Prologue

Forest Prophecy

Alder Xanthos

City of Cyme, Amazakaraan

Two days before Xishlon

A primal scream tears from Alder Xanthos’s throat. Explosions sound on all sides, hammering her ears as Mages soar down into

Amazakaraan on their broken, shrieking dragons, laying waste to the city of Cyme.

Alder raises the living branch in her hand, her heartbeat thundering against her ribs, readying herself for battle inside

the translucent green dome-shield she and her soldier friend, Vestylle Oona’rin, cast around the Queenhall to protect the

fleeing Amaz.

A closer explosion sends a burst of pain through Alder’s head as the Mages throw down bolt after bolt of Shadowfire, leveling

the remaining buildings surrounding the Queenhall. Monstrous gray Shadow trees rise from each explosion, high as the clouds,

the grotesque forest rapidly overtaking Cyme’s valley under its nightmare canopy-prison.

Azion! Alder screams through her mind-link to her eagle kindred as she curses herself for sending Azion out to survey the incoming

attack. Desperation rakes her throat. At any moment, Azion has to soar out of the Shadow chaos and through the verdant, wavering dome. She can sense his frantic heartbeats and desperation

to reach her growing closer by the moment.

A powerful explosion booms from Cyme’s forested periphery. Alder’s lungs contract, the ground beneath her feet shuddering.

The screams of trees rip through her mind, and pain streaks through her Dryad rootlines, nearly whiting out her vision. Blinking

hard, she’s just able to make out the wall of steely flame bursting up from the tree line edging the great valley’s northern

edge.

Alder watches, frozen in shock and pain, as the wall of gray flame roars north, a gigantic swath of the Caledonian Forest igniting with Shadowfire, the death of so many trees gouging a growing portion of her Forest-melded power from her lines. As she realizes, with soul-shredding horror, that the Mages on their shrieking, broken dragons aren’t just bent on destroying her beloved Cyme.

They’re going to raze her entire kindred Forest .

A stronger sense of Azion blasts through Alder, her heart-bonded bird’s rasping cry of terror lashing through the back of

her mind along with the screams of her dying Forest.

“Azion!” Alder bellows, launching herself toward the shield, ready to hurl herself clear through it.

A strong hand clamps around her shoulder, and she skids to a stop.

Alder whips her head around to find Vestylle holding her with a viselike grip, fierceness marking the young Smaragdalfar sorceress’s

emerald-patterned face, a rune stylus glowing green in Vestylle’s hand.

“Let me go!” Alder growls, yanking herself away from Vestylle. She moves to launch herself at the shield, her mind pounding

with combined terror for Azion and her Forest as her kindred eagle draws closer.

“No!” Vestylle snaps as she takes hold of Alder once more. “They’ll kill you like they killed our queen! We’ve got to get East now !”

Wild desperation overtaking her, Alder struggles against Vestylle’s grip. “Azion!” she screams, kicking and flailing as Vestylle drags her toward the Queenhall’s Subland entrance.

Alder’s anguish turns feral. Because she knows what Vestylle is doing, pulling her through an arching doorway, down spiraling

stairs cut into the valley’s pale stone, then through a crimson-torchlit cavern. She’s being dragged toward the emergency

portals in the Sublands below the Queenhall—portals through which almost all the surviving Amaz have already escaped to the

East, save for the portal guards, Alder, and Vestylle, their small group the last of the rearguard soldiers reinforcing the

failing shield with their combined Dryad and Smaragdalfar magic.

The only types of magic able to tenuously hold their power against the Magedom’s incoming Shadow.

Azion’s and the Forest’s terror burgeons, blazing through Alder’s weakening rootlines, as she’s hit with the growing awareness

that her kindred bird is just outside the shield. With a snarl, she breaks free of Vestylle’s grip and launches into a run

back toward the stairs.

“Alder!” Vestylle cries.

Alder barely registers the panic in her friend’s voice as she sprints up the stairs, multiple explosions rattling the very

earth.

Rattling her Forest .

“Don’t be a fool !” Vestylle bellows, thumping up the stairs behind her. “Our shield is about to fall!”

