Chapter One

Shadow Wand Demon

Tierney Calix

Northern Vo River

Tierney swirls through Viger’s Darkness, wrapped in his misty embrace as they tunnel North through the Vo River’s waters. She clings to Viger’s long form, the two of them whirled into a blur, an echo of his Death Fae kiss brushing her lips. A kiss she can sense him holding himself back from repeating, his mouth firmly pressed to the nape of her neck.

She’s stunned by the potent edge of want in Viger, shuddering through the tether his Xishlon kiss set down between them, emanating from deep in his center. Their proximity makes it difficult to think around her own bond-fueled desire to merge with Viger’s Dark thrall, to fall into another of his tongue-twining, otherworldly kisses, even though she’s distantly aware of Or’myr and Fyordin also tethered around the two of them, the collective spiral of their partially dissolved forms accelerating through the Vo River with breathtaking speed.

Viger’s Darkness abruptly lifts, his powerful momentum halting.

Vertigo accosts Tierney in an Erthia-tilting swoop, her body jostling to a stop against Viger. She blinks, her eyes stinging from the abrupt switch from Viger’s otherworldly Dark to the underwater Northern Vo River’s shimmering gray light, she and Viger back in corporeal form, lying on the River’s soft bed, Or’myr and Fyordin beside them.

Dizziness swirling through her, Tierney takes in the three males clustered around her at the Vo’s base. Viger’s lips are still pressed to her neck, his sharp teeth lightly touching down, the flick of his tongue against her skin enticing in the extreme. Or’myr hugs her side, his strong hand grasping her upper arm with covetous force, a shock of purple electricity sizzling through the point of contact in an unnervingly exciting rush that only adds to the bond-fueled thrall of Viger’s kiss. And Fyordin . . . he’s holding on to her other arm, his kindred water power whooshing through her with emphatic, territorial might, as if seeking to drive Viger and Or’myr clear away from her.

Her own water power churns into turmoil in response to her bond-amplified attraction to all three of them. Tierney huffs out a hard, bubbling breath, struggling to regain her wits. She pushes at Viger, and his enticing closeness immediately breaks away as all three males pull back from her.

Viger’s Dark eyes meet hers, his arresting, pale features wavy under the water, and Tierney fights the urge to grab him and pull him back into a world-Darkening kiss.

It’s the Deathkin bond you’re feeling, Tierney cautions herself. Force it back! You need to think past it!

Viger gives her a discomfited look, and she can sense him struggling against the bond’s draw, as well. Both ensnared and disconcerted, Tierney averts her eyes from Viger’s rattled look only to meet Or’myr’s green gaze shot through with purple lightning. A shock of Or’myr’s power crackles against hers in a forking array, and Tierney shivers, stunned by her new bond-fueled ability to read Or’myr’s emotions in his magic like an empath, the intensity of his feelings for her blasting through his lightning in an ardent line of longing.

A color-streaked Rainbow Trout speeds past them and snares Tierney’s attention, her Vo-kindreds pulsing warning, warning, warning through her bond to her Waters. Tierney’s focus on her River’s life sharpens, a school of violet-glittering Noi Minnows as well as a multitude of other aquatic creatures swimming past them in panicked flight.

All of them fleeing south.

Concern eddies through Tierney’s water power, cutting through her mind-scattering bond-pull to Viger, Or’myr, and Fyordin, the fishes’ collective terrified energy prompting a surge of alarm.

Tierney’lin!

Every one of Tierney’s nerves spikes to alert as her kelpies’ cries flow in, along with a wavering, watery image of them trapped inside a ring of iron spikes hammered into the Vo’s bed.

Tierney glances up, frantically scanning the water above them, a more intense alarm racing through her power as she spots a line of glowing gray runes shivering to life on the Vo’s surface to the far north. She squints, her gaze snagging on a slowly advancing tide of gray in the distance, seeping toward them through the Vo’s pristine water, gradually overtaking the Deathkin-and-Asrai runes marked on the Vo’s surface that she and Viger set down to wall off Shadow power, the runes incrementally morphing to gray.

