Chapter Fourteen

Forest Magic

Elloren Guryev

Northern Dyoi Mountain Range

I startle awake after only a trace of sleep, the shock of a new, green blaze of fire power roaring through my horde bond, a flare of Yvan’s heat lashing out to wrap so hungrily around me, it sparks a rampant warmth through every line.

Yvan lies beside me in a mossy Forest alcove inside the ledge’s tree line, both of us catching a few hours of much-needed sleep after the grueling work of connecting everyone’s power to the Dyoi Forest’s shielding as strongly as we can without Oaklyyn’s runic amplification.

Yvan’s eyes snap open and meet mine in a rush of green sparks, my pulse quickening over both the feel of this unexpected verdant flame and the powerful hunger in Yvan’s fire.

“What just happened?”

I ask, fighting off the urge to draw him close, shocked by how much this rush of fire is making me crave his lips and body against mine, a firestorm having flared between us.

A glazed look enters his eyes, his breathing uneven. His brow tenses, and I can feel him forcibly wresting a line of his fire magic away from me to search our horde connection for the source of this new flame while our bond burns as if fanned to new heights by this unfamiliar fire, green-and-vermillion fire blazing through it with spitfire energy.

“Someone has joined our horde,”

Yvan huskily states, focusing his green-flame-streaked gaze back on me. He swallows, a hot flush coloring his angular face. “Raz’zor . . . his fire brought them in. There’s an energy of attraction in it. Can you feel it?”

It’s my turn to draw inward, to search the horde bond for a deeper reading of Raz’zor’s vermillion line of fire, and sure enough, I find his red flame embracing this new green power.

Raz’zor, I send out through our fealty bond.

Dryad Witch, comes Raz’zor’s low, simmering reply.

Who have you horded to us?

A triumphant rush of his vermillion flame streaks through my vision.

The Dryad, Oaklyyn.

Red sparks explode through our fealty bond, and it surprises me, the amount of fire Raz’zor has wrapped around Oaklyyn’s name.

“It’s Oaklyyn, isn’t it?”

Yvan surmises, giving me a sly look.

“It is,”

I confirm, astonished. “I’ve never felt Raz’zor’s fire this worked up.”

Yvan’s expression takes a turn toward the knowing, a molten heat entering his gaze that sends a flare of his warmth straight down my spine. “He wants her for his mate.”

He wraps his hand around mine as the unspoken simmers between us, the hot brand of his gaze and the Wyvern warmth of his touch surfacing a memory from what feels like lifetimes ago—that time Yvan and I danced in Verpacia under a starry sky, loved ones gathered around us, Trystan’s violin music light on the air. I remember being entranced by Yvan’s seductive Lasair grace and assured lead, by the feel of his body moving against mine with unerring rhythm, the two of us perfectly in sync, our faces flushed, the caress of his hot hands on me lighting a fire down low. A fire that’s drawing me to him right now.

“Do you remember when we danced?”

I whisper, the question escaping before I can swallow it back, my pulse thudding around it.

The sparks crackling through our bond strike into a blaze, fast and hot. Suggestive amusement dances in Yvan’s eyes as he lifts his free hand and authoritatively swipes it down, pushing our horde’s fire clear away, only the firestorm of want in our bond remaining.

“Do you want to dance with me, Elloren?”

he asks, voice sultry, a serious glow entering his eyes as he strokes sparks along my hand.

I swallow, not able to pull in an even breath as I fall into the ravishing heat of his fire, finding him so achingly handsome in this moment I can barely get the words out. “I do.”

And I mean it. I’m almost ready to move past the grief that has an aching grip on my heart and embrace him in every way.

Almost.

Yvan’s fire gutters, and I know he’s sensing the almost in my emotions. I can sense it in the fleeting tension in his body and how his hand stills around mine. And in the way he’s now drawing back some of his fire and taking a steadying breath.

The energy of understanding ripples through our bond, and he reaches up, his warm hand caressing my face before he leans in to press his heated lips to my temple. “When you’re ready,”

he whispers, and I have to blink against the sudden burn of tears in my eyes.

After a moment, Yvan draws back, lifts his hand, and flicks it open, our horde’s fire streaming back through our power, Raz’zor and Oaklyyn’s intertwined green-and-vermillion sparks still crackling through it.

