Chapter Fifteen

Vo Guardians

Tierney Calix

Northern Forest

Eighteen days after Xishlon

Tierney watches, transfixed, as Yvan and Elloren draw each other into a passionate kiss beneath the Great Ironwood Tree, III. The giant raven beside her shivers, Tierney’s palm pressed to the great bird’s onyx feathers, as Elloren and Yvan ignite.

The conflagration enveloping Yvan and Elloren blazes gold, then . . . green.

The backflow of their magic’s green aura blasts through Tierney’s rising water power, the surrounding world briefly tinting with the color. The Great Tree’s planet-strong magic pulses through it all, its verdant mist flowing outward to enfold the surrounding Dryads and giant ravens and kindred animals as well as both Tierney and Viger, who’s standing behind her. A buzzy static still tingles over Tierney’s skin from her Dryad-portal journey here with Viger and the giant ravens.

The Great Tree’s mist flows into Tierney, a sudden craving for the Natural Balance overtaking her, filling her with vertigo as she’s swept up in the unmooring sensation of the whole of Erthia tipping off-kilter, desperately needing to be righted, her water magic taking a swirling turn for deep-water dark.

Abruptly hyperaware of Viger’s primordial magic pulsing against her back, Tierney stiffens against the urge to let her magic fall into his, the memory of his all-consuming Death Fae kiss quickening her breath.

The green-tinted world shudders into a darker hue, and she turns to find Viger right there, his horns up, his midnight eyes intent on hers, as if he’s caught up in the same memory, the palpable flare of his low-resonating, primal energy deepening her pulse.

She swallows as a phantom-caress of Viger’s living Darkness traces her lips, the Great Tree’s powerful aura swirling through both his thrall and her water aura, intensifying the potency of their attraction.

As if the whole of Erthia wants them to fall into each other and fully join their magic.

Asrai . . . Viger’s rattled voice shivers through her, achingly resonant.

“What magic is this?”

Tierney wonders aloud as she holds Viger’s stare, the feral current rising between them like blackened water crashing against a dam that Tierney yearns to break.

On instinct, she grasps hold of Viger and pulls him close at the same time that his strong hands take hold of her and he fully wraps his thrall around her, her heart tripping over itself as he draws her into a kiss and she’s enveloped in a swirl of his intoxicating Darkness.

A moan escapes Tierney, the darkening scene wavering and growing blurred as the Forest and the Great Tree and everyone surrounding them is overtaken by Viger’s deep-night thrall.

Tierney arches against him, all rational thought swept away as they go skidding, rapids-fast, into a whirlpool of pure, magical want.

Give me all your fears, Viger shivers through her mind as he deepens the kiss, gravity giving way as Tierney surrenders to the swooping sensation of dropping down with him into Erthia’s center. Trembling with want, she opens her mouth to him, opens herself up to his flickering, purple tongue as it twines around hers in an entrancingly serpentine way that has heat curling through her body, the intoxicating motion of his tongue hinting at the things he might be capable of if she joined with him fully.

Sweet holy gods.

A ravenous energy enters his kiss, and an undertow of her darkening water power breaks loose to capture them both.

Viger shudders against her as they lapse into a frenzy, as if desperate to meld power, their kiss turning devouring as gravity gives way, the two of them now prone and submerged in Tierney’s dark waters, waves whooshing around them.

A sense of Tierney’s Vo River bond abruptly rises, deep in her core, then gives a magic-upending pull.

Shock flashes through both her aura and Viger’s as they liquefy, the two of them suddenly flowing through the aquifers under the Northern Forest, racing southeast through nature’s watery Matrix, pulled by Tierney’s tether to her kindred Vo River, the tether now startlingly and fully bound to another power . . .

Viger’s thrall.

Tierney’s natural sense of Erthia’s waterways blurs as their speed increases, their fused auras funneling, flowing, and switchbacking through underground waterways, then up through countless aboveground tributaries, rivers, and streams.

Before sloshing to a sudden halt.

Abruptly, they shift to solid form, still caught up in Viger’s Darkness, their bodies wrapped around each other, the two of them lying on what Tierney immediately senses is the Vo River’s damp, sandy riverbank, at least a league upstream from Voloi . . .

Dizzy with vertigo, Tierney blinks, Viger’s Darkness receding to reveal an unnaturally gray twilight. Viger is on top of her, their limbs entangled, his tongue flickering against her neck as they lie there entwined.

At Fyordin Lir and Or’myr Syll’vir’s feet.

With a stinging bolt of alarm, Tierney takes in Fyordin’s expression of burgeoning fury and the explosion of purple lightning in Or’myr’s green eyes.

