Page 268 of The Dryad Storm

And then, Sylvan wrangled his magic away from hers with what felt like great effort before bidding her a strained goodbye, and Iris wondered, as raw longing for him gripped hold, if she’d ever feel that closeness between them again.

Certain that the answer was a firmno.

But then, his letters started arriving.

A trickle of them at first, carried southeast by a Fire Hawk, the trickle strengthening to a letter almost every day, the walnut-ink missives matter-of-factly detailing Sylvan’s work to reestablish a Dryad homeland and bring their Balance-minded ways to the entire Eastern Realm.

Ensconced in her small Fire Fae community to the north of Voloi, Iris pored over every letter, her pulse never failing to quicken as she read each one multiple times. Her aura flared white-hot when he sent his shortest letter yet, inviting her to travel to Zhilaan so he could show her what they were building there.

Yet, his prose was so succinct, Iris agonized over whether she was reading too much into his correspondence, suffusing it with her own longing for him.

Wrestling with her feelings, Iris decided to give in to her yearning to see Sylvanagain, forgetting that the trip would coincide with Xishlon, the damned moon turning her into a lovesick mess, unable to approach him with any semblance of hidden feelings.

Get a hold of yourself!she gruffly urges as she withdraws her palms from the tree before her and bunches them into fists.Admit it—coming here was a mistake. Even if he has feelings for you, he’ll never give in to them. Let him go before he breaks your heart.

Her emotions bottoming out, Iris roughly swipes away the tears pooling in her eyes and turns to leave, to get as far away as she can from the man who will never, ever want a Fire Fae.

Rancid misery simmering through her power, she moves to turn back toward the tree line, but freezes in her tracks.

A majestic, deep-purple stag is watching her.

The breathtakingly handsome creature is standing, stock-still, between two Nightwood Pines, its silvery rack seeming to possess hundreds upon hundreds of points, its eyes flashing like violet gems.

Iris’s heartbeat quickens, her magic roaring into sudden, hotter life as the certainty sweeps through her—

This is Sylvan’s hidden kindred.

Staring straight at her, as if at a treasure found.

Emotion grips Iris’s throat, hot and raw.

Could he be searching for me this Xishlon like I’m searching for him?

After they parted, Iris tried to fall back in with her fellow Lasair Fae, settling with them in Eastern Noilaan, where the Lasair had taken up residence near the Eastern Realm’s sole active volcano, the fire power there a marvel to behold.

She tried to forget Sylvan. Truly she did. Tried to fit in with a solely Lasair community once more. But the xenophobic views still held by some of the non-Dryad’khin Lasair felt like clothing Iris no longer fit into, and she found herself arguing against such thinking as passionately as she used to argueforit, her thoughts and dreams increasingly drawn back to Sylvan.

Night after night, she revisited the time when she’d emerged from the Dyoi Forest’s innermost being and experienced that first awareness of her fire powers and Sylvan’s flashing around each other... and how he’d grabbed hold of her when she almost fell to her knees, his embrace igniting something powerful between them. They’d sought each other out from that point on, their late-night conversations under the stars a sometimes painful illumination as they told each other about theirlives and confronted the difficult history of both their people, the Lasair and the Dryads having always existed on the mistrusted periphery of the Sidhe Fae’kin. Both groups almost wiped clear off the face of Erthia during the Fae wars.

But it’s not just Sylvan’s fierce personality she misses.

Increasingly, he’s part of the hottest fire of her dreams. For so many years, she’d thought she was meant to pair with Yvan. Butthisattraction... it’s like all the lightning bolts in the world colliding in a firestorm of sparks. There were moments she was sure that Sylvan felt it, too, as she caught a few of his sidelong glances before he’d quickly look away, his face tense with conflict. He seemed, in those moments, to be struggling as mightily against their draw as she was, the two of them hells-bent on holding to their own Fae ways. Both of them voicing, as if in an attempt to ward off this thing growing between them, how they planned to seek out their own kind after the Realm War.

If the Natural World survived.

And now, here they are in a world thathas, against all the odds, survived—tenuously—the opportunity to seek out their own Fae kind suddenly before them like a path unscrolled at their feet.

But the Xishlon moon seems to have other plans, Iris thinks as she peers up through the Zhilaan canopy. As does her aching heart. An ember of hope ignites as Iris moves toward the stag, only to have that ember snuffed out as the stag turns and strides away.

The pain of rejection clutches Iris’s heart with surprising force, just as the buck pauses once more, turns and gives her an unmistakably beckoning look, her falcon kindred landing on the buck’s majestic rack.

Startled, Iris’s fire magic blazes into a swirling, sparking anticipation. Emboldened, she finds her footing and follows the silent, stately kindred and her falcon through the Forest, caught up in a sense of the whole Forest eagerly watching.

And breathlessly waiting.

Eventually, the buck stills, and both kindreds set their gazes on her. Iris stills as well, her heart thudding as the kindred gives her one long, last look then darts away, disappearing into some dense brush set around a raised hillock, her falcon taking flight toward the canopy above.

Confusion flooding her, Iris lets out a hard sigh, tracking her kindred’s flight path. Her fire aura leaps when she finds Sylvan there, sitting on a branch just above her, washed in the Xishlon moon’s purple light, her falcon perched on his shoulder.

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