Chapter Eleven

Forest’khin

Elloren

Northern Dyoi Forest

Vogel’s Void tree shivers against the edges of my mind.

My pulse quickening, I dig my sharpened Dryad nails into the canopy-piercing branch I’m clinging to, the Void tree vision blurring my nighttime view of both the Shadow wasteland just beyond our Dyoi Forest shielding and Alder, who’s on evening watch beside me.

“Vogel’s there,”

I huff out to Alder, pointing west toward the Shadowed lands, my alarm intensifying as a distant sense of Vogel’s stolen and corrupted silver gray Wyvernfire prickles heat over my skin. My surrounding ravens have grown restless, their huge wings ruffling. Errilith lets out a rough caw of warning, the ravens’ distress spreading to Alder’s encircling giant eagles.

“I can sense Vogel, as well,”

Alder affirms, giving me a stark look as an unnatural frosty power crackles against my lines, the ice magic weaving through the Shadow net Vogel cast over our shielding.

Black Witch strong.

“Holy Ancient One,”

I gasp, “I’m picking up on Fallon Bane’s power.”

“I sense her too,”

Alder confirms, her timber-calm voice low with dread. “It’s stealthy, her attack. She’s suffusing Vogel’s net with enough Shadow ice to speed winter’s descent.”

The scream of distant Forest abruptly roars in from the southwest through Erthia’s rootline network, reaching us after who knows how long. Vertigo swoops through me and my hands flex, my nails digging into bark as both Alder and I shudder, overcome by the sense of the entire Natural Balance of Erthia tilting toward the East. Now held by the East.

Flashing images of a cloud-high Shadow forest of ice trees burst into my mind, huge swaths of healthy southwestern land being blasted apart by Fallon’s power, the trees’ elemental might siphoned into the ice as they die.

“Fallon has killed the Forests of Ishkartaan,”

Alder rasps, trembling.

“With a Black Witch level of power,”

I grit out, narrowing my gaze on the West. “Only this time, the Black Witch isn’t coming with fire. She’s coming with ice—”

My words break off as a line of glowing purple moons flash into existence above the western horizon, as if Xishlon itself has joined with us to face Vogel and Fallon down. Stunned, I read the magic at play in those moons, and shock sizzles through my rootlines.

“That’s my cousin Or’myr’s magic,”

I gasp, just as my sense of Vogel’s and Fallon’s presence snaps out of existence.

“They’re gone,”

Alder shakily notes.

“For now,”

I rejoin, my heart slamming against my ribs as I meet Alder’s dire look once more.

“Vogel’s Black Witch is about to shorten foliage season,”

she warns.

Resolve rips through me. “We need everyone under this shield to unite right now.”

She gives me a concerned look. “Which means we need your Icaral’s mother on our side right now.”

I inwardly curse that impossible task. Soleiya Guryev’s campaign against me has only intensified.

“Yvan is meeting with her to plead for an alliance,”

I say. I focus in on my link to Yvan’s fire, engaging fully with his power, and am almost blasted off-balance by the frustration sputtering through it. I cast a fierce look at Alder. “Warn the others that Fallon’s magic has been woven into Vogel’s Shadow net.”

I start down the trunk as I send out a mental call to my ravens to remain on watch.

“Where are you going?”

she presses.

“I’m going to find Yvan,”

I return, “and get his damned mother on our side.”

I rush through the Forest’s upper reaches, leaping from branch to branch, drawing foliage-amplified light power into my vision to allow sight as I follow the furious thread of Yvan’s fire. Before long Yvan’s burning aura is blazing over my skin . . . along with the scorching Fire Fae aura of his mother, their angry voices audible just ahead.

I drop silently to the ground, my heartbeat quickening as Soleiya’s incensed voice rings out clear. “We are open to an alliance, but the Black Witch must be slain!”

I halt in response to the level of vitriol in Soleiya’s voice, Yvan and his mother now visible through the branches before me, the two of them facing off inside a small clearing. Their figures are illuminated by the blaze of their eyes, their magics’ violet and gold auras flaring to wildfire heights.

“Elloren is on our side,”

comes Yvan’s seething reply. “And we’ve run out of time for anything but alliance with every single person under this dome!”