Ignoring her, Alder sprints toward the top of the stairs, agony piercing her chest as Azion’s frantic call blasts through

their bond along with the horrified screams of her tree kindreds.

Azion! My Forest! I’m coming!

Her eagle kindred’s squawking cries tear through Alder’s mind with slingshot force as she reaches the top of the newly deserted

stairs and races toward the door, her whole being distilled into the desire to save her kindred bird and Forest. Her beautiful

feathered one... her trees ...

“Alder!” Vestylle yells again.

Alder’s magic plummets as the Shadowfire spreads through her Forest. Certain of her narrowing window of time, Alder spins,

rasps out a Dryadin spell, and thrusts her branch toward Vestylle, hurling out magic.

A green, glass-like shield rises from the ground before Vestylle, her friend’s silver eyes widening as she’s forced to a halt

at the top of the staircase.

Emboldened, Alder turns and throws the Queenhall’s door open, bursts through it... and skids to a stop.

High Mage Marcus Vogel sits on dragonback just past the rapidly decaying dome-shield, his dark cloak flowing behind him, Fallon

Bane on dragonback beside him. There’s a dark gray wand in Vogel’s hand.

Shadow curling from its tip.

Vogel narrows his pale green eyes, a vicious glint in them as his lip ticks up. “Dryad,” he croons. “We’ve been searching

for you.”

Pulse quickening, Alder pivots her gaze to Fallon Bane, who gloats at her from astride her multi-eyed dragon, a dark wand

in her hand. Fallon and Vogel are surrounded by an army, spectral fingers of Shadow mist rising around them from the plaza’s

stone floor.

Alder looks around frantically as her sense of her kindred eagle’s proximity intensifies. The heat in her rootlines turns

agonizing, her trees crying out to her as they burn, the giant Shadow trees the Mages cast over Cyme looming mockingly above.

Rage blasting through her, Alder raises her living branch and aims it straight at Vogel.

“Go ahead, greenling,” Fallon Bane chides, a smug smile overtaking her mouth as she raises her dark wand toward the distant

sky.

Roaring wind powers to life over Alder’s flaming Forest, forming churning clouds rife with black lightning. Two tornadoes

descend from the unnatural clouds, and Alder watches, wide-eyed, as they funnel toward the flaming trees.

An explosion detonates, and Alder flinches, her rootlines contracting painfully as the gray Shadowfire whips into the tornadoes,

then bursts over a huge expanse of her Forest. A vision slashes through Alder’s mind’s eye, overtaking her sight—her beloved

animals futilely trying to flee from the terrifying Shadowfire as her miraculous Forest, more complex than any human city,

burns. Color is stripped away from the Forest as it falls to the unnatural fire, the Shadow leaving behind only gray waste

just as it has in the city, consuming all color except for the green of the Mages’ skin, the Forest green hue of her own skin,

and the emerald green of Vestylle’s.

And the green glow of her and Vestylle’s magic.

Warrior fury sizzles through Alder, and she glares daggers at the evil forces before her. A spell snarling from her throat,

she raises her branch once more, tenses her rootlines, and pulls on her power...

... only to find it depleting to char as her kindred Forest is murdered, tree by tree.

“It’s working,” Vogel observes to Fallon, all the Mages’ eyes focused on Alder with glittering looks of anticipation.

Panic rising, Alder glances down to find the hue of her hands and lower arms graying as her power is siphoned out of her.

In some small recess of her grief-razed mind, realization hits. They’re experimenting on her. Her gaze slides to the Shadow Wand in Vogel’s hand, and she can feel it. Feel the Wand eating her Forest’s magical aura and siphoning away both her power and the elemental magic of the trees

as her Forest burns, its magic morphing into twisted Void power...

“Azion!” Alder screams again, the name torn from her heart.

Time is running out. Her shield is wavering along with her diminishing power, and Vestylle will have to seal the portals in

a matter of minutes. But in this moment, she doesn’t care. She can sense Azion, her beloved winged one, right here .

Commander Damion Bane emerges from the Shadow mist, gliding into view on dragonback, a bright, wicked smile on his face as

his dragon halts beside his sister’s.

His green eyes narrow on Alder with delight. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He raises a limp golden eagle in the air, the bird’s talons gripped in his fist.

