Chapter Thirteen

Fire Forest

Oaklyyn

Northern Dyoi Mountain Range

The Wyvern Raz’zor and the Icaral Mage Ariel Haven sought me out soon after I broke from their allies’ cursed ranks, the two of them ignoring the violently clear message I gave to my Dryad’kin.

Leave me be.

I empathically sensed the Wyvern’s and Icaral’s approach before I sighted them from where I’d retreated, deep into this doomed Forest. I could sense their cursed fire.

Their cursed non-Dryad’kin fire.

Rage lashed through me, and I reached for my staff, ready to fight them off here in the dawn-lit wilds. Ready to unleash revenge and scream until the heavens shook. As their wicked fire drew nearer, I sprang to my feet, trembling with grief-stricken fury.

Wanting them dead.

Wanting to be dead.

The memory of the sound of my bonded Northern Forest and my kindred wolverine screaming echoed through my soul, echoed through my destroyed heart again and again and again.

“Leave me be!”

I snarled at them, spittle flying from my mouth as the Wyvern and the Icaral slunk through the trees with their terrible serpentine fluidity.

Non-Dryad nature killers! I yearned to scream at them.

All of them nature killers.

Hate pummeled though me as the Icaral and the large white dragon slid into fuller view. Their gold- and red-fire eyes took in my murderous stance, unintimidated ferocity blazing in them.

I raised my staff and moved to attack as the Wyvern suddenly contracted inward.

I halted, dead in my tracks, as his form snapped into the shape of a serpentine young man, his startlingly abrupt change throwing me off-kilter, his form clothed in hard white scales, the crimson fire burning in his eyes undimmed. His wings fanned out just as two Noi Doves with half-grayed feathers soared down from the Forest’s canopy and perched on my shoulders, the birds flooding me with a pleading, gut-wrenching affection that was unbearable to sense, hopelessly doomed as they were.

Undaunted by the hardening of my aggressive stance, the doves flashed images into my mind of the Icaral woman before me placing healing salve on their burns. Cooing them to sleep.

But I wanted none of the wingeds’ false hope.

I shrugged them off, struggling to harden what was left of my shattered heart against their startled flare of protest as they flew off to the branches above in a flurry of hurt and confusion.

A misery so acute I feared I’d retch swamped me, and I doggedly avoided looking at the winged innocents. Unable to bear the pain of any type of connection forming between us or with the surrounding doomed Forest—a Forest that kept swirling unbearable, embracing love around me.

Because it would soon be dead. Like my Northern Forest was dead. Like I wanted to be dead.

It’s over, my broken heart beat out.

Nature is over.

“I know what it is to want to die,”

the Icaral, Ariel, blurted out, her tone blade sharp.

My gaze snapped to her, the Icaral’s expression shot through with such a blazing level of sincerity that my misery whipped into even greater turmoil.

And fury.

So potent it could level galaxies.

I took a menacing step toward her, my grip firming on my staff, ready to smash her Icaral head right off her Wyvern’kin shoulders.

I took another warning step, snarling, my rage so intense it singed acid into my lungs. “You know nothing of what I feel, Wvyern!”

Casting a belligerent look toward Raz’zor, I found his crimson-fire eyes focused on me, unblinking. Everything about him disturbingly other. More reptile than human.

But that wasn’t the most disturbing thing about him.

The most world-upending thing was the intense understanding simmering in his blazing red eyes, his gaze shot through with such leagues-deep pain it prompted a tidal-wave rise of my own misery, the swell of agony unbearably intense.

“Get away from me!”

I screamed at them, drawing on what shreds of Forest power I could without a kindred connection to conjure a cyclonic ball of elemental power above my staff.

NOOOOOO! the Forest shuddered through my every withered rootline as the doves and other wingeds broke into agitated squawks and wing ruffling, every tree and kindred clamoring for me to stop.

I was unmoved by their protest, ready to blast these Wyvern’kin straight through their futile dome-shield and into the waiting Shadow.

The Wyvern’kin said nothing. Instead, they remained fixed in place, eyes locked with mine, their stares full of that wildly unsettling understanding. And then, as one, they threw their wings down in an emphatic whoosh and launched themselves into the Forest’s canopy, where they perched on branches high overhead.

A hissing conversation in their Wyvern tongue ensued before they seemed to come to some agreement, the Icaral flying off after giving me a long, pained look, and the pale Wyvern remaining.

Refusing to leave.

I snarled and hurled out curses at him before turning and stalking deeper into the woods, pointedly ignoring the curious animals that followed, rippling out their vulnerability and love to me. Because it crushed the remaining shreds of my heart to know that their home was about to die.

The Wyvern found me that evening.

He remained there, straight through the night, watching me from up high in winged-human form. He retreated briefly when I shook my fist and screamed at him. But then, as I crumpled into a ball of utter despair, he reappeared in the canopy above, a silent, stubborn presence, refusing to leave.

The next night, I’m balled up on the Forest floor, sobbing for my destroyed Forest and kindreds.

That’s when the Wyvern approaches me once more.

I’m too worn down by grief to scream at him. To summon power and attack. To do anything but grieve for my dead Forest. For all the soon-to-be-dead remaining Forests.

He crouches down in human form on one knee, pale wings pulled in, alabaster horns curved above snow-hued hair. “Horde to me, Fierce One,” he says.

I blink up at him. “What?”