The sense of a nightmare descending shocks through Tierney’s system as she takes in the dead fish and crustaceans floating in the gray tide, the creatures multi-eyed and oddly grayed . . .

Fyordin’s flood of shock rushes through Tierney with typhoon force, their eyes meeting in a flash of Asrai horror. Her stunned gaze pivots to Viger, who has gone preternaturally still, his eyes narrowed on the incoming threat, as Or’myr draws his stone-encrusted violet wand, a stark look overtaking his expression. Or’myr’s neck tightens, his power bursting into desperate, lightning-flashing chaos.

A dire thought pierces Tierney—Or’myr can’t breathe underwater. And if he surfaces . . . he’ll fall into the hands of whatever evil lies above.

Urgency exploding through their power, Tierney and Fyordin launch themselves at Or’myr at the same moment Viger’s ropes of Darkness lash around them all, pulling Tierney, Or’myr, and Fyordin in tight before speeding them south in a blur, away from the killing tide of gray.

Viger tugs them upward, and they surface inside a sheltered rocky inlet, the surrounding black stone shot through with lines of dark purple. The water is waist deep, an overcast twilight above, steely clouds roiling across the heavens.

Or’myr’s hand slaps down on the wet stone as he pulls in gasping breaths, brusquely nodding his thanks to Viger, as Tierney finds herself swept up in a sense of the elemental power of the Northern Vo’s headwaters being consumed and siphoned west.

“The Shadow power . . .”

she sputters “. . . it’s feeding on my River and killing the river life and my kelpies—”

Her words choke off as Viger raises a silencing hand and opens his mouth slightly, his forked, purple tongue flickering toward the Shadow threat to the north of them, as if he’s reading it on the very air.

Slowly, carefully, they rise and peer over the bank’s purple-veined, obsidian stones.

Alarm eddies through Tierney as she takes in the swarms of Mage soldiers gathered on the Northern Vo’s western and eastern banks, this narrow northernmost section of the Vo splitting into multiple tributaries just beyond.

Most of the Mage soldiers are massed around the bases of a great arc of Shadow runes that spans the River. The rune arc resembles a giant half portal, projecting a rippling pewter flow of Shadow into her Vo’s waters to create the poisonous tide that’s slowly advancing south toward them—the tide incrementally overtaking her and Viger’s warding, a small grove of Vo Cypress trees that grow beside the arc beginning to gray, the other trees edging her River’s banks graying, as well . . .

Tierney pivots her hand in the water, fully connecting with her Vo, instantly able to sense her kelpies’ weakened, dissolved forms at the base of the rune arc’s eastern side. The image of a spiraling Wand made of Shadow ripples through Tierney’s water power, the poisonous tide siphoning her River’s life into that Wand—the siphoning a full, consuming drain without any replenishing.

Bringing Void Death to her Waters.

A cyclonic whirlpool of rage gathers inside Tierney, a primal scream readying itself in her throat. She moves to launch herself toward the Mages as the Vo’s own avenger, Fyordin’s power rising beside hers, their combined Asrai might ready to break into a storming mass above them both.

Viger leaps at them, hurling out lashings of Darkness, forcefully binding not only Tierney and Fyordin, but Or’myr as well, his arms clamping around Tierney’s upper body.

Tierney opens her mouth to let loose a ferocious snarl of protest, but it gets lost as Viger dissolves them all into his swirling Dark once more, sweeping them down into a tunneling retreat.

Viger swiftly remanifests them all underwater, Tierney hissing and bucking against his iron grip as they surface within another stone-sheltered bank a much farther distance south from the invading Shadow tide.

“Let me go!”

she snarls at Viger, wrestling against his hold as he keeps both her and Fyordin bound but flicks a hand and releases Or’myr.

BE STILL! Viger’s words strike through Tierney’s mind with bone-vibrating force.

Both Fyordin’s and Tierney’s water auras burgeon inside them, Fyordin’s expression like a gathering thunderhead. “Release us right now, Deathling,”

Fyordin growls, “or we will send the Vo’s power straight through you!”

Or’myr levels his wand at Viger, his green eyes afire with purple lightning. “What are you doing, Viger?”

he inquires, lethally calm.

