Page 66 of The Dryad Storm

“You need more power,” he growls back. “Deathpower. Vogel’s forces willdestroyyou.”

“They’ll destroyall of you,” Or’myr tersely interjects, shooting Viger a cutting glare. “You’re all Fae. Mark my words, they’ll be ready for you. Withiron. Which I can easily subdue.” He unsheathes his purple, gem-encrusted wand. “Geomancer,” he throws down in challenge. Like a leveled weapon. “I can subdue all stones and metals.”

“You can’t travel as fast as us!” Tierney cries at Or’myr. “It would takedaysfor you to get that far north! There’s no time! The Shadow is about totear my River apart!” She looks to Fyordin, her water aura churning with desperation. “We need a Noi portal to get Or’myr north with us! We need to go to the Vu Trin!”

“Wecan’tgo to the Vu Trin,” Or’myr shoots back. “Why do you think we’re here in an isolated area above Voloi, instead ofinVoloi? The Vu Trin are hunting downevery last one of Elloren’s allies.”

Or’myr quickly outlines the cenote cavern hiding spot and portal stones he helped Elloren’s allies obtain and how he briefly encountered Alder there before he aided them in portaling to the Northern Forest. Afterward, he returned here to help Fyordin draw Tierney back East.

So they could all find a way to keep Vogel from overtaking Noilaan via the Vo River.

Tierney’s mouth drops open as she listens, her heartbeat quickening over this turn of events. She looks to Fyordin to find his eyes a raging storm, his water aura clashing against her own. As she realizes, with a chastening swoop of gratitude, that Fyordin broke ranks with the Vu Trin and the Asrai to find her.

And bring her back to their threatened Vo.

“Do you know what’s become of my cousin?” Or’myr asks her and Viger both,an edge of desperation in the question.

Fyordin’s glare swings to Or’myr. “You mean thehomicidal Black Witchwho leveled Voloi?”

“I meanmy cousin,” Or’myr counters, his tone dangerously clipped, a few strands of violet lightning forking around him. “Who was overtaken by Marcus Vogel and forced to do his bidding.” He levels his green eyes back on Tierney. “Alder sensed a change in her through an empathic reading of the trees.”

“Viger and I were briefly with Elloren in the Northern Forest,” Tierney supplies. “Elloren has broken free of Vogel.” She swiftly recounts what transpired in the Northern Forest when she and Viger went after Yvan and Elloren through the Dryad portal, along with a flock of giant Errilor Death Ravens. “Elloren is united with Yvan Guryev,” Tierney staunchly insists, “in the defense of the Natural World.”

Fyordin’s power turns ballistic, raging against her own so intensely, Tierney takes a step back. “Elloren Gardner Grey nearly destroyed the entire East!” he thunders. “To go after her for any reason but tostrike her downis madness!”

“Fyordin,please, you have to believe me!” Tierney chokes out, desperately needing his full alliance. Overtaken by terror for her Vo. For her kelpies. For the entire Natural World of the East. Strangled into silence by the Shadow horrors once more flashing through her mind, she looks beseechingly to them all and can see it in their eyes and posture—fierce concern for her, even Viger’s Death Fae remoteness shattered.

A knot of wild emotions forms in Tierney’s throat. It’s a complicated mess of a grouping, the four of them. But, nonetheless, they’re true allies.

And true allies of her Vo.

Viger’s thrall intensifies, like deeper night closing in. “If I link all of you to my bond to Tierney through a blood tether,” he hisses, low and even, “I could swiftly draw you North inside my thrall mist.”

Fyordin rounds on him, power rearing. “Oh, you’d bindusas well, would you? Infiltrate our dreams, too, and control us through our fears?”

Viger’s snakes bare their teeth, tongues flickering, a confrontational half smile forming on his mouth that sends a shiver down Tierney’s spine. “I’d need tokissyou to infiltrate your dreams.”

“Tether me, Viger,” Or’myr offers, resolution in his eyes as he holds out his wand hand. “Get us all to the Northern Vo so we can drive off the Shadow bastards.” Heglances pointedly at them all. “If Vogel poisons the Vo River, Noilaan will fall. There will be a severe shortage of drinking water. Noilaan’s farms will fail. Most of the fisheries too.” He sets his lightning eyes back on Viger. “I suspect you’re a danger to us, Deathkin, but you’re an even greater danger to Vogel. Which makes you my ally.”

Warmth shoots through Tierney’s power as she takes in Or’myr’s stance, finding him wildly heroic in this moment, chagrin again rising that she was unable to withstand his kiss on Xishlon.

Fyordin lets out a vicious epithet as the Vo’s waters swirl around them all. Shooting a murderous look at Viger, he thrusts his hand out, as well.

Viger grabs hold of Or’myr’s and Fyordin’s wrists, a disconcertingly wicked grin forming on his mouth as he sinks his dark claws into their skin.

Tierney flinches as a sudden flash of his Darkness bolts through her power, blood trickling down both Or’myr’s and Fyordin’s wrists as black mist bursts into being to encircle their forms. She shivers as a connection toallof them ripples through her magic, threads of Or’myr’s lightning now crackling through her power alongside her rippling water bond to Fyordin, all of it spiraling through Viger’s tether of Darkness.

Bound.

A hot impulse races through Tierney as their binding consolidates, the unsettling urge rising to take hold of each one of them, draw them into a deep kiss and more tightly meld their magic to hers. The desire overtakes her so intensely that she has to tense every muscle against it. And worse, she can feel their return rush of yearning in Viger’s swirling Darkness, Or’myr’s spitting lightning and Fyordin’s water aura, all of which are now desperately encirclingher.

“Asrai,” Viger says to her, a hardened glint in his pitch eyes. “This bond is centered in you and me. If we draw each other close, it will enhance our speed north.” His aura closes in around her in a dark mass, edging away Or’myr’s and Fyordin’s auras of power, and Tierney can read in its covetous thrum how much Viger wants her to prefer him to the other men here. But also, how he’s struggling to restrain that want and put the Vo first. Which, despite everything, feels extraordinarily valiant.

“All right, Viger,” she concedes, emotion knotting in her throat as she steps closer to him, surrendering to the pull of his Darkness. “Bring us north.”

Viger nods before sliding his arms and thrall around her. The shivering sensationwinds a breathless want through her as the world darkens. A ravenous, unyielding look of hunger passes over Viger’s face, and he draws her close and into a kiss with sudden, breathless force.

Tierney gasps, careening into his kiss, Viger’s thrall intensifying as he spins Tierney, Or’myr, and Fyordin into his Darkness.

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