Page 5 of The Dryad Storm

And a world without Forest, without trees, isfinished.

Alcippe’s voice invades her mind—

We’re going to need Alder to read where the Black Witch is through the trees.

Her throat clenches with bark-hard defiance. She won’t scry the Forest in front of any Amaz, not even her new queen. No, she’ll read how her Forest will endaloneand spare her people this horror. That will be her final gift to them. Her late mother, a Great Seer for the Amaz, inherited the divination power of every group in her Ishkart, Urisk, and Wyvern lineage, and Alder has inherited these scrying abilities in turn, along with her mother’s power empathy. But unlike her mother and other seers, Alder has no need for scrying cards made from stiff leaves, or for sticks for casting. She needs no candle or incense smoke to coax meaning from wood. She can read the trees directly.

For, like her father, she is most essentially Dryad’kin, through and through.

And so, bracing herself to face the incoming horror, Alder pushes both palms hard against the deep-purple trunk before her and slides her fingertips over the crenelated bark, letting splinters pierce the skin under her grayed nails, blood to sap for the deepest of readings.

For this final, world-upending reading.

Alder shudders as the Forest’s consciousness links with her mind and blasts Elloren Gardner Grey’s face into her thoughts.

Alder pulls in a hard, rasping breath, her world tilting once more. Because Elloren...

... she’s deeply altered, her ears now gentle points, her hue a deeper forest green.

A fullDryadgreen, with a new moss-green streak running through her midnight-black hair.

Alder’s back arches, every muscle stiffening as she’s flooded with the astonishing sense of Elloren’s link to III, the Great Northern Source Tree. The Third Sacred Tree of Erthia. Elloren has been utterly transformed into something new, completely free of Vogel’s Shadow grip.

No longer the Black Witch but aDryadWitch.

Aligned with the Forest and with Erthia’s rejuvenating power.

Alder digs in deeper, nails biting into bark, blood flowing into wood. Confusion wells as she reads the prophecy still flowing through the Forest’s sap, the Black Witch still destined to fight the Great Icaral. A remembrance of the twin tornadoes Fallon Bane so easily conjured to rip apart Alder’s Forest assaults her, and the blood drains from her face.

Could Fallon be the true Black Witch instead of Elloren? Destined to fight Yvan Guryev? While Elloren is now a weapon aligned with the Forest.

A weapon who could turn the tide of that prophesied battle.

Alder’s heartbeat quickens, gooseflesh rushing over her skin.

Once Vogel finds out Elloren has become a Dryad Fae, he will want her dead. And Alder overheard Alcippe telling Freyja that the Vu Trin are bent on slaying Elloren, as well.Everyonewill want to slay her, including the Amaz. Alder knows there will be no convincing her people to align with Elloren based on her reading from the trees, not after the destruction Elloren came close to raining down on Voloi.

Alder’s heart beats faster.

Vogel knows what it takes to kill a Dryad. A chill races down her spine. She looks at her grayed hands and tenses her withered rootlines. Vogelknowsthat he can deplete Dryad power by killing the wilds.

And he’s not just targeting the Forest.

She can feel, in the trees’ consciousness, that Vogel’s Shadow power is massingagainst the waterways and oceans too. Even the skies above.

A multipronged attack of Shadow, brewing against the entire Natural World.

It’s true, what Alcippe conveyed, Alder considers as she grips the tree.His attack on Amazakaraan and the East was just the beginning.

Practice.

Which means the Dryad Tree’kin are going to need everyone united in this fight if they’re going to save Erthia.

But... it’simpossible.

The threat too huge, the people who might fight it too beaten down and divided, even though the trees now have Elloren on their side.

“Show me what to do,” Alder rasps to the Forest, quivering with despair.

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