“Keeping Tierney’s and Fyordin’s storms at bay,”

Viger hisses as Tierney and Fyordin draw up cyclones of power. “If we are sighted,”

Viger bites out, “we will be destroyed.”

Fyordin’s cyclonic might stills, prompting Tierney’s out-of-control fury to intensify as a swift, dire look passes between the three men.

Tierney snarls, teeth gnashing, thrust into a maelstrom of outrage by their timidity in the face of their River’s murder. Darkness strobes through her vision, obliterating reason, the sight of the grayed waters and poisoned creatures fueling in her power the rush of a night-dark, cataclysmic force she’s never felt before.

She pulls in a harsh breath, readying enough water power to blast through Viger’s bonds, just as Viger tightens his hold and Or’myr raises his wand and levels it at her while Fyordin wrests hold of her magic through their Vo bond and yanks its flow toward his center.

“Control yourself, Asrai!”

Viger hisses, his claws biting into her arms.

Unable to contain her rage, Tierney wrests her invisible tempest from Fyordin and blasts it at Viger, obliterating his Dark bonds to mist, their powers shuddering against each other with vibrating force, the whole world seeming to tint to midnight.

“It’s the Void Death of no beginnings!”

she snarls at Viger. “They’re bringing Void Death to my River!”

“Yes,”

Viger hisses back, “and they’re going to succeed if you can’t get your power under control. Look!”

Viger flicks one clawed finger northward, and Tierney turns and peers through a gap in the stones of the rocky embankment. Her breath stutters as she takes in the huge demonic creature rising from the distant water, just below the arc of Shadow runes.

The beast’s horned, pale gray form unfurls and rises higher than the arc, higher than the surrounding tree canopies. Two huge gray insectile eyes bubble out of the creature’s eggshell-flat face, smaller eyes bulging into being around the two main ones. The creature sways over the River, its unnaturally long arms extending to embrace the runic arc.

The gray demon shivers, its neck arching back in a grotesque show of ecstasy, and Tierney’s outrage crackles through her inner storm as she senses the thing feeding on the Vo’s power through the killing gray tide.

“What is it?”

she demands of Viger, engulfed in pure horror.

“A primordial V’yexwraith demon,”

he hisses, his solid-black eyes fixed on the thing, a flicker of cold fury running through his Darkness. “Summoned from a runic Striike Void somewhere holding monumental power to the west of here.”

He turns his Dark gaze on her, a formidable urgency in it. “This demon will be difficult to best.”

Tierney fixes her gaze back on the V’yexwraith as her magic continues to surge and darken, whipping stronger and stronger, rapidly drawing on what feels like a line of Viger’s Darkness and churning toward reckless violence. A seething tremble kicks up inside her. She can feel the tang of the demon’s vast power in the air. A sliver of rational thought breaks through as she realizes why her allies are trying to keep her power from visually manifesting—because the only advantage they have is surprise.

Her storm of magic cannot break free.

“Help me control it,”

she rasps to Viger, grabbing hold of his arm. “I think our bond has opened up a pathway from your power to mine . . .”

A faint click click taps over the embankment’s stone just above them.

Viger lets out an unearthly hiss as a Marfoir’s salt-pale head rises above the stone’s apex, the Marfoir’s huge, bone-white spider legs bursting up. Four more Marfoir-spider Elves explode from the adjacent purple woods and run toward them in a blur of scuttling legs.

Viger releases Tierney and lunges at the beasts in a wild blur of Darkness, ripping off Marfoir heads and limbs with Dark claws and elongated teeth, while Tierney swiftly draws her power into her palms, and Or’myr levels his wand at a Marfoir coming in from the side. Growling out a spell, Or’myr blasts a bolt of purple fire clear through one of the insectile Elves while Fyordin throws out both hands and punches three more incoming Marfoir with a potent blast of water, sending them tumbling back toward the trees.

Frantic for her Vo, Tierney springs out of the sheltered rocky inlet.

The huge V’yexwraith beast’s malefic gray head angles toward her.

Tierney’s rage fires through every nerve as the V’yexwraith’s insectile eyes meet hers, the demon’s great slash of a mouth pulling back to reveal row upon row of sharp teeth as she’s overtaken by the sense of her Waters screaming.