Before she can voice her protest, Or’myr and Fyordin launch themselves at Viger and haul him off her, Fyordin’s water aura rushing out to lash around Tierney with protective force. Viger wrests himself from their grip in a blur, horns up, dark claws snapping out as he thrusts his palms forward.

A sonic boom splices through Tierney’s ears as an arc of Viger’s power blasts from his palms and punches both Or’myr and Fyordin backward through the air.

They hit the riverbank, and Tierney flinches, but they’re back on their feet in a flash, Or’myr pulling a wand and Fyordin conjuring a roiling ball of water above his palm.

“Stop!”

Tierney cries as she hurls herself between Or’myr, Fyordin, and Viger.

“Release her from your thrall!”

Or’myr growls at Viger, his eyes spitting purple lightning as he levels his wand at the Death Fae.

“I’m not under his thrall!”

Tierney counters in an unfortunate shriek. “If anything, he might be a bit under mine!”

“You dare summon Death?”

Viger booms at Or’myr and Fyordin, his disturbingly low-pitched voice pulsing in from all sides, every hair on Tierney’s body rising, the twilight world strobing Dark with his primordial power.

Ridiculously unintimidated, Fyordin and Or’myr take a confrontational step toward him.

“Why are you linked to her, Deathkin?”

Fyordin demands as he readies a hurricane level of power in his suspended ball of water. “I can feel your incursion into our Vo bond! We summoned Tierney here. Not you.”

His storming eyes flick up and down Viger. “What have you done to her?”

“He didn’t do anything to me,”

Tierney snaps, swiping her hand at Viger. “And I can handle his thrall!”

Viger swivels his gaze to hers, eyes gone fully Dark.

A single pulse of his power sends Tierney’s thoughts careening, the world flashing to black, a chill, claw-sharp warning racing down her spine, his unspoken message clear—No, in fact, you really can’t handle my thrall.

He’s holding back, Tierney realizes. He’s been holding his power back all along.

Viger turns and squints at Fyordin, twin black snakes now looped around his shoulders. The serpents let out a hiss that seems to come from everywhere at once, and Tierney is momentarily lost to the siphoning sensation of Viger reading the full extent of Fyordin’s and Or’myr’s protective fear pertaining to her, his power strengthening against it.

“Tierney and I are now linked,”

Viger states in a bone-resonating tone, his Darkness consolidating into ropy lines of black smoke, suspended around them both. “Bound by our Xishlon kiss.”

Shock explodes through Tierney, every last trace of intimidation falling away. “Bound?”

she sputters.

“Wait,”

Fyordin exclaims, outrage gleaming in the Vo-hued eyes he’s locked with hers, “you took the Death Fae as your Xishlon’vir?”

Tierney gapes at Fyordin, bristling at the ire in his tone. But the angry response clamoring in her throat lodges tight as she takes in the betrayal flashing through Fyordin’s gaze.

“Tierney,”

Or’myr says with lethal calm, his eyes narrowed on Viger, the threat of violence flashing in them, his wand still leveled, “are you certain you’re acting under your own free will?”

Tierney inwardly curses. “I am,”

she admits, a fitful storm cloud forming above her head.

Or’myr eyes Viger warily, seeming wholly unconvinced as Tierney’s rain starts to fall. Or’myr’s eyes flick toward hers, his voice tight when it comes. “May I ask, approximately, when on Xishlon that this kiss took place?”

Chagrin slams down, Tierney’s chest stiffening against it as she remembers how she slid that Xishlon’lure necklace around Or’myr’s neck. And how much she wanted to kiss him. To be with him. And how crushed she felt when they did kiss and his lightning aura sent that unbearable shock of pain through her lips.

“Before Vogel’s invasion,”

she rasps. “I kissed Viger soon after I kissed you, all of it of my own free will.”

She can feel the sudden press of Viger’s penetrating stare as well as the jealous disturbance sputtering through Fyordin’s water aura, a pained slash of violet lightning striking through Or’myr’s green eyes.

“Hold up,”

Fyordin demands, his storming power barely contained now, a scandalized look on his face. “You took them both as your Xishlon’virs?”

Tierney’s temper snaps its leash. “That’s right,”

she bites out, her rain beginning to sheet down, thunder rippling through her enlarging cloud. “I took them both as my Xishlon’virs. And you know what, Fyordin? None of this matters right now!”

“Oh, it matters,”

Or’myr rejoins, his flashing green eyes fixing on Viger like twin blades. “Did you fully inform her what kissing you means?”

Viger’s snakes hiss at Or’myr as Viger’s horns elongate, forming sharper points than Tierney has yet seen on them. Angled threateningly toward Or’myr.

