast over the Vo River and its bracketing land. Shadow storms he wrested hold of and drew East, more rolling in, ready to crash through the shield’s northern and southern focal points.

His Shadow attack on the East just beginning.

The heathen’s shielding is about tofall, regardless of the rise of a new Tree of Power.

Pausing, Damion draws in a deep breath, lifts his wand hand and runs a finger over the steely fastmarks on it, a tendril of gray smoke emanating from them curling around his finger. Concentrating on the Shadow Wand’s directional pull on his fastlines, he senses the Wand closing off its power from heathen detection while it floods its gray might into him, its magicthrummingwith the desire for him to recapture the Wand and take it firmly in hand.

Rising as the Magedom’strueruler.

A Magedom that will rise again and prevail against every vile enemy.

Anger ices through Damion’s lines and quickly barrels into vengeful rage. Because he’s seen, through his brief, forced, fastline-connection to the Fae Wilds, what Vogel truly was all along—a cursed Icaral demon.

The whole Magedom led disastrously astray.

Damion balls his fastmarked hands, savoring how he used the Forest’s brief linkage to his fastlines to find out as much as he could about the Magedom’s enemies, leaving him with the information he needs to retake the Shadow Wand, gather the small army of true Mages who resisted the heathen Forest’s pull, wrest hold of the continent’s Shadow power, then take down the Dryad whore and her alliesonce and for all.

Oh, yes, he’ll finish what he started with Elloren Gardner on that Valgard balcony so many months ago.

Damion’s magic whips into a frenzy, battering against his lines for release, Shadow-amplified wind and water storming through him. The desire to avenge his slain sister, Fallon, and their brother, Sylus, surging.

He’ll hunt down his fastmate, Aislinn, as well. The little wolf bitchbelongsto him. His to do with as he pleases, Lupine freak that she is. Arousal takes root just thinking about it. Oh, he’ll fully break her this time. And get his fill of her animalistic corruption before killing herslowly.

Leaving him free to fast to another.

The certainty of his impending triumph floods Damion with resolve. He launches back into motion, striding toward the Shadow Wand, reveling in its guiding pull, a sense of destiny filling him.

A slim, cloaked figure suddenly slips in front of him, so fast it’s as if she’s appeared out of nowhere.

He halts, startled, and reflexively unsheathes his wand, his Shadow-amplified power brewing to life.

Killinglife.

The slim figure raises her gaze to meet his, her cloaked face cast in darkness.

But hereyes.

Wild and glowing with amber ferocity.

Concern sparks inside Damion, but then he looks closer and his concern evaporates.

Aislinn.

His little bitch of a fastmate.

He flashes her a congenial smile as he begins to murmur the binding spell in the back of his throat.

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