Tierney’s Asrai warrior energy turns tidal, her River’s distress creating a whirlpool in her rage, spiraling it into a frenzy. With a growl, she leaps over the remaining boulders and makes for the multi-eyed V’yexwraith demon.

She can sense Viger’s Dark swoosh of alarmed awareness. He hurls his power into hers through their bond at the same moment Fyordin releases his full Asrai might into her and Or’myr’s purple lightning aura flashes urgently to her through the connection.

Latching tight hold of their power through Viger’s bond, Tierney races toward the V’yexwraith, an edge of her storm escaping her hold and blasting into existence, dark clouds roiling to life and overtaking the sky, a violent wind whipping up, Or’myr’s purple lightning cutting from cloud to cloud as she breaks into a faster sprint toward the huge demon.

The V’yexwraith opens its fanged mouth and releases an otherworldly hiss. It springs toward her, a second mouth appearing inside its maw, then another, more mouths telescoping outward, each holding a cavern of teeth as the throngs of Mage soldiers massed along the bank nock iron-tipped arrows and fall to one knee, all aiming at Tierney.

Gritting her teeth, Tierney runs straight toward the Mages and demon, drawing on the Vo’s full power, Fyordin’s and Or’myr’s might, and Viger’s line of Death.

Every arrow is loosed and whizzes toward her as the V’yexwraith closes the gap between them, and Tierney realizes, in a flash of Asrai reckoning, that the iron onslaught will hit her before she’s drawn enough power to take down the beast.

Or’myr springs past her, surprise jolting through her as he slashes his geo-wand through the air.

A crack of purple lightning scythes from his wand’s tip, the bolt bifurcating and crackling sideways to collide with the violet-veined stone edging both of the Vo’s banks. The stone’s veins blast into purple incandescence, blazing with light as every iron-tipped arrow is yanked from its trajectory and pulled toward the stone of the eastern bank, along with the iron spikes encircling Tierney’s dissolved kelpies.

A chorus of clangs sounds out, the arrows slamming into the purple-lit stone, quickly followed by every iron sword, axe, spike, and blade.

Magnetism, Tierney realizes in a shock of comprehension as Or’myr wrests every last iron weapon from the Mage forces. Emboldened, she quickens her pace, the Vo River rising within her as the V’yexwraith thrusts its hands forward.

A blast of Void energy scythes from the demon’s palms and streaks toward Tierney in dark gray bolts, the screams of destroyed Forest and Waters reverberating through them.

Ready to die as an avenging warrior for her Vo, Tierney screams out an Asrai battle cry and releases her full storm.

Ropes of Viger’s Darkness unleash from her palms, surrounded by whooshing streams of both her and Fyordin’s Asrai storm shot through with Or’myr’s purple geo-energy, the three males’ determination ricocheting through her center.

Their attack slams into the V’yexwraith’s Void bolts, blasting them into an explosion of purple-lightning-spitting steam before their combined powers spear forward and lash around the towering demon. Tierney draws her palms back, cinching the tethers violently inward and binding the creature tight. The V’yexwraith lets out an earsplitting, multitoned shriek while Tierney swipes her arms in a sideways arc and lets out a guttural cry.

The tethers of Darkness hurl the V’yexwraith clear out of her Waters and crash it onto the western riverbank with an Erthia-shaking BOOM.

The battle going on around her shudders into focus, the Mages and the Marfoir racing toward her blasted apart by Or’myr’s violet-spitting lightning while Fyordin rushes into the water with raised palms and sends a whirling tide around the Shadow corrupting the Vo. Viger surges toward Fyordin in a blur of Dark, blackened hands thrust forward, the mist emanating from his palms twining through Fyordin’s power. Their combined might rapidly corrals the Shadow corruption and halts its spread downstream, then hauls it away from Tierney’s kelpies.

Fury and Darkness pounding through her, Tierney stalks toward the prone, hissing V’yexwraith’s colossal form where it writhes on the riverbank, pinned there by her bindings.

On instinct, she draws in a deep breath and swipes her hands toward the demon.