“What does it mean, Viger?”

Tierney demands, undaunted by his spiky horns.

“It means,”

Or’myr cuts in, “that he can enter your dreams now. And he can infiltrate your mind through your fears. Isn’t that right, Viger?”

Viger hisses, a larger portion of his thrall breaking free to encircle Tierney in a powerful whirl of dark mist just as Fyordin hurls out his invisible water aura to lash around her and batter against Viger’s power . . . and then, incredibly, purple lightning forks through all of it.

Tierney’s temper turns cyclonic.

Gritting her teeth, she balls her fists and swipes her arms outward, releasing a huge blast of her own power’s aura.

Their magic explodes, her magic forcing theirs back as her rain sheets down with pummeling force.

They all gape at her, even Viger’s snakes seeming a bit stunned by her magical outburst.

“I said, this isn’t important!”

Tierney growls, lips rain-slicked. “I don’t care if you can all invade my dreams and infiltrate my fears! Maybe I took a hundred Xishlon’virs!”

Fyordin draws back, eyes wide. “Maybe I kissed everyone who crossed my path on Xishlon!”

she exclaims. “None of that matters right now!”

“Yes it does, Asrai!”

Fyordin booms, a storm spitting to life over his own head as he levels a finger at Viger. “You disappearing with . . . him, matters! Because I’ve needed you for eighteen straight days and couldn’t find you!”

Eighteen straight days?

Panic rears. Tierney thrusts her hands out then slams her palms down. Her rainstorm falls along with Fyordin’s, clouds meeting earth and instantly turning into mist twining up from the riverbed. Her gaze sweeps up toward the unnaturally gray sky, and she zeroes in on the gauzy half-moon in the darkening twilight where a full purple Xishlon moon hung what seems like only the night before.

The world tilts from the force of her disorientation, and Tierney’s eyes snap toward the Shadow-free surface of the Vo River, the Shadow-smoking, half-decimated Vo Mountain Range just beyond. The runic ward-net she and Viger placed over the entire Vo River to keep magic out of it is still blessedly in place, their runes rippling against its waters. The invading Mages and their broken dragons and other nightmarish Shadow creatures—she can’t spot them anywhere. It’s as if the skies have been stripped clear of them.

Eighteen straight days . . .

“My . . . my family . . .”

Tierney stammers.

“I checked on them,”

Or’myr reassures her. “They’re fine and sheltering in the Sublands.”

Her thoughts spin. “We went through a Dryad portal . . .”

she starts, eyes still pinned on the Vo.

“Which are slow as pine tar,”

Or’myr rigidly supplies. “Alder Xanthos surmised as much. She read your location in the trees.”

Tierney’s rattled gaze swings to Or’myr’s drenched form, his flashing eyes. She takes in the emerald Varg color-fixing rune on the side of his glistening purple neck, there to hold his color against Shadow. A type of rune that takes days to fabricate . . .

Portal lag, Viger hisses into her mind, and her hackles rise over the potent clarity of his voice right in the center of her head.

She shoots him an acid glare, and Viger gives her an unrepentant look in return that sends a chill through her, whatever ardent emotion there was in him in the Northern Forest now gone. Replaced by that impenetrable Death Fae veneer. But there’s no time to think too deeply on any of it as a fuller clarity of exactly what’s happened descends—

The Dryad portal she and Viger traveled through with the flock of giant ravens contained a huge lag. And then, not long after they arrived in the Northern Forest on the heels of Elloren and Yvan, Or’myr and Fyordin figured out a way to pull her back to the East through the Vo River bond she shares with Fyordin.

And Viger was drawn back with me, she pieces together, through some Death-magic binding in his kiss.

“Why did you pull me back?”

Tierney shakily demands of Or’myr and Fyordin, her anger sliding into overwhelming concern in response to the tidal energy running through Fyordin’s aura.

“Vogel is going after the East’s waterways,”

Fyordin growls. “He attacked the Salish Ocean with a huge mass of Shadow that’s making contact with the Southern Vo River, and the shielding you set down won’t hold for long against it.”

He glances south, eyes storming. “I need to more powerfully shield our River to protect its southern waters. But I can’t cast spells into the Vo because you warded it against all magical incursion. Working with him.”

He shoots Viger another furious look, maelstrom intense.

Her alarm exploding, Tierney abandons them all and rushes into her Vo, water sloshing around her legs. She throws out her arms and dives headfirst into the River, her beloved Vo’s cool waters closing around her in an impassioned embrace, a school of silvery fish affectionately brushing by.

