Page 7 of The Dryad Storm

A sense of the momentous building, Alder picks up one of the purple branches. The Forest’s power surges through her and into it, connecting the branch to her rootlines and filling it with life. Tightening her grip around the living branch, Alder sheathes it at her side... and rises.

Prelude

Chapter One

Selkie Mage

Gareth Keeler

Salishen Isles, Eastern Realm

Xishlon night

Gareth glances up at the purple moon through Noilaan’s translucent dome-shield, unsure he’ll be able to get through thisXishlon night without his heart breaking completely apart.

This love-amplifying purple moonlight... he knows it’s a source of festivity for the Noi’khin. His fellow Vu Trin soldiers are excitedly streaming offThe Water Viper—the naval ship they’re all stationed on. Several other Vu Trin naval ships are docked here, just below where the huge Vo River meets the Salish Ocean, but the ship Gareth is stationed on is unique in that the majority of its naval soldiers are Sylphan Air Fae. His fellow Vu Trin barely spare him a glance as they disembark, having been granted a Xishlon-evening’s leave by their tough but fair-minded commander, the young Sylphan Air Fae Zephyr Quillen.

Gareth ties off one of the ship’s dock lines to a steel hitch and pauses, drawn in by the rippling violet water before him, the Xishlon moon a wavy reflection in it. As if the moon’s location is not in the lavender-star-splashed sky above but in the ocean world below.

The moon’s thrall is a mounting torment, filling his heart with a ceaseless, serrated longing for a Selkie who is oceans away, living in the waters’ great depths.

Where he can never follow.

Gareth fights the urge to jump through that shimmering violet moon straight into the Salish Ocean’s waters. To submerge himself and swim west without ceasing.

Until he finds Marina.

The bond they formed in Verpacia is always at the forefront of his mind, as is thekiss they shared in the foyer of the North Tower, not long before she regained her skin and power.

It was like all the tides of Erthia had broken free.

One kiss led to another and another, the two of them not able to bear being parted that evening. And so, they snuck out, and he let her lead him through the nighttime woods under a full moon like this one. The two of them journeyed through the dark toward the lake they could both sense, the body of water nestled deep within the Verpacian wilds.

Standing on the lake’s bank as wildlife softly chirred around them, Marina sinuously drew off his tunic and kissed the skin over his thrumming heart. She pulled off her own clothing, Gareth’s pulse quickening as desire raced through his veins in response to the sight of Marina’s moon-washed, naked form. And then, she took his hand in hers and, together, they walked into the water. Not into the sweet kiss of salt water that Gareth knew they both craved, but still, being in water of any type was always so much better than bearing the harsh desiccation of land.

Far under the water they pulled each other close and kissed unreservedly, giving in to the powerful draw they’d both felt building for some time. A draw Gareth had forcibly held himself removed from, especially given the particular cruelties Marina had endured on land.

That most female Selkies endured on land.

They stopped short of taking each other to mate that evening, even though it had felt right in a soul-deep way. Because they also knew that a life mated to each other would forever turn her into a cursed creature like him—trapped between two worlds.

Yes, if he remains very still, he can stay underwater for an unnaturally long time, but not long enough to make a life beneath the waves, his half-Selkie lungs cursedly dependent on air.

“If you were Selkie...” Marina had ventured, her melodic voice tight with anguish, “I’d take you as my ooo’ohn’uuniahohn’.”

The vibration of her language through the dark water shivered through Gareth, his neck arching slightly as his bones resonated with its low frequency.

And Gareth knew, without Marina needing to translate, the meaning of her words.

The one you join your tides to.

But the terrible fact remained—he’s not full Selkie.

And he’s not fully a Mage either.

He’s always been able to sense the water power that flows through his affinity lines with the strength of an oceanic tide. But every time he was wandtested, he found himself unable to manifest even a drop of it.

His magic completely trapped inside him.

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