River snakes swarm out of the Vo and coil around the V’yexwraith’s limbs, a dart of vengeful satisfaction rushing through Tierney as serpentine fangs bite into the demon’s gray flesh. The beast hisses out its pain and fury, its long back arching as Tierney’s storm of Darkness rages around them both.

The V’yexwraith bares its rows of teeth at her, its multi-eyed expression chilling. “You cannot kill me, Asrai,”

it chitters, its multitoned voice seeming to come from everywhere at once, vibrating straight through her. “My power is growing.”

A harsh shiver courses through her, and she has to fight the urge to recoil. “I will re-form and come for you, Asrai filth,”

the V’yexwraith chides, its multiple mouths smiling. “I will feed on Forest and Water. And I will feed on you.”

Images of Shadow consuming the Vo accost Tierney’s mind. Her fish and amphibians and plant life . . . all the complex Life of her River corrupted and destroyed, the River’s Balance breaking. The image sharpens, and Tierney’s lungs seize. She’s suddenly unable to pull in a breath, the V’yexwraith’s vision choking her . . .

An explosion of purple light blasts the vision apart, and Tierney finds herself on her hands and knees on the riverbank, gasping for air. Or’myr stands beside her, wand raised, his purple lightning sizzling around the demon in a forking array. The V’yexwraith snarls, its multiple mouths accordioning forward with stretching force, stopped a fraction away from Or’myr’s face to viciously snap at him, straining to bite. Its attempt thwarted by Or’myr’s lightning, the demon hisses and contracts its mouths back into its large slash of a maw.

“Do you understand what it is to move against a primordial demon,”

it snarls at Or’myr, giving him a terrifying multimouthed smile. It rears its head back and thrusts out two thick, forked, black tongues. Twin blasts of silver gray lightning shoot from the tongues’ tips, scything straight toward Or’myr.

Or’myr drops his wand and thrusts up his arms. He catches the lightning bolts in his fists, then smiles at the demon as the gray spitting bolts rapidly tint to violet, Or’myr’s tone chillingly vicious when it comes. “Do you understand what it is to move against the geomancer grandson of the Black Witch?”

Or’myr hurls the lightning bolts back at the demon, impaling the V’yexwraith’s two largest eyes and pinning its head to the riverbank. The demon screeches as the lightning bolts’ purple energy sizzles over it, its huge form catching violet fire.

“I will re-form!”

the V’yexwraith shrieks, so loudly that the very earth beneath Tierney quakes.

“Oh, go ahead and re-form, Void-spawn,”

Or’myr snipes as he splays out his hand toward his dropped wand. The wand flies into his palm, and Or’myr levels it at the V’yexwraith.

Tierney flinches as purple lightning blasts from Or’myr’s wand and impales the creature’s huge, bony chest, the imprint of a glowing purple Xishlon moon forming around the strike.

“Here’s my calling card,”

Or’myr snarls, low and deadly. “Vogel thinks he destroyed our Xishlon moon. Well, he didn’t. And it’s coming for him.”

A chilling grin forms on all the V’yexwraith’s mouths. “Your love moon can’t defeat us.”

“Are you certain?”

Or’myr shoots back. He raises his wand to the heavens and sends a bolt of purple light into Tierney’s storm.

The lower clouds agitate and roll into bright purple orbs, all of them lit up like Xishlon moons.

Or’myr swipes his arm down, and the moons fall, each one colliding with every surviving and slain Marfoir or Mage soldier, the soldiers bursting into purple fire.

The V’yexwraith’s smile vanishes, replaced by a look of teeth-gritted feralness as Or’myr once more levels his wand at the demon.

“Vo’s love can turn to vengeance in a heartbeat, syth’vuu’wraith,”

Or’myr bites out. “And I’m Her Varg-warded Strafeling. Come against me and feel my wrath.”

An eruption of curling Shadow detonates around the V’yexwraith, and the demon vanishes.

Tierney looks at Or’myr in shock as the whole world quiets, countless dead Mage and Marfoir soldiers burning in violet conflagrations all around. Bolting up, she breaks into a run toward the Vo and into it, while reaching up to grab hold of the vial necklace she always wears around her neck. She unstoppers the vial-pendant and thrusts it into the water while hoarsely murmuring an Asrai command.