I spit out, not believing his sheer audacity.

“Horde to me,”

he hisses again, emphatic, his crimson eyes lighting up the night.

I want to hurl every last shred of my power at him. I want to hurl it at them all.

“Why are you doing this,”

I rasp at him, voice choked.

“Horde to me,”

he says once more, fierce. “You are not alone.”

Incredulity leaps through me, tightening my every muscle. I spring up at the same time he does in an otherworldly blur. Balling my fists, I lunge toward him, staring into those burning crimson eyes, not caring about the monumental Wyvern power I sense radiating from him.

Power that can incinerate trees.

That can destroy Forests.

“I am a Dryad!”

I cry, my voice splintering from the sheer force of my rage. “I am not a Wyvern! I wish you were all DEAD!”

He doesn’t budge. His crimson eyes only burn hotter. “Horde to me, Fierce One,”

he hisses, infuriatingly stubborn, everything surrounding us lit up by the flickering red glow of those eyes. “We will protect Erthia’s surviving Forests together. As one.”

I spit out a sound of blistering fury. “You want to protect Forests? You’re all fire.”

I splay my arm out, gesturing around us, tears blurring my eyes. “How can you protect any of this?”

He’s unmoved, his stare pierced through with ferocity. He leans in, teeth bared. “By protecting you.”

I bare my own Dryad-sharp teeth at him. “I don’t want your protection!”

Again, he doesn’t budge. “I was alone for a long time,”

he growls, low and emphatic. “Unhorded. Imprisoned by runes. My fire . . . it couldn’t breathe. I was like a lone tree without a Forest.”

My face twists with feral offense. “You dare to compare your horde to my Forest?”

“Yes,”

he snarls, flashing his canines. “A Forest of fire.”

And then it’s all crashing in—the never-ending barrage of horrific images.

My beloved Forest, caught up in the Magedom’s Shadow conflagration, rapidly singed to nothing. The wild innocents who trusted me as their protector all decimated, my Dryad grief consuming me in the Shadowfire’s cruel wake.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I scream, readying every last shred of elemental power I can summon to deploy against him, even at the risk of fatally collapsing my rootlines.

He gives me an incinerating look, the understanding in it holding the power to destroy me. But before I can unleash my full rage against him, against the entire Forest-murdering world, he snaps out his wings, throws them down, and soars away.

I fall to my knees and scream out my despair, wanting to shatter the heavens, as the Forest gently sends multicolored leaves and fluttering kindreds and lovely, tendriling vines out to me, shattering what’s left of my heart.

Raz’zor is back again later that night, the Forest washed in violet light emanating from a line of purple moons that sprang up over the Dyoi Forest earlier this eve, an image of the moons sent to me through the trees, as if they should give me cause for hope.

There is no hope in this cruel, Nature-destroying world.

I look up, bleary-eyed, and spot Raz’zor’s pale human face in the trees, surreally illuminated red by his crimson-fire eyes. He’s perched on a low-lying branch, wings tucked tightly back, his unblinking Wyvern gaze set stolidly on me. Blazingly on me.

“Don’t you ever give up?”

I ask, my throat raw and tight.

“Horde to me, Fierce One,”

he replies, steadfast and adamant.

I hold his gaze, too worn-out by grief to keep my defenses up.

“Raz’zor,”

I say, startling myself with the intimate strangeness of his name on my tongue. I shake my head, a mournful sorrow tightening my throat. “You’re all fire. I’m Dryad’kin. We can never be khin.”

In a pale blur he’s next to me, crouched down, stubborn fire in his otherworldly slit-pupiled eyes. His pale lip ticks up, defiance sparking in his gaze. “Your trees consume the sun, Fierce One. And that sun is made of flame. Your Forest and your power, it pulses with that connection. Pulses with the light power of fire. Horde to me.”

I choke back a startled sob. Stunned by his idea—the Erthia-upending idea of a Wyvern-Dryad’kin horde bond able to support and defend the Forest rather than singe it to the ground.

The Dyoi Forest stills, as if holding its breath, as if it, too, senses the revolutionary power in his idea.

A hot tear rolls down my cheek. “It’s lost,”

I choke out to him as images of leagues and leagues of my Forest burning with Shadowfire ricochet through my mind in eviscerating spasms. Combined with the root-deep awareness of ever-increasing leagues of Western and Southern Forests being murdered, all of it slicing clear through my soul. “The battle you seek,”

I tell him, “it’s already lost.”

He draws even closer, bringing his fiery eyes level to mine, and I feel as if I’m staring into a never-ending inferno.

“Horde. To. Me,”

he says again, baring his teeth. “We will fight for every last remaining tree.”

Startlingly, the boundaries between us begin to fall, searing to flame under the relentless force of his stubborn fire.

And the compassion burning in his eyes.

I force myself to sit up, mouth trembling, holding his relentless stare. “All right, Wyvern,”

I raggedly concede, with absolutely nothing left in this world to lose. “I’ll horde to you.”

Raz’zor’s lips lift in a canine-baring smile. He takes hold of my hand and coaxes me to rise with him, before drawing me into a loose embrace and bringing his lips to the base of my neck.

A shiver of sparks radiates from the contact, the pleasurable sensation startling me.

He tightens his embrace, his teeth piercing my skin, and I gasp, my eyes widening as my rootlines open and I’m flooded by his entire horde’s sunbright, revolutionary fire.