The ground seems to shift beneath Alder’s feet, and she almost drops to her knees.

All the gold and russet hues have been stripped from Azion’s beautiful form, only pale gray remaining, one of his wings nearly

torn off. Black blood cakes his feathers, his injured wing hanging limply from his body. His powerful beak is tied with dark

Shadow vine, and his once golden eyes... they’re ash-hued as they meet Alder’s gaze with a misery so acute that Alder fears

she might come undone.

In that split second as their eyes meet, a thousand memories flash through Alder’s mind. Countless sunsets with Azion on her

shoulder. The two of them nestled high in the trees of their Forest. Watching Azion’s first hatchlings emerge, proud joy in

both their breasts...

Damion hoists the eagle and shakes him like one might shake a sack of millet. “It was crawling toward your shield,” he sneers.

“Was it looking for you? Put up an impressive fight, I’ll admit. I enjoyed breaking it. It flopped around so pathetically

after I smashed its wing.”

Wrath surges through Alder’s veins. With a growl, she leaps toward Damion Bane, ready to hurl herself through her sputtering

shield, even as every military instinct within her blares out Stop! It’s a trap! and Vogel raises his Wand...

The door behind her bangs open, and a cord whips around her ankles and wrists, then gives a violent backward tug.

A protest bursts from Alder as her legs are pulled out from under her just as Vogel’s bolt of Shadow hits her shield, the

decaying barrier punching inward, its green hue turning gray.

“Stop!” Alder growls as the side of her shoulder and face collide with the tiled ground and she’s slid backward. She glances behind

her, finding herself tethered by glowing emerald Varg cords, Vestylle dragging her toward the Queenhall’s Subland entrance

as Azion lets out another soul-breaking squawk of distress.

Clawing futilely for purchase, Alder looks toward the Mages just as Vestylle blasts out green rays of light from her stylus.

Several suspended Varg runes, big as wagon wheels, flash into existence and hurtle toward the Queenhall’s dome-shield.

The runes slam into the shield and are absorbed, Vestylle’s Varg power racing over the translucent green barrier and overtaking

the gray just as Vogel levels another blast of Shadow power at their barrier. Its surface punches in farther this time, Alder’s

desperation skyrocketing.

Azion is so close .

“Let me GO!” Alder rages at Vestylle.

“NO!” Vestylle snarls back at her, just as Alcippe Feyir races out of the Queenhall and takes hold of one of Alder’s tethers, the

huge rose-hued Amaz warrior aiding Vestylle in dragging Alder backward.

“The Mages want to trap you and take hold of you!” Vestylle grinds out. “Just like they took Wynter and Valasca as their prisoners!”

“Azion!” Alder cries, half hearing Vestylle as she struggles against her bonds and is towed by both Vestylle and Alcippe toward the

doorway.

“You will live , Dryad’kin!” Vestylle insists as they near the door, the sorceress’s voice breaking with emotion. “You will live to avenge

Azion!”

“No... NO!” Alder screams as she’s pulled through the open door and Vogel’s viperlike expression turns venomous.

“We’ll track you down, tree filth,” Vogel promises, giving Damion Bane a quick, prodding look.

Damion shoots Alder a smile and grips Azion’s head, then wrenches it around so hard Alder can hear the crunching break.

“No!” she screams again, her whole world caving in around her as she senses Azion’s pulse cease. “NO!”

Damion Bane’s amused chuckle is the last thing Alder hears before she’s hauled down the stone stairs, screaming, the entire

world reduced to the shattering of her heart. She continues to scream, barely noticing herself being yanked through a winding

tunnel and thrown through the shimmering gold interior of the last remaining charged portal, set for the East.

Alder hurtles out of the portal’s golden maw and is thrust into a purple Forest with gray-tinged leaves, her stomach heaving.

Her grayed hands slap down on violet grass, and she gasps for breath. She looks around frantically, not knowing how long she’s

been caught in the portal’s lag.

Has it been days? Weeks? She’s certain the lag was significant, with so many people traveling such a vast distance through

the portal, the lag longer still for the last ones through.