“We should find our horde,”

he throatily offers, his hand caressing my arm, and I nod, distantly wondering if Raz’zor and Oaklyyn wanting to be Wyvernbonded mates could possibly be true.

Oaklyyn blasts onto the predawn mountain ledge like a Dryad storm. Her runic staff is in hand, verdant runes glowing all over it. Three midnight-purple Noi Wolverines trail her, and my heart lifts at the sight of her newfound kindreds. The wolverines are all as growly as Oaklyyn, their purple fur bristling, their combined ferocity at full odds with the delicate beauty of the dew-speckled morning, a mounting, prismatic riot of color close to overtaking the trees, a gauzy fog rising from the ledge’s stone.

“Dryad’kin,”

Sylvan states as he and Yulan step toward her, their magic awhirl with a sudden rise of feeling, powerful relief shuddering through everyone’s power, even Hazel’s magic briefly eclipsing the world in Darkness.

Because Oaklyyn is transformed, her green hue fully restored, the purple branching pattern shimmering over her skin heightened. The same golden-star horde mark emblazoned on my entire horde shimmers against Oaklyyn’s inner shoulder.

Raz’zor stalks in beside Oaklyyn in human form, his crimson eyes lit up as they swing to me. He shoots me a smug, triumphant grin that I raise a brow at, his aura’s ruddy power flowing embracingly around Oaklyyn.

Naga and the rest of our horde rise as Ariel sends a welcoming line of her golden flame out to Oaklyyn, the rest of our horde joining her and flowing power into a communal blaze.

Oaklyyn stiffens, her elemental power held tight in her core, emotion churning in it. She glances toward our dome-shield, taking in the multicolored mosaic of runes shimmering against its surface, Vogel’s Shadow net slithering over it all like a giant, clawed hand shot through with Fallon’s winter-hastening magic.

“We need to flood that shield with amplified power to blast through Vogel’s Shadow net,”

Oaklyyn bites out. “I’ve a few Dryad amplification and expansion runes that should do the trick, especially when I draw the power of our Dryad Witch through them.”

Her newly green-burning gaze swings to mine, a rush of her verdant flame blazing through my rootlines, green sparks crackling in my vision. Oaklyyn levels her staff at me, a staff I’ve felt the blunt end of a few times, before her gaze slides to Sylvan and Yulan. “I’ll rune-bind the witch’s rootlines not only to the shield but to our rootlines as well, via a linkage rune,”

she states. “I’ll do the same for the other Mage-born Dryad’kin. To give their rootlines full access to our knowledge of Forest magic so they can become true soldiers for the Forest.”

I catch Gwynn’s and Mavrik’s eyes, then Thierren’s, all of us exchanging a quick look of surprise.

“It is good to have you back with us, Dryad’kin,”

Sylvan enthuses, his usually severe tone shot through with feeling as Yulan flows lavender-flowering vines out from the soil beneath her feet to encircle Oaklyyn.

Oaklyyn grows quiet, the powerful flow of her magic seeming to collapse into troubled chaos as she looks at the Death Fae Dryad amongst us. “Hazel . . .”

she starts, “I might have been wrong . . . for hating you when you saved our lives.”

She pauses, her mouth twisting into a trembling grimace. “True Dryad’kin fight to the end for all Forests. And for every kindred. Not just their own.”

She tenses, blinking back the sheen of tears in her eyes as she looks to the tree line, her voice rough when it comes. “The Forest showed me what you have done . . . and who you truly are.”

She stops, an overwhelming remorse overtaking her expression. “Hazel . . . I was wrong.”

Devastation is writ hard in her eyes, and the vast-unsaid hangs in the air between them—how she leveled the slur halfling at him again and again. How she reviled us all.

Hazel considers Oaklyyn, tendrils of his snaking Darkness shivering to life to wrap around them both as a single purple viper appears at Oaklyyn’s feet then slithers up and around her form to curl around her shoulders, dark tongue flickering.

“All is forgiven,”

Hazel says, his voice a bone-deep thrum. His black lips lift, a devilish light entering his eyes as his Death Fae energy pulses the world Dark. “Time to strengthen our shielding,”

he drawls, his wicked smile broadening, “and turn our Dryad Witch and her allies into weapons for the Forest.”