Tierney glides toward her River’s center and arrows down to the Vo’s bed, immediately sensing that the River’s power is braced defensively against an incoming threat. She splays out her arms, closes her eyes and meets with the riverbed, pressing her body against its soft, wet earth.

Flashes of images accost her mind.

A Void sea.

The dark, raised mass of it looming at the Vo River’s southern base. Multi-eyed kraken and other grotesque, Shadow-elongated sea animals and flying Shadow sea demons ready to rush in with the sea to terrorize Noilaan.

But then . . . the rise of a wall of monumental, storming water magic, battling back the Shadow sea to hold it at bay. The water magic linked to a young man who is part Selkie, part Mage . . .

Gareth Keeler.

Shock flashes through Tierney, her focus suddenly whiplashed away from the South and toward the North by some other force, the images not coming from her River this time . . .

. . . but from her kelpies.

Tierney’s every muscle goes taut, her bond to her kelpies abruptly shot through with vivid alarm as Tierney is filled with the awareness of them bound in the North somehow, sending out flare upon flare of distress to her for days, desperately searching for her to no avail.

Her throat tightens as images of what her kelpies are witnessing in the Vo River’s northernmost reaches blast through her mind . . .

Gray Shadow curling above the Vo’s northern waters. Ready to choke the life out of water and fish and plants and surrounding trees as it siphons up the Vo’s elemental power, the Vo-protecting wards she and Viger extended there encased in Shadow and rapidly graying . . .

Terror spikes through Tierney, and she thrusts herself up from the riverbed, breathing in gulp after heaving gulp of water. She’s sensed this Shadow power before, when Elfin Marfoir assassins came for Wynter Eirllyn.

But now it’s coming for her River.

A scream straining to tear from her throat, Tierney darts up toward the Vo’s surface and breaks through. Water power surging, she swims rapidly back to shore, another storm cloud bursting from her and expanding overhead, rain spitting over this entire swath of Vo and riverbank.

“Vogel’s forces are about to break through our Vo warding!”

she cries out as her feet meet land and she looks to Viger’s, Or’myr’s, and Fyordin’s rain-slicked forms. Pausing waist-deep in the Vo, she meets Viger’s solid black gaze. “Our wards are decaying. Vogel’s forces are getting ready to send a Shadow mass into my River’s northernmost reaches. What’s happening in the South . . . it’s part of a two-pronged attack on the Vo. We need to get North. We need to strike this magic down!”

Viger bursts into dark mist and Fyordin morphs into water, and then the two of them are suddenly right there, beside her, waist deep in the Vo as Or’myr launches himself toward her, splashing through the water until he, too, stands by her side.

“Read my fears!”

Tierney cries to Viger, gripping his pale wrist.

Viger stiffens at the contact, an unsettling shiver of his Darkness passing through her.

Undaunted, she tightens her grip on him. “Read them all!”

Viger’s brow tenses, his eyes going half-lidded as a shudder passes through his body. His eyes snap fully open, and his otherworldly gaze turns knowing. Tierney almost draws back from the way he’s looking at her as he brushes her fear, his purple tongue flickering out, forked, as if tasting it on the very air. He grimaces, stretching black lips over elongating teeth that he snaps once, as if he’s seeking to bite the fear out of her.

“You see?”

Tierney implores, her heart thundering with fear for her Vo.

I see, Asrai, he answers in her mind, dread lacing his words.

Tierney lets go of Viger and rounds on Fyordin, her urgency reaching a fever pitch. “We need to flash through the waters and get to the Northern Vo. Now!”

“Not alone, Asrai,”

Viger hisses, grabbing hold of her this time, claws digging in.

Furious lightning flashes through Tierney’s storm above. “Unhand me, Viger,”

she growls, ready to throw her full tempest at him.

“You need more power,”

he growls back. “Death power. Vogel’s forces will destroy you.”

“They’ll destroy all of you,”

Or’myr tersely interjects, shooting Viger a cutting glare. “You’re all Fae. Mark my words, they’ll be ready for you. With iron. 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 take days for you to get that far north! There’s no time! The Shadow is about to tear 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!”

“We can’t go to the Vu Trin,”

Or’myr shoots back. “Why do you think we’re here in an isolated area above Voloi, instead of in Voloi? The Vu Trin are hunting down every 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 the homicidal Black Witch who leveled Voloi?”

“I mean my 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 to strike her down is 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 bind us as 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 to kiss you 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.”

He glances 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 to all of 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 encircling her.

“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 sensation winds 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.

A vision of the Great Tree, III, flashes in Tierney’s mind, gravity giving way as they all turn to mist and spear north, as one, through the midnight black.