Page 35 of The Dryad Storm

Gwynn freezes, his answer like a fist to the gut.

The Agolith Desert. Leagues and leagues and leagues away from home.

Her gut clenches tighter.The home I destroyed.

Bile burns Gwynn’s throat, and she struggles to swallow it back, swept up in the memory of her parents’ home being blown up by runes she, herself, marked.

Light-headed, she staggers to her feet, her attention yanked to her clothing as one of her sleeves falls away. Her gaze jerks toward the lines of charred, puckeredfabric running down both sides of her sacred Mage blacks. Remnants of the storm spiders’ electrified Shadow power is still forking over the charred fabric in muted flashes of gray, her garb’s black threads fraying and gradually crumbling to ash as the remnants of Shadow power course outward, consuming the fabric. A sliver of Gwynn’s naked side appears, her body increasingly exposed...

Mortification explodes as she grabs at the fraying garb, her gaze snapping toward Mavrik as the side of his tunic’s collar drops, exposing his collarbone. Seeming surprised, Mavrik glances at it, then over his shoulder. Cursing under his breath, he grips his tunic’s front and tugs it forward, a few threads audibly snapping. The black silk tears away from his body, the entire back of his tunic destroyed.

Gwynn’s pulse skyrockets at the forbidden sight of his naked chest, all taut muscle with a trace of dark hair in its center, his deep green nipples exposed.

She meets his eyes in a flash of unsettling heat. Shame surging, she looks away, desperately clutching at the sides of her clothing to keep it from falling open or, even worse,off. A raw panic grips hold... being so exposed... seeing Mavrik so exposed... it makes her feel as if her center is coming unmoored.

Mavrik calls to someone in Smaragdalfarin, and she winces, her gaze now riveted to the stone floor as her heart races, her emotions too turbulent for her to focus on a translation. A melodic female voice answers him as Gwynn struggles to control her panicked breathing, her new reality crashing down with cyclonic force.

It’s over.

An irrevocable line has been crossed, leaving her unanchored and splayed open, body and soul. She’s an enemy of the Magedom now, an enemy to her own family, in unknown terrain. Surrounded by non-Gardnerians—people she was taught, her whole life, to view as Evil Ones, her recent contact with Bloom’ilya and little Ee’vee her first real connection to people outside of her closed Styvian Mage circle.

Is this how Sage felt?Gwynn agonizes, remorse knifing through her as she considers how she left her good friend to fend for herself when the Gardnerian wolves closed in around her in Verpacia. Without aid, without alliance...

“Gwynnifer.” Mavrik’s deep voice jolts her from her tortured thoughts. His tone is forceful, but there’s an underlying note of compassion in it that has Gwynn raising her tear-burning eyes to meet his intent stare.

She blinks, thrown off-kilter again by the sight of him, his chest now blessedly covered, but by a vivid emerald Smaragdalfar tunic.

Gwynn inhales, the sight of a Gardnerian male dressed in forbidden Fae color ashock to her system... a shock to herlightlines. A tingle races straight through her lines, the verdant hue of Mavrik’s eyes intensifying the sensation.

“Here, Gwynnifer,” a heavily accented and melodic female voice chimes in.

Gwynn turns to the willowy Smaragdalfar archer, Mynx, who helped Ee’vee through the portal, surprised to find the striking woman there. Mynx is holding out bright emerald Smaragdalfar garb to Gwynn, her gaze suffused with concern.

“I... Ican’t...” Gwynn’s face burns as she makes no move to accept the taboo clothing, afraid that if she stops clutching the edges of her long black tunic and underlying skirt, her sacred black garb will completely give way.

Mynx turns and calls out something toward a knot of male soldiers. One strides forward, casting a quick, wary look toward Gwynn before he unfastens his cloak and hands it to her. Mynx flicks her graceful hand at the soldier in a shooing motion, and he steps away. Gwynn catches a quick, unreadable look from Mavrik before Mynx sets the Smaragdalfar clothing down on the red stone floor before Gwynn, then straightens and holds the cloak out to its full expanse, walling Gwynn off from the rest of the cavern.

“Go ahead and change,” she prods.

Her heart pattering hummingbird-fast, Gwynn releases her hold on the sides of her garb, her mortified flush turning scorching as both her tunic and long skirt give way, along with her undergarments. The cavern’s cool air skims her sides, raising an uncomfortable sweep of gooseflesh.

Hands trembling, Gwynn hastily tugs off the remnants of her destroyed garb and, for the first time in her life, puts on nonblack clothing. She pulls the bright emerald tunic over her head and slides on pants of an equally vivid-green hue, forcing back a remembrance of the lines inThe Book of the Ancientsthat condemn garb like this, and her for wearing it.

The image of the piles of color-edged Gardnerian garb being burned in Valgard assaults her mind as she glances down at the Shadow lightning–singed pile at her feet, feeling as if she’s drowning in the sudden culture shock of wearing pants—something Mage women are forbidden to do—her thighs encircled by fabric, the shape of her legs so brazenly on display.

She tenses, lacking the headspace to rapidly process this transgression, but she also knows she can’t stay hidden behind this cloak forever.

“All right, I’m done,” she manages.

Mynx lowers the cloak, and her eyes make a swift sweep over Gwynn’semerald-garbed frame. Gwynn hugs herself tight. Cheeks and neck burning, she meets Mavrik’s eyes across the cavern’s expanse. A flash of what looks like understanding lights in his, bringing the sting of tears to her own. But still, she can’t bring herself to approach him dressed like this, feeling as if her legs are naked before him.

Mavrik looks away and she knows, from the stiffening of his stance, that, unlike the others here, he truly comprehends the suffocating morass of cultural and religious upheaval she’s fallen into.

“Mavrik Glass,” a sharp, Noi-accented female voice calls out, as several heavily armed Vu Trin soldiers enter the space from a side tunnel.

Noi soldiers, covertly active in the Western Realm Resistance, Gwynn surmises.

The Vu Trin glance briefly at Gwynn before launching into a stream of conversation in Noi with Mavrik.

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