An ache constricts Tierney’s heart as her kelpies’ iron-decimated forms dissolve and stream toward her and into the vial, tears stinging at her eyes over their cruel treatment. Forcibly calming herself, she stoppers the vial and puts the necklace back on, then reaches up to massage her neck, her breathing still labored, her power severely depleted. She looks at Or’myr to find his gaze pinned on the bank where the demon thing just was, his breaths measured, a wild purple light in his eyes.

As her storm dissipates, her gaze catches on the single purple orb left hanging above the Vo—Or’myr’s own conjured Xishlon moon.

“I . . . I didn’t know that you’re religious,”

Tierney manages, gaping at him. Gaping at what they’ve all wrought.

“I am,”

Or’myr says, voice clipped. “A tad.”

A huff escapes Tierney. “More than a tad, I’d say.”

She’s still stunned by his outburst. In all the time they spent together in his laboratory at the Wyvernguard, she never once heard him utter so much as a prayer to the Goddess Vo. Or saw him wear Vo’s necklace. Or set up a shrine anywhere.

Or’myr’s eyes meet hers, purple blazing in their green depths. “You don’t know everything about me,”

he says, sounding sharp.

Tierney inwardly winces. “I realize that, Or’myr,”

she offers, overcome by the sizzle of intense feeling passing between them through the bond, strong as his purple lightning. A memory pulses through her, of the emotional energy in his Xishlon kiss just before the pain struck, and she averts her eyes, her gaze catching on his conjured purple moon once more.

“You should leave that there,”

Tierney says, a pang cutting through her heart as she lowers her sight to the corralled swath of Shadow-corrupted Vo. Ferocity rises. “Leave that moon right there,”

she insists, her voice splintering with emotion.

“Oh, I intend to,”

Or’myr replies, looking at his moon. When his eyes meet hers again, they flash with defiant light. “Vogel doesn’t get to take it away from us. And I’m going to hang purple moons all over the skies of the West through spells I sent through Vogel’s V’yexwraith.”

Tierney’s eyes widen. “You’re going to torment the Magedom . . . with Xishlon moons?”

Or’myr nods stiffly. “And if I can find a way, I’ll color the whole damned Magedom purple before I’m done with them.”

A spark flares between them just as the Shadow runes spanning the Vo shiver into Death Fae black, hooking Or’myr’s and Tierney’s attention. Multiple black Deathkin runes ripple to life over the gray-tinged River, and Tierney realizes Viger must be underwater, casting them.

Fyordin is gliding over the Vo’s surface just outside the edge of the Shadow corruption, strengthening his and Viger’s compact stormwall of Darkness and sectioning off the gray corruption from the Vo’s unpoisoned water. Or’myr lifts his wand and sends lightning through their stormwall, and the unpoisoned waters of the Vo tint purple, the protective wall doubling in height and flashing with violet lightning.

Saving her Vo, the River itself flowing out a sigh of relief.

Fierce affection for Fyordin and Viger and Or’myr surges through Tierney, the unexpected swell of feeling constricting her heart. “Your power has turned my River purple,”

she marvels to Or’myr, her voice hitching.

She turns to him and is instantly ensnared by Or’myr’s heated look of surprise. She flushes, suddenly hyperaware of the possible innuendo. And hyperaware that his invisible lightning aura is pulsing toward her through the bond.

Or’myr swallows and glances away, but their new linkage . . . Tierney can feel in it how much he wants to embrace her. And she’s stunned by the strength of that desire.

A flush spreads down her neck. “You’re using those Xishlon moons to declare war, aren’t you,”

she says, unable to suppress her own heated rise of feeling for him.

“I am, indeed,”

Or’myr affirms, keeping his lightning-flashing eyes locked with hers as the bond’s pull surges and Or’myr’s lightning tingles all over her skin with rampant yearning.

A potent wave of water power crashes into them both, and their thrall breaks. Tierney turns to find Fyordin striding toward her over the Vo’s surface then onto its bank, his rapidly replenishing power rushing toward and around Tierney’s depleted magic with covetous fervor. An edge of Fyordin’s storming might jostles against Or’myr’s magic through the bond, to no avail as Or’myr stiffens and keeps his violet aura sizzling around Tierney.