Hours later, I’m covered in Dryad runes that blaze every foliage color, my body newly clothed in formfitting bark armor Oaklyyn conjured onto me that’s surprisingly easy to move in. An ever-growing portion of my power flows into our shielding, our linkage to it amplified via Oaklyyn’s shield runes as I wrest hold of my remaining magic and face off, once again, against the one ally among us who holds even more fire than Vogel, even with a portion of it tethered to our shielding.

My Wyvernbonded mate—the Icaral of Prophecy.

Yvan stands before me in a Dyoi Forest clearing, his similarly rune-marked body coiled. His wings are drawn in tight, and both his hands glow violet as he draws fire magic into his palms. Oaklyyn and Raz’zor are watching us from the Forest clearing’s violet grass periphery, along with Sylvan, Iris, Yulan, Hazel, Wrenfir, Mavrik, and Gwynnifer.

It’s a struggle to keep my focus from being scattered by the sight of Yvan’s handsome face and bare chest, peak foliage amplifying our already strong draw to each other, a feverish warmth having overtaken me. Yvan gives me a slow, dangerous smile that sparks a hotter flaring of our bond, his eyes narrowing on me with an all too knowing light.

“Attack,”

Sylvan charges, and Yvan lunges at me in a blur, raising his palms.

I level my branch’s tip at the ground, Oaklyyn’s knowledge of soil spells flashing through my rootlines and fluently rolling off my lips.

A dark mass of metallic powder flies up from the ground, and I send fire into it, melting it into thick, black fibers that I whip around Yvan’s wrists and ankles. Before Yvan can release his power, I arc my branch toward the earth, my conjured fibers following my motion, yanking Yvan to the ground and tethering him there.

Yvan gives me a teasing smile before deploying a punch of his heat, his body flashing violet for a split second as my lashings melt away and he springs at me once more in a blur, knocks my branch from my hand and takes hold of me from behind.

I can feel his smile against my cheek, my heart skidding from the hot contact. “You’re getting better,”

he murmurs as I ignore the thrum of my pulse and force myself to focus, drawing on Yulan’s avian knowledge to send a mental call out to the Forest’s wingeds.

A sapphire hummingbird darts in from the Forest, a small twig grasped in the bird’s talons. It zooms close to my hand, and I grab the twig and rapidly murmur a series of Sylvan’s storm spells.

Wind bursts to life between Yvan and me, blowing him backward.

I swing around as he hits the ground, leveling my twig at him as he springs to his feet. He thrusts his glowing hands forward and blasts a wall of fire toward me while I deploy a bolt of storm shot through with prismatic lightning.

Yvan’s incoming wall of flame crashes into my tempest, our power pressed tight in crackling prismatic-and-violet walls, a backdraft of static energy sizzling over my skin. I dig my heels into the soil, holding my ground, teeth gritted, twig raised, as Yvan’s magic battles against mine, our bond’s heat intensifying the storm, a sudden desire for him gripping hold once again. My feet skid against earth along with Yvan’s as our storming walls enlarge, growing higher than the treetops, the two of us locked into a churning, roaring standoff.

A smile spreads across Yvan’s lips and I sense my foliage-fueled power gaining ground, even as I hold a portion back to keep from igniting the surrounding Forest.

Yvan abruptly surrenders, my wall of power crashing into him, its edges whipping back around me and skidding me forward. Carried by my magic’s momentum, I hurtle toward Yvan. He catches me and pulls me close, my prismatic lightning flashing around us as we fall to the ground.

He rolls me onto my back and brings his lips to mine, his impassioned kiss sending a charged thrill through my body, violet-hot, a triumphant energy coursing through me along with a shuddering flash of Yvan’s fire.

“You did it, Dryad,”

he says as we break the kiss, his eyes afire, my compact storm still whipping around us. “You held your own against the Dread Icaral of Prophecy.”

A laugh bursts from me, a rush of love flooding our bond as he slides off me and rises to his feet with his usual grace then holds out his hand to me. I let him help me up before glancing around to find Yulan and Gwynn beaming at me and the others giving me sly looks of approval.

I turn back to Yvan, growing serious. “I held back,”

I admit. “To keep from killing trees. Or kindred ones.”

“I sensed as much,”

he confides, growing serious as he reaches up to caress the side of my face, the edge of his warm thumb trailing sparks.