“Even if what you say is true—”

Soleiya hisses.

“It is true.”

Yvan cuts her off. “I’m an Icaral. I can sense the truth of Elloren’s every intention.”

Soleiya spits out a mocking sound, her mouth twisting with derision. “Oh, such keen powers of perception. You thought you knew her every intention in Voloi. And then she came close to leveling the entire city! And don’t tell me that it was Vogel controlling her!”

“Even though he was, in fact, controlling her?”

Yvan counters.

“I don’t believe it!”

Soleiya’s face takes on a look of sheer desperation. “Her grandmother killed your father. Her family is evil to the core. My son, how can you possibly ally with her?”

“She is my Wyvernbonded mate,”

Yvan snarls, eyes incandescent.

Yvan’s fire roars toward me through our bond, a startled flare momentarily overtaking its heat as he senses me so close. He immediately regains his bearings, catching me up in a blazing aura embrace so full of defiant love it brings the sting of tears to my eyes.

Yvan jabs his finger toward the ground, as if there’s a burning line in the sand between himself and his mother, his molten eyes severe. “Stop judging Elloren for her lineage. For her face.”

“You ask too much of me!”

Soleiya cries.

“No, I ask fairness of you,”

he lashes back. “Elloren has the right to be judged based on her own actions, not her grandmother’s. Stop actively undermining her. You’re sowing division, and it’s playing right into Vogel’s hands!”

Emotion surging, I’m about to step out of the shadows to join Yvan in facing Soleiya but am halted by the sudden sense of her invisible, fiery onslaught falling into sparking disarray, my heart twisting in response to the misery crackling through it as she gives Yvan a look of pure devastation.

“You can’t be in love with the Black Witch!”

she practically screams, her voice breaking. “There is nothing but pain for you there!”

They abruptly quiet, as if their combined violent storm has been reined in, their twin gazes blazing white-hot, both of them breathing hard, their fiery auras pulsing around them with out-of-control emotion, my own aura swept up in their firestorm of pain.

“Do you wish you’d never been with Father?”

Yvan finally asks her, his voice low and harsh.

Soleiya’s face tenses with what looks like vast, shattering hurt. “How can you even ask that?”

she hisses, mouth trembling.

“Yet choosing him brought you great pain.”

“Your father didn’t bring me pain!”

she counters. “The cursed Mages did!”

Yvan steps forward, wings fanning out, refusing to back down. “But your relationship, with an Icaral, in the Western Realm. It brought pain into your life.”

“Yes,”

Soleiya cries, tears falling as she thumps her chest with her fist. “It ripped my heart right out of my body when that witch murdered him.”

I wince, a tear escaping my eye.

“Yet, knowing all of that,”

Yvan says in a strangled voice, eyes burning, “you’d choose him again?”

Soleiya breaks down now, sobbing. “Yes, Yvan . . .”

she roughly sputters. She closes her eyes tight, then opens them, tear glassed, her voice a defiant snarl when it comes. “I’d choose your father again and again and again and again.”

And then her aura implodes, her shoulders slumping as she weeps, her body quivering.

Yvan’s invisible fire blazes out to her, circling her in an embrace as he steps forward and brings a hand gently to her shoulder. “That’s what love is, Mav’ya,”

he says in Lasair, his tone rife with feeling. “A wide-open heart. Wide open to the love and the pain.”

After a long moment, Soleiya meets Yvan’s gaze and brings her hand to his angular cheek, her lips trembling, her fire reaching out tentatively to his. Yvan meets her flame without hesitation, flowing a graceful tendril of fire around his mother’s power, his own tears falling.

Soleiya pulls in a shuddering breath, her angular face tightening with emotion. “How did you get to be so wise, my son?”

An incredulous laugh escapes Yvan, his tear-slicked mouth lifting into a wry smile. “Maybe growing up an Icaral in a Realm that hates me?”

He loses the jaded look, his expression growing earnest, his form a prism through my own tears as he sends out an invisible, ardent embrace of flame to encircle me. “But then, I met Elloren. And I learned, along with her, that there’s another way. Beyond all the rigid lines. And then . . . I joined with the Forest, and found out that I don’t have to be this . . . this force of destruction. This ‘Icaral of Prophecy’ weapon. That there’s another path for me. Another path for us all.”

