Page 69 of The Dryad Storm

Everyone.

Noexceptions.

Defiance rears through my chest, scathingly hot. “Yvan, I’m asking you to trust me in this. As your fire-bondedmate.”

The wordmatetriggers another palpable surge of Yvan’s fire, a ravenous look passing over his face, every nerve inside me heating and contracting toward that lightning-bolt look. His power streaming hot around me through our bond, he nods then turns and brings his palms definitively to III’s trunk.

I gasp as golden light rays out from where Yvan’s hands meet bark, at the same moment that Oaklyyn, Lyptus, and the huge Dryad with the bear kindred cry out and lunge forward, leveling branches and staffs at Yvan while Errlith’scawsplits the air, a misty shield of Darkness flowing out of my flock’s midnight feathers and Hazel’s raised palms to enclose Yvan and me.

Yvan shivers, and aCRACKsounds on the air as the attacking Dryads blast bolts of deep-green power at our Deathkin shield.

The shield explodes into black mist while bark forms all over Yvan’s body, and Oaklyyn, Lyptus, and the huge Dryad ready another magic attack just as Yvan’s whole form is drawn into the Great Tree.

“NO!”Oaklyyn cries.

I blink once then stagger back, my pulse roaring through my ears, barely registering her alarmed cry and the Forest’s sharp spike of terror as my newly reformed Wyvernbond to Yvan gives a sudden, brutal stretch...

... andbreaks.

A shock of pain blasts through my rootlines, and I cry out and drop to my knees, Yvan’s volcanic, all-encompassing heat wrenched away, only his hands’ glowing imprints shimmering bright gold on the Great Tree’s night-dark bark. Until those, too, are consumed by III.

Chapter Two

Shadow Strike

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Agolith Desert Sublands

Fourteen days after Xishlon

“We have to get to the Northern Forest before Vogel invades it!” Yyzz’ra snarls, her livid silver gaze boring into Gwynn and Mavrik. “How long until this damned portal is charged?”

Gwynn’s hackles go up, sweat lining her brow. Down on her knees, she murmurs spell after spell, holding the Verdyllion to the Vu Trin portal’s runic frame, one of a multitude of hidden underground Noi military portals, their runic charges long since spent. Mavrik is on his knees beside Gwynn, every nerve in her body hyperaware of his palm lightly cupping the back of her neck, his direct touch amplifying their merged power.

“I asked you a question,” Yyzz’ra snaps as a rainbow of sparks sprays across Gwynn’s vision. She shivers, her and Mavrik’s twinned power coursing through her arm and wand and then into the Noi portal runes, flashes of sapphire magic igniting in them.

“Will you do your level best to bequiet?” Valasca aims at Yyzz’ra, the Amaz warrior’s tone crisp. Valasca’s grayed arms are crossed in front of her chest, the runes of her imprisonment collar glowing emerald against her neck.

Yyzz’ra rounds on Valasca, quietly lethal Valkyr and intense Gavryyl bracketing her, the two young Smaragdalfar soldiers mirroring Yyzz’ra’s scowl. “Aren’t you myprisoner?” Yyzz’ra snaps.

“Stupidly, yes,” Valasca drawls as she splays her hand out toward Mavrik and Gwynn. “But that doesn’t change the fact that they’reclearlytrying to charge that portal as fast as they can.”

“Well, they need to workfaster!” Yyzz’ra seethes. “Or by the time we get to the Northern Forest, Vogel will have already found a way to crash his storm bandsclear throughthe Forest’s warding!”

Distracted by Yyzz’ra’s and Valasca’s constant sniping, Gwynn struggles to hold her focus. Wynter stands behind Mavrik, preternaturally still, even the Icaral’s smattering of kindred birds unnaturally motionless from where they watch, perched on stony outcroppings all around them, including the two Agolith Flame Hawks who, Gwynn notes, almost always have their flame-hued eyes set on her and Mavrik.

Willing calm, Gwynn murmurs the Noi interlocking spell, and a harder swoosh of light magery courses from her to her wand, the emptying sensation stealing her breath. Their woven spells snap through the portal’s runic frame with a sharpping.

A burst of chromatic light rays out from every rune, and anticipation grips hold of Gwynn, the suspended Varg, Issani, Gardnerian, and Alfsigr charge-acceleration runes she and Mavrik have painstakingly crafted and connected to the portal all pulsing with her multihued light magery.

The normally sapphire Noi portal runes shift into a full rainbow of light as they begin to rotate and charge, and a swell of elation suffuses Gwynn’s every line.

Beautiful.

Sensing emotion searing through Mavrik’s power, she turns and meets his glowing golden gaze. That familiar flash of multicolored sparks ignites along the edges of Gwynn’s vision, a triumphant smirk pulling at Mavrik’s lips, words wholly unneeded in this moment. They can both sense that their spellwork has fully taken hold. And to have the power to charge and magically recalibrate a portal in a way that sets its course, speeds its charge and removes its lag...

Gwynn pulls in a hard, shaky breath.

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