Beyond the trees’ purple canopy, she can just make out a decimated mountain range. Its upper half looks like it’s been blasted

away, tendrils of Shadow rising from it, the sight increasing her alarm.

Alder’s bonds dissolve, and she springs up, whirls around, and leaps back toward the portal only to find herself stumbling straight through its fading form.

“Azion!” she cries with such force she almost vomits, her legs buckling as the last of her magic shreds inside her, the remaining

traces of her green glimmer turning full gray.

Overcome by despair and the soul-crushing sensation of her dying distant Forest, she falls to her knees. The heartbreaking

image of the tortured Azion and the sound of his last pained cry tear through her devastated mind again and again and again .

Alder throws back her head and wails, dropping her now lifeless branch to the ground, her kindred gone, her Forest gone.

Her Dryad heart destroyed.

She remains there, gutted by grief, knowing the only reason she survived the murder of her kindred Forest is that her lineage

is not full Dryad.

She rises shakily from the purple brush as Vestylle, Alcippe, and a clutch of Amaz soldiers step toward her, their faces as

grave as the overcast sky.

Growling, Alder springs at Vestylle and shoves her with the last of her strength.

Vestylle stumbles backward, looking distraught. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, tears glazing her silver eyes. “Alder, I’m so

sorry—”

“Leave. Me. Be ,” Alder snarls back in Dryadin, not caring that Vestylle doesn’t understand the language. Not caring about anything .

Lips trembling, Vestylle holds up her palms in surrender.

Alder turns and stumbles away from them all, shambling toward the edge of the purple clearing, before her legs give way and

she crumples into a magic-depleted heap.

“Leave me alone!” she hisses at any Amaz who tries to come near, knowing she’s now a destroyed thing, none of them understanding. None of them of Dryad blood. With Azion and her kindred Forest, she was never broken, never alone, even though it was often a

lonely path, being the sole Dryad’kin amongst the Amaz. But now ... now she is truly alone and broken, despite her bonds to her adopted people. She’s forever forsaken without her Forest,

like an animal whose habitat and sustenance has been annihilated, her rootlines stripped bare.

Shattered, Alder sits for a long time and watches the Amaz soldiers come and go, until dusk descends and thunder rolls across

the bleak gray sky.

“When she gets hold of herself, we’re going to need her,” Alcippe says to Vestylle.

Alder looks on listlessly as the warriors turn toward where she’s still bunched up on the ground at the edge of the clearing in the gloomy twilight. Alder can practically feel the grief spitting off her own grayed skin, her rootlines stripped raw. Killed off, like her Forest.

Like Azion.

“She needs time,” Vestylle insists, face tense. “She just lost her Forest. Her kindred —”

“There is no time !” Alcippe snaps back, her tattooed features twisting. “The Mages used their attack on Noilaan as practice . The destruction of Amazakaraan was practice . And killing the greatest queen who ever lived, more practice !” Alcippe shakes her head, seeming too choked up to continue.

Grief for Queen Alkaia knifes through Alder, followed by a welling of rancid misery for her friend Valasca and the gentle

Icaral Wynter Eirllyn, both taken prisoner by the Mages.

Alcippe drags her hand across her eyes, swiping away tears. “Apparently, while we were all caught in the portal lag, the Mage

Roaches annexed the entirety of Issaan. Refugees are streaming into Noilaan. The Issani brought the last surviving flock of

their giant Saffron Eagles with them, but the birds are going to die. They won’t eat. They need their natural habitat, but

it’s gone. The Mages razed Issaan’s entire Olneya Forest.”

Vestylle glances at Alder with concern, and Alder knows her friend is worried about the mention of eagles and forests. And

she’s right to be. It’s like a knife strike straight through Alder’s chest to hear of yet more displaced eagles and their

destroyed habitat. She also knows that the destruction of the giant Saffron Eagles and their Forest is a chilling omen written

about in the Issani religious texts, signaling the triumph of the incoming Shadow evil.

Stricken, Alder looks toward the decimated Vo Mountain Range. She overheard that they’re in Noilaan’s Vo Forest, about a league

north of Voloi. But even this far from the city, the purple trees carpeting the mountain’s slope are tinged gray, a remnant

of Vogel’s Shadow attack on Voloi.

