Page 53 of The Dryad Storm

“You did it,” he murmurs, kissing her forehead, seeming overwhelmed. “Well played, Gwynnifer.”

Gwynn clings to him as Mynx, Cael, Valasca, and others race over to them. She shivers, the full interconnection of her and Mavrik’s lines disorienting, the two of them like one fused entity. Gwynn can sense his emotions through their merged lines, almost as clearly as she feels her own, Mavrik’s potent determination to protect her rushing through her while her equally potent desire to protecthimshimmers through them both in a sizzling aura of light.

“Don’t move!” Valasca orders, raising the Varg-marked blade in her hand, her eyes pinned on something above and behind Gwynn and Mavrik.

Gwynn turns just as a raven soars from a stony alcove and Valasca hurls her weapon. The blade impales the raven. A chillingly multitone, too-lowcawsounds from the raven as it falls, the pair of Agolith Flame Hawks screeching out sounds ofdistress as they wing away to perch on an outcropping of stone.

Valasca runs to the flapping, fallen raven, and Gwynn notes, with a sharp recoil of fear, that the bird has eyes of swirling Shadow massed all over its upper head, with a single pale green eye set in their center.

And there’s a Shadow rune on the raven’s side.

Valasca grabs the raven and hoists it by its feet, the pale green eye fixing on her with a look of palpable hate that sends a dart of fright down Gwynn’s spine.

“I’ve encountered this type of beast before,” Valasca growls. “Vogel’s in it. He’s watching us through this runic spy. It’s likely he’s been watching us for a while now.”

With a sweep of her blade, Valasca decapitates the raven spy, and its head thumps to the ground, its Shadow eyes deadening to black, but the pale green eye—theVogeleye—remaining brutally fixed on Valasca.

Growling, Valasca thrusts the thing’s body to the side, grabs hold of the raven’s decapitated head and stabs her blade straight into the Vogel eye, scouring it out.

Everyone stills while Wynter lowers herself beside the raven’s body and places her hand on its rapidly disappearing Shadow rune. A slight shiver ripples through her.

Valasca is breathing hard, her blade’s hilt gripped tight in her fist, as they all take in the horror before them. “So, he knows we’re here and that we have the Verdyllion,” Valasca states. She looks to Yyzz’ra and the two young Subland soldiers bracketing her. “Which means he knows quite a bit about your Subland army.” Her dark gaze swings to Wynter. “And there’s a chance he knows what Wynter can do with the Verdyllion.” Valasca turns to Mavrik and Gwynn, her eyes flicking toward the prismatic Subland shielding they just conjured. “And he knows that you’ve twinned your magic to wall the Magedom out of here.”

“So he has his little spy,” Mavrik snarls back. “He can’t get through our shielding.”

“He can,” Wynter murmurs.

Everyone’s gaze swings toward Wynter.

She draws her hand back to cradle it against her chest as the Shadow rune marked on the raven’s side vanishes, her wings drawing in protectively around herself. “Vogel is going after the wilds,” she warns. “I read his intent through that Shadow rune’s tether to his power. He’s not just targeting Elloren and Yvan, but the entire Northern Forest.”

“To get hold of the Black Witch,” Yyzz’ra impatiently snaps.

“Not just that,” Wynter counters, looking to Yyzz’ra. “To destroy the forest itself.”

“Well, we best hope the Dryad wards surrounding that forest hold,” Mavrik says. He narrows his gaze at the prismatic shield above them, the chromatic runes pulsing every color over the cavernous space before he lowers his gaze back to Wynter’s. Gwynn stiffens as his worry sizzles through their twinned power. “If Vogel destroys enough forest,” Mavrik says, “he might be able to break through our shielding.”

Gwynn furrows her brow. “I don’t understand,” she says. “How could destroying forests break through our shielding?”

Mavrik gives her a grim, searching look. “Gwynn,” he says. “We’reDryads.”

A reflexive protest rears over this outrageous claim. “We’reMages...”

“Yes, Gwynn,” he agrees, a hard edge entering his tone, “we are. And all Mages are partDryad. Trees are the source ofallour magic. Magery flows from the rooted forest, through our lines, then out through our wands. If you kill enough trees, you destroy our magic.” His gaze darkens. “Unless you replace the elemental power in our lines with Shadow power.”

Gwynn blinks at him, pinned by the intensity of his stare, her thoughts at war. Just uttering that thought is the highest sacrilege in Gardneria.

“Did you ever think about the dead trees that decorate practically every Gardnerian home?” Mavrik presses, unrelenting. “The dead trees set into the Valgard Cathedral itself? The forest decoreverywhere, in every Mage home? The wands of layered wood? The religious obsession with Ironflowers, which are the beginnings oftrees? The Sealing ceremony full of dominion over the elements of nature culminating with control over the trees themselves?”

Gwynn’s disorientation intensifies, and she can feel the blood draining from her face.

“We’re part Kelt, part Dryad,” Mavrik vehemently continues. “We’re not ‘First Children,’ sprung from the Great Ironwood Tree. Gwynn, we’re partTree Fae.”

The undeniable truth cycles down, slamming through Gwynn with the force of a thousand runic storm bands.Part Tree Fae. We’re part Fae.

She gapes at him, stunned, as Vogel’s muted power thunders against the world above. “How have I never pieced that together?”

Mavrik’s lips give a bitter twist. “The power of religion. Able to make us deny even the most glaringly obvious of truths.” He glances up at their color-pulsing shielding. “Wynter’s right,” he says, warning in his eyes. “We’re not just walled offfrom the surface of Erthia by Vogel’s Shadow storm bands—”

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