Page 41 of The Dryad Storm

“But that was before the Wand linked us. I should test you while touching you. And without touching you, as well.”

“All right,” she says. Lost to the magical tension flashing between them, she dares to voice the forbidden. “I want to hold your hand.”

Mavrik lets out a harsh breath and looks at the ceiling. “It’s best that we don’t,” he says in a constrained voice before giving her an intense look. Gwynn reluctantly nods, all too aware of the fastmarks all over their hands.

As well as the prismatic color still sparkling over both their lips.

Did you ever love your fastmate?she wonders, her grief for Geoffrey slicing through her.Is your heart broken like mine?

The devastating emotions churn, and Gwynn’s heart fractures against them, so painfully that it’s a blessing when her eyes finally flutter closed and she falls to sleep, the Verdyllion Wand-Stylus strobing in the back of her mind all through the night.

Chapter Nine

Queen of Fracture

Queen Freyja Zyrr

Western bank of the Vo River, north of Voloi

Fifteen days after Xishlon

The Eastern Realm is in chaos, Freyja Zyrr considers as she stands on the Vo River’s broad bank. Her gaze slides along Noilaan’s runic border wall, the Vo River just beyond. She narrows her gaze at the Vu Trin forces positioned along the sapphire-glowing border’s base and takes stock of the situation, the overcast day as grim as her thoughts. Four of her Queen’s Guard soldiers surround her, her people having emerged from a portal lag into this stretch of wilderness north of Voloi one day prior.

A chill wind whipping at her black hair, Freyja battles back a surge of grief for her beloved Queen Alkaia, brutally slain by the cursed Mages. She pulls in a measured breath, struggling to adjust to the mantle their slain monarch placed upon her too-young shoulders—queen of the Amaz. Leader of a people who are suddenly refugees in a land where it’sclearthey are thoroughly and completely unwanted. And leader of a people who would hate her if they knew how much she yearns to find out if her secret love, Clive Soren, made it to the East.

Is Clive even alive?

Freyja stiffens her shoulders against the rush of emotion, the pull of the straps attaching her runic axe to her back a steadying thing. Her people need to comefirst, above all things.

Even her own heart.

Willing fortitude, she glances over her shoulder at the half-decimated Vo Mountain Range, the upper half of the peaks now a dark, melted apex of Shadow-smoking stone. She turns back toward the runic border, which grows higher and moves farther north each day.

To wall Westerners out of Noilaan, including us.

Ire flares, burning hot in Freyja’s chest as she remembers the military support her people gave to Noilaan during the last Realm War. How courageous Amaz battalions took down legions of Mage forces after the last Black Witch was killed, countless women struck down, their sacrifices key to halting the Mages’ incursion into the East.

Now that the Amaz have landed on Noilaan’s doorstep, it seems the East has a very short memory indeed.

Go ahead and wall us out, Freyja seethes at the entirety of Noilaan as the wind grows stronger.We’ll claim the Northern Vo Forest as our own and wall you out in turn.

A hard crack of thunder sounds, and Freyja glances north toward the storm that’s moving in, the clouds ominous masses of gray. Galvanized by the incoming storm, her people call out to each other from both the riverbank and the wilderness to their west as they hastily fortify the small city of rune-marked shelters they’ve erected inside the Vo Forest’s tree line, an army of Amaz soldiers ringing their newfound territory’s hastily established periphery, guarding it with warrior focus from intruders.

Freyja surveys her soldiers’ weapons, a growing number of the axes and blades, arrows and battle-staffs glowing Varg emerald against the day’s stormy gray, the Varg runes swiftly crafted by their Smaragdalfar runic sorceress, Vestylle Oona’rin. There’s a martial light in her soldiers’ eyes as they study the Vu Trin forces stationed along the border wall.

Ready to war with them if need be.

Freyja’s response to the Noi Conclave’s firm “request” to “portal back West” was an immediate call to arms that seemed to catch the Conclave off guard. The sight of a few thousand Amaz, both soldier and civilian, leveling their weapons in unison at the three Conclave members and accompanying Vu Trin tasked with relaying the “request” was a formidable sight to behold.

Force us into a corner,Freya fumes,and we’ll simply annex a piece of Noilaan for the Goddess’s Own.

Defiance on behalf of her people surging, Freyja makes the Goddess’s symbol on her chest, kisses her fist, and thrusts it toward the heavens, ready to face down every force on Erthia as she booms out the Goddess’s Warrior Prayer for the Defense of Her Free Daughters—

“We will fight with the Goddess’s Own Fury!

“We will fight to avenge every Blessed First Daughter!

“We are theEver-UnbrokenFree People of Amazakaraan!”

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