The Magedom’s Shadow poison entrenched here in the East just as it is in the West.

Alcippe gestures toward her. “We’re going to need Alder’s forest-empath abilities to read where Elloren Gardner Grey is through

the trees.”

Alder startles. Through her morass of grief, her every last Dryad sense pricks up. The recesses of her mind light with memories of her moments in Verpacia with Elloren Gardner Grey, a Dryad-lineage one. An untethered Mage, like all Mages, shunned by the Forest.

But Elloren... she was different from so many Mages. So much so that Alder and Valasca allied with her to rescue trafficked

Selkies as well as to free the Icaral Ariel Haven and the Icaral child Pyrgo from Valgard’s prison.

Every nerve on alert, Alder listens as Alcippe and Vestylle converse in low tones. Alcippe conveys what they’ve learned of

the Magedom’s attack on the Eastern Realm—Voloi and its Wyvernguard are in ruins. And a freak explosion took out the top half

of the Vo Mountain Range and Vogel’s hidden Shadow forces within it, that explosion responsible for saving the rest of Noilaan

from Mage invasion and complete Shadow destruction.

“I was right about the Crow Witch,” Alcippe says, her tone as weighty as the huge axe strapped to her back. “Elloren Gardner

Grey is Vogel’s witch now. She conjured a great Shadow tree over the Vo River. Almost destroyed the entirety of Voloi and

beyond until the Icaral male Yvan Guryev struck her down, as I should have when I had the chance.”

Urgency lights in Alder, her mother’s blood swelling in her veins with its mix of Wyvern, Urisk, and Ishkart heritage. Alder

remembers her Wyvern senses picking up the fire churning in Yvan Guryev, back when she thought him Yvan Guriel, part Fire

Fae, never suspecting the wings he was hiding. She also remembers how his fire burned for Elloren Gardner Grey.

And Elloren... her desire to fight against the Magedom and for her allies and loved ones was true.

And she burned for Yvan Guryev in return.

Alder chews over this information, shocked that Yvan was the one to bring the Black Witch down. Then shocked again as she

listens, with her Wyvern hearing, to learn that Elloren escaped the Eastern Realm, Vogel having taken over her body and mind.

Alder’s grief implodes into an abyss, scouring her out fully.

Because things are truly over for every Forest on Erthia.

It’s only a matter of time.

With his captive Black Witch and growing Shadow power, Vogel will be unstoppable .

So, a few hours later, when Alcippe calls to her in a stilted attempt at a gentle voice, “Alder, Queen Freyja has summoned you to her,” instead of heeding the call to any queen, Alder gets up on unsteady legs and walks away from Alcippe and Vestylle.

Because it’s all over.

“Let her go,” she hears Vestylle urge as Alder stumbles into the unfamiliar purple woods, not caring about the tears blurring

her vision, not caring if she walks through this foreign wilderness until she passes out. Wanting to die with the last remnants

of living Forest.

As the purple trees close in around her and thunder drums in the distance, this Forest’s unfamiliar birdsong wrenches her

heart anew.

Eventually, Alder falls to her knees, wave upon wave of sorrow swamping her. She presses her palms to the dark purple trunk

before her, hangs her head and weeps.

She senses the Forest waking up to her. Senses the settling of its gentle aura around her shoulders like a soft cloak. And

then, its rippling wave of connection, Tree’kin to Tree’kin.

The love and complex beauty in this purple Forest’s enfolding energy shatters Alder’s heart anew, because she knows what’s

coming—the Magedom’s Shadow magic is going to consume this Forest whole , along with every other surviving Forest.

And a world without Forest, without trees, is finished .

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 end alone and 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 full Dryad green, 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 a Dryad Witch.

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. Everyone will 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. Vogel knows that 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 massing against 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’s impossible .

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.

The image of a Wand-Stylus, glowing green and edged with prismatic light, shimmers into Alder’s mind.

A rush of connection to that Wand-Stylus whips around her, coursing through her with chest-expanding force, the palm of her

right hand tingling. Alder pulls her hand away from the trunk and draws in a shocked breath as she finds the image of III—the

Great Tree and Heart of the Forest—imprinted on her palm. She peers up at the purple canopy, tears in her eyes, as she realizes

what this purple Vo Forest is doing.

