Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The elements were a bitch.
And Poppy was right.
Both of those things stung less than being struck by lightning. The impact tore through my body and blinded me at the same time. It snapped my jaw together, sending white-hot agony into my bloodstream.
Why the silence?
Was it because the only thing I could hear was a long low drone?
The storm’s energy surrounded me, forcing its way into my bones, trying to steal every ounce of my magic to make itself stronger.
Pulse racing, I fought to ground myself, my magic tugging at me and burning my veins, wild, untamed. Chaotic and free.
Lightning danced along the inside of my closed lids. It crackled out my fingernails. Currents of air and atoms clashed together through the strike. My wolf was no match for it. She howled and demanded we let go when the cost for it would be too high.
The storm would consume us.
Energy cradled the world in flames from the blast. But rather than let go of the storm, I pulled harder.
Only one of us could be in control, me or the storm. Only one of us would come out the other side and I wasn’t going to let those poor Dryads be trapped.
Distant awareness of falling, of sinking to my knees in a body no longer mine to control, fractured through the blinding pain. This energy would kill me. It would cut me into pieces, too large to swallow, but I did.
I swallowed it down, atom by atom, strike by strike, my magic devouring until the storm was inside of me.
The tempest lived in my heart. Thunder crowded my limbs and lightning turned my eyes pure ivory.
I curled into myself, arms wrapped around my torso, and sagged into the sand. I was full to bursting, a typhoon filling the cavity of my chest and battering against the endless pit I’d always drawn from.
My magic no longer felt hollow.
Exhausted but determined, I hold on tight. To diminish the storm. To force it into submission and then throw a lock on it.
The rumble of thunder faded and the crackle of lightning dulled until only the cavernous pulse of my heart remained.
Finally, when the vanquished clouds gave way to light, I opened my eyes.
Raging white water slowed under a calm sky. No longer yellow and pulsing, it glimmered and cast a mirror reflection of the blue expanse overhead.
“Tavi?” Poppy reached for me and hissed, drawing back her hand at whatever she felt in the air. “Hold on.”
My teeth chattered. Pressure inside dissipated until my muscles loosened from their tense knots. Minutes ticked by until I uncurled my arms and managed to regain my feet. Poppy kept her distance.
I looked for the Dryads. “Why isn’t the river gone?”
Although no longer raging, it still snaked around the city swallowed by its grip.
“Too much water. The sand is already drenched, nowhere for it to go, would be my guess,” she supplied. “We’re going to have to find a way to get across. It’ll be deep but I think