“That’s our great weakness,”

I worriedly say as I sheathe my twig through my vine belt, then turn and take in Oaklyyn’s wolverines, Yulan’s heron, Mavrik’s and Gwynnifer’s Agolith Flame Hawks, my Errilor Ravens, and the other kindreds. Along with the beautiful, multihued Forest surrounding us.

“We care,”

I rue to Yvan, “and Vogel will show no such weakness.”

Unease shivers through me, and I unfurl the fingers of my branch hand, glancing at the image of III imprinted on my palm, a shimmer of the slain Tree’s rich energy humming through the mark, the sensation steadily gaining potency as we near peak foliage.

“This III mark,”

I murmur, closing my fingers around it, before looking to Sylvan and the other Dryads, “there’s what feels like growing power in it.”

“I’m feeling it too,”

Yvan affirms, balling his fist around his mark.

“As am I,”

Gwynnifer concurs, to poignant nods all around.

“Perhaps it’s a call III left in the mark,”

Yulan suggests. “Our call to unite with everyone in the East—the call that you all saw when you were inside the Forest, sent to you in visions of the peoples of every land gathered around III. We must hold on to our hope of this.”

A cautionary look enters Sylvan’s severe visage as he glances up at our shielding, Iris beside him, the two of them seeming increasingly inseparable. “Our shielding should hold enough power in a matter of days,”

he notes, “as soon as peak foliage arrives. After which, we’ll be able to send it over the entire East. We’ll then have, at most, three or four days to travel to the Wyvernguard and bring the entire East to our side so we can all merge power and take down Vogel’s Shadow before foliage season recedes. And the Forest goes dormant along with our power.”

A weighted gravity descends, the odds so firmly stacked against us.

Against the entire Forest and Natural World.

Defiance fires up inside me, and I look pointedly at Yvan. “If you and I can become Wyvernbonded mates with an entire world bent on us hating each other, then there’s got to be a chance of uniting the East.”

My uncle Wrenfir spits out a jaded sound, and I turn, an expression of frustrated derision on his spider-marked face. “I want to believe this, Elloren, truly I do,”

he says. “But do you honestly think there’s a chance in all the hells that the entire East will immediately jump into the trees and radically change the way they think about everything?”

He huffs out a bitter laugh. “We had quite the time of even uniting ourselves.”

“Wren . . .”

Hazel softly interjects.

“No, Hazel, no,”

Wrenfir snarls, rounding on him, my uncle’s invisible fire-and-earth aura encircling Hazel with desperate, crackling intensity. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. The East will fracture, and you’ll be pulled into a Reckoning. All the Death Fae will. Everything lost to us all forever. The Eastern Realm will tear itself to shreds, the Magedom’s Shadow winter will descend, the Natural World will fall and you will be forced to devastate it and then fall with it. And there will be nothing left but Shadow.”

A fraught silence overtakes us, jagged energy shivering through Wrenfir’s power, my uncle trembling now, his body stiff with rage as he stares Hazel down, the whole world briefly pulsing with Hazel’s dread-stricken Darkness.

Hazel’s Darkness suddenly breaks free of the dread and pulses around Wrenfir in defiant, embracing coils. Wrenfir grimaces and looks away, pain slashing through his magic as a gust of cold blows in from the Shadow net beyond our shield.

Grayed frost shimmers to life along the edges of every prismatic leaf, the temperature dipping.

Alarm flares through the Forest and everyone’s power as I shiver, our kindreds growing agitated, my Errilor Ravens letting out loud CAWs.

“Holy gods,”

Mavrik exclaims, his breath puffing fog into the air, “winter’s going to come faster than we thought.”

He turns to Sylvan. “How much foliage time have we lost?”

Sylvan shakes his head, his brow furrowing. He half closes his eyes, and I’ve a sense of him hooking his empathic senses into the Forest’s power. “Perhaps a day?”

he gravely states.

“Which now gives us only two or three days to unite the entire East once we expand our shielding over it,”

Wrenfir seethes, his power cast into a desperate, fitful embrace around Hazel.

I meet Yvan’s fiery eyes, alarm crackling more intensely through our bond because my uncle is right—we’re running out of time. And it took more time than we have left just to unite the people under this dome.