Marking her as its Guardian.

“I can’t be Guardian to you,” she chokes out. “My kindred has been murdered . I cannot be Guardian without a kindred.”

A crackling of twigs sounds, and Alder turns as an emaciated, horse-size eagle staggers toward her. Its singed feathers are

a wash of grays, its eyes dulled by devastation, burn marks on its taloned feet.

“Oh,” Alder says, compassion tightening her chest as fresh tears well. As she realizes this damaged Forest is bringing her

a fellow orphan.

And this giant winged one isn’t a gray eagle at all.

This is one of the Saffron Eagles from the decimated Central Desert lands, stripped of her color by Shadow and torn from her

home. Alder can sense the bird’s grief over this strange new place. Over the wrongness of this habitat.

“Both of us,” she says to the eagle, her voice breaking, “both of us have lost our habitat.”

Alder holds out a shaking hand, and the eagle nears cautiously, then lowers her great head, Alder’s palm meeting grayed feathers. They touch, forehead to forehead, and Alder is flooded with the bird’s heartbreak, her hands trembling against feathers and bark.

And as much as her own heart is broken in this moment, as much as her kindred’s death feels like it destroyed her very soul,

a remaining shard of Alder’s heart knows that this new Forest, a Forest that has just weathered its own devastating blow...

It’s calling to her.

Calling her to take this equally battered bird as kindred. To bind with this Forest as Guardian, even with the unstoppable

Shadow bearing down. To find the allies of the Dryad Witch—her fellow Forest Guardian—so they can save Elloren Gardner Grey.

And to find the Forest’s Wand of Power—the Verdyllion, the Great Wand of Myth.

And so, even though her body quivers with grief, Alder summons her last remnant of courage and answers the Dryad call.

“I accept you,” she says in Dryadin to the bird, voice breaking as she caresses the side of the eagle’s great head. “In the

name of Azion, my beloved, I accept you as kindred.” She looks to the gray-tinged purple canopy above, pressing her free palm

to bark. “And I accept you, Vo Forest, as Guardian’kin. I will fight for you. I will die for you. I pledge myself to you,

Forest kindred.”

Silence descends, even the chirring of insects momentarily ceasing.

And then, the Forest’s aura loosens in a great rumble and flows in, a huge sigh pushed through Alder’s chest as the trees’

Life-giving energy rushes through her rootlines, restoring her Dryad magic, the tingling energy passing from her into her

eagle, who shivers, as well. Alder’s eyes widen as the deep-green glimmer of her skin returns and a violet branching pattern

spreads over it, even as a smattering of the great eagle’s grayed feathers morph into the color of flame, the eagle’s eyes

brightening to orange.

Fireling. The Saffron Eagle’s Issani name lights in Alder’s mind.

“Well met, Fireling,” Alder says, her heart swelling. “We will fight together, Great One, for what’s left of our Forest.”

More rustling echoes in the woods, and Alder gasps as six more emaciated gray eagles move toward her, then three more. Forest

power rushes through the root-rich ground toward the eagles, and they stiffen, smatterings of gray feathers turning flame-hued,

their dulled eyes lighting into sunburnt orange.

“My flock,” Alder whispers, realizing in one monumental sweep of emotion that no one is ever truly lost, truly alone.

Not while there are trees still rooted and breathing on Erthia’s soil.

The Shadow is coming for the land , she thinks to her displaced flock and battered Forest. It’s coming for you. But it’s also coming for the Air and the Life-giving Waters.

It’s coming.

She looks at each of the eagles in turn. “Who here will fight with me for the Forest?”

The eagles fan out their wings as one and lower themselves to the ground, wings to roots, as pride bursts through Alder’s

breast.

“We fight then, kindreds,” she vows, Dryad and Amaz steel rising.

Forest steel rising.

“In the name of Azion, free eagle of the Caledonian Mountains,” Alder vows, “we fight for the surviving Forest.”

Purple branches from every nearby tree drop down around her, one landing in Alder’s lap. Tears mist her eyes, and power from

the ground rushes into her and thrums through her Dryad rootlines.

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.