The flow of his fire around her flares with insistent, loving might. “Join with us, Mav’ya. This path holds our only chance to save Erthia and defeat the Shadow.”

There’s a prolonged beat of hesitation as Soleiya turns and registers my presence inside the Forest, a startled blaze of conflict igniting through her aura, her power whipping up to tempestuous levels before she sets her sights back on Yvan with a look of outrage.

“Please, Mav’ya,’ Yvan urges, holding firm. “Please, just hear the Forest out.”

Soleiya holds his gaze for an excruciatingly long moment. “All right, my son,”

she finally concedes. She casts me a look of hatred before turning back to Yvan, her expression tortured. “I’ll listen to your Forest.”

Yvan pulls in a deep breath, then takes his mother’s hand and leads her to a large oak. Gently, he lifts her palm to the bark, and I’ve a sudden sense of the entire Dyoi Forest pulling in a breath as its power abruptly contracts toward Soleiya.

Soleiya gasps, her hand taking on a prismatic glow. Then, just as it happened for the others, bark swiftly forms over Soleiya’s body, and she’s pulled straight into the tree.

Yvan lets out a harsh sound, both his palms on the tree now.

My heart in my throat, I step from the tree line and swiftly close the distance between us. I bring my hand to Yvan’s hot shoulder, and his fire immediately flares and flashes around and through me in impassioned strokes.

“I’m sorry, Elloren,”

he grits out. “I’m sorry you have to endure so much hatred.”

“Yvan,”

I warn, “Fallon Bane and Vogel were briefly just outside our shielding.”

Yvan’s palms drop from the tree as he turns to face me in an urgent blur. “What happened?”

“They seemed to portal out as quickly as they came,”

I answer. “Alder and I read a message from the Forests of the continent’s South, sent out as those wilds were destroyed. Fallon has leveled both Northern and Southern Ishkartaan with her ice. Yvan, she’s now capable of a Black Witch level of Shadow ice power. She’s thrown a line of her ice into Vogel’s Shadow net over our shielding. Which will hasten winter. We need every last person under this dome on our side tonight.”

Yvan casts me a fervid look before glancing at the trunk Soleiya just entered, a frustrated look sharpening his features. “My mother’s as stubborn as me.”

“Well, we can only hope the Forest gets through to her.”

I tell him about Or’myr’s line of purple moons as we wait for what feels like an unbearable stretch of time. Eventually, rays of prismatic light blast from the trunk, and Yvan and I step back, his mother suddenly before us, down on her knees and panting, her palms to the ground.

“Mav’ya?”

Yvan says, dropping down to her level and reaching out to take hold of her arm.

Soleiya lifts her head, and I pull in an astonished breath.

Her eyes are filled with purple fire. She unfurls her clenched hand to reveal a dark violet pinecone, the image of III marked on her palm just beneath it, and I can sense it thrumming through her—Soleiya’s new bond to Yvan’s kindred Zhilaan Forest.

The Forest that needs fire.

“It’s . . . it’s all more complex and interconnected than I ever realized,”

Soleiya stammers, her awestruck face slicked with tears as she stares, wide-eyed, at the pinecone and III mark on her palm. She lifts her gaze to me, her brow knotting as more tears pool and streak down her face. “The trees . . . they showed me what you’ve both been through. And, Elloren . . . they showed me your heart, and what Vogel tried to do to you. They showed me everything . . .”

Her words trail off as her face tenses with obvious remorse. “I’m so sorry.”

My throat tenses with emotion as Yvan huffs out a relieved breath and Soleiya rises. I draw her into a close embrace, her lips trembling along with her voice when she draws slightly back. “Perhaps . . . we can start over, you and I?”

I nod with enthusiasm and urgency, Yvan’s wings arcing in around us both as his fire lashes around us, the three of us no longer divided as Icaral, Fire Fae, and Mage.

All of us now Forest’khin.

“Vogel’s Black Witch, Fallon Bane,”

I caution Soleiya, my power’s flow bright with alarm, “she’s woven her ice power through Vogel’s Shadow net over our shielding.”

Soleiya’s fiery eyes widen.

“Which means,”

Yvan stresses, “we need your help uniting everyone right now.”