Fyordin shoots Or’myr a narrow look before settling his Vo-blue gaze back on Tierney. “Once your power is recharged,”

he states, “we need to all work together and ward the Vo using our bonded power.”

His eyes flick toward Or’myr, the jealous ire in them shifting to a look of unequivocal alliance as the task at hand cycles down.

A task more important than this undercurrent of attraction and competition for her affections their bond is dredging to the surface.

Because Vogel’s forces will be back, Tierney considers with grim certainty. And the Shadow Wand’s V’yexwraith demon will be, too, likely wielding much more power. A shiver runs down Tierney’s spine, a knot tightening her throat as she catches sight of Viger, in mist form, gliding just under the Shadowed Waters, more Death Fae wards shivering to life on the section of grayed water.

Or’myr points at the stony embankments around them, drawing Tierney’s attention. There’s a calculating look in his eyes, and she can sense the wheels of his Geo-Mage mind turning. “There’s purple-veined stone not only along the riverbanks,”

he says, “but lining the Vo’s bed as well, which means I can anchor power to it.”

He looks to Tierney and Fyordin both. “If I draw on everyone’s power, I should be able to cast a shield over most of the Vo. If I link Viger’s wards to the shield, that should be sufficient to fend off any new Shadow attacks. For now.”

For now. Tierney stiffens her spine against the rise of foreboding.

But still, it’s a solid start.

“All right, Strafeling,”

Fyordin says, giving Or’myr a look of begrudging respect even as his power encircles Tierney along with Or’myr’s lightning. Tierney struggles to ignore the churning sizzle and whoosh against her skin as they each attempt to shove the other’s power off her, the strength of feeling in their magic making her a bit dizzy.

Tierney turns back to the Vo, and her breath catches, her heart picking up speed.

Viger has surfaced, his tall form standing thigh-deep in the water beside the western-bank base of the Shadow-rune arc, ropes of his Dark power twining around it.

Their eyes meet, and Tierney pulls in a shuddering breath, a shiver racing over her skin as Viger’s magic undulates straight through Or’myr’s and Fyordin’s to twine through hers. There’s something off about it—his usual edge of viciousness seems ramped up in a dangerous way.

Abruptly, Viger pushes back the other men’s power in a stunning show of force, and the world slants Dark, everything seeming to fade but Viger’s eyes on hers, and Tierney realizes how little she knows about the bond he’s set up.

How little she knows about the ramifications of his Death Fae kiss.

Viger lifts one clawed hand and flicks his index finger inward.

Tierney gasps as the distance between them contracts, her body leaving the ground, the world a momentary blur as she’s pulled toward Viger, Or’myr’s and Fyordin’s powers surging toward her, filled with resentful, protective energy.

But Viger is too strong, his eyes full Dark, which sets the hairs on the back of Tierney’s neck prickling. She slows to a halt, thigh-deep in the water beside him, and Viger motions to the base of the runic arc. Sloughing off her ire at being dragged here by his thrall, Tierney takes in the single Shadow rune he’s left amidst the blackened runes, the rune slowly rotating, like something disconnected from a larger set of gearworks.

Touch the Shadow rune and tell me what you sense, Asrai, he shivers through her mind.

Tierney gives him a narrow-eyed searching look then complies, pressing one palm to the vaporous Shadow rune.

The rune’s energy slithers over her skin, and Tierney fights the urge to recoil as a vision of the Northern Forest’s huge Ironwood Tree, III, exploding into Shadow accosts her mind, the Great Tree’s vast root network shot through with a line of gray power as a Void-abyss swirls to life in its corpse-stump.

Shock breaks through her.

“Oh, gods,”

she breathes out as she wrenches her hand from the rune.

Vogel’s taken hold of the Center of Nature, Viger seethes into her mind. He’s consumed the Northern Forest’s Great Tree.

“And linked its root network to his Shadow Wand,”

she realizes, dread burgeoning.

Viger bares sharp, blackened teeth at her. And now, that Shadow Wand is going to use this connection to consume all of Nature’s power.