Page 9 of The Dryad Storm

Elloren.

He’s seen these postings before, and he fears for his friend. The news that Elloren has Black Witch power was shocking in the extreme. He’s sure she never knew it. Sure that someone tampered with her wandtestings. Made her a pawn in some hidden game.

Yes, someone knew.

That whole time they were at Verpax University, someonehadto have knownwhat she was. He remembers how he and Elloren promised to fast to each other if it came to it, when the threat of forced wandfastings loomed over everyone. How they were always there for each other, their friendship a solid, sure comfort in an increasingly cruel world.

Gareth tears his gaze from the posting and resumes walking, striding off the boardwalk and across the moonlit beach. Certain the Vu Trin are making a mistake. Because it’s clear from Elloren’s evil depiction on the postings that they’re not simply searching for her. They’rehuntingher.

He’s spoken to Commander Quillen about it. Openly voiced his support for Elloren. Refuted the slurs aimed at her by his fellow Vu Trin mariners, which only reinforced his outcast status on his ship and in this land. Before his advocacy for Elloren, some of his fellow mariners were willing to give him a chance, but now they’ve stated that his “Mage blood” is rising to the surface and “polluting” the “slim bit of Selkie good.” His life so oddly flipped. Reviled in the West for his silver-tipped hair and his host of odd aquatic abilities, and now, reviled in the East for the green glimmer of his skin.

Gareth pauses, finding himself alone on a blessedly isolated stretch of beach, his trapped water magic tingling with anticipation as he looks out over the water toward the forest of deep-purple mangroves in the far distance. The forest that is tugging on his Magelines. The ocean-loving trees are bunched near a narrow peninsula jutting out from the coastline, their roots arcing down into the water like curving stilts, tethered to the ocean’s floor.

Trees caught in the middle—half on land, half on sea.

Just like him.

The first time he encountered Salishen’s famed mangroves, he was mesmerized by them in an instant, sensing a soul-deep kinship that affected him profoundly and still does, to the point where his trapped water magic thrums to life and eddies through his lines whenever he makes contact with a mangrove tree’s slick bark.

The grove wakes up to his nearness, its enthralling energy swirling around him, prompting Gareth to draw off his naval tunic. Then his boots. His socks. He piles his garb on a rocky outcropping and, dressed only in his dark uniform pants, wades into the water.

The ocean laps over his feet and ankles, warm and embracing, and Gareth pulls in a euphoric breath, entranced by the ocean’s liquid beauty. Feeling like he’s coming home, he keeps advancing until he’s up to his neck. Then drops under.

As he launches himself into a smooth stroke, everything in Gareth yearns to inhale a deep breath of salt water. Iridescent silver fish close in around him in joyful welcome, and he swims toward the mangrove forest as if born in the ocean’s depths. He darts into the grove’s tangle of underwater roots, gliding just above the ocean floor.

Never wanting to surface.

His sense of homecoming increases as purple crabs scuttle boisterously around him and a violet manatee swims near to eye him with curious, affectionate interest. A school of translucent jellyfish ghost by, their ethereal beauty striking a chord deep in Gareth’s Selkie soul, and he lingers amidst the Noi Mangroves’ roots for a long stretch, everything in him blessedly merged with both water and grove and the kindred life they support.

But then, a tight pain in Gareth’s lungs pricks to life. At first, he ignores it, his usual outrage rearing, everything in him revolting against this merciless biological need of his cursed form. But the pain intensifies, and soon his lungs are burning, hot tears warming his eyes as he’s forced to swim toward the Xishlon moon’s shimmering, luminous form overhead.

He bursts through the water’s surface and gulps in air, raging against the moon, against every last thing keeping him away from Marina and the ocean’s deepest depths, the cruel moon’s light a mercilesstorture.

“Gareth!”

Caught off guard by Commander Quillen’s urgent, distant voice, he turns to finds her racing toward him over the shore. A naked, blue-hued, silver-haired Selkie strides just behind her, a silver seal pelt tied around her shoulders.

Gareth’s lungs seize, the whole world contracting. The crowd forming on the shore seems to blur as a child’s cry of “Mamma, look! A seal woman!” cuts through the murmurs of amazement.

Commander Quillen slows, but Marina breaks into a sprint toward Gareth. He launches himself toward her in a rapid stroke, aching with gladness at how strong and sleek Marina looks splashing into the distant water.

“Gareth!” Marina cries, and Gareth is swept into a powerful tide of love. A rasping bark escaping her lips, Marina dives into the water and swims toward him. They near each other rapidly, then meet in the waves.

Capsized by emotion, Gareth catches Marina in a desperate embrace before she draws him under the water in a swirl of crystalline purple, the sealskin tied aroundher shoulders flashing silver as it ripples behind her like a cloak.

Overcome, Gareth sweeps her into a passionate kiss that she enthusiastically returns, the two of them embracing until Gareth’s lungs begin to ache, then burn, and he has to make for the surface again.

Breaking through into the purple Xishlon world, he gasps in air as Marina surfaces beside him. She pulls him into another besotted embrace, his hand tangling in her waterfall of hair, his lips pressing a kiss to her temple, the Xishlon moon’s heart-opening lull intensifying his passion for her. “Marina,my love.”

“Mytide,” she manages against his cheek, her gills ruffling like feathers against his neck, her fractured, flutelike tones rife with feeling. “My ever-flowing tide.”

Tears warming his eyes, Gareth takes hold of her arms, wanting to draw her under the water and never surface. “How did you get past Noilaan’s dome-shield?” he wonders.

She turns one arm over, revealing the small scarlet Amaz shield-safe rune emblazoned there. Gareth nods, remembering the measures the Amaz took when they helped the freed Selkies get back to their ocean home.

“Why did you risk coming here?” Gareth implores, concerned even as his heart thuds with joy.

Marina’s ocean eyes darken with urgency. “To warn you, and to gain your help.” She glances toward the shore where Commander Quillen stands, a crowd of Noi’khin surrounding her. “Vogel is coming for the Waters, Gareth,” she cautions. “He wants to wipe out my people along with our ocean kindreds. He’s conjured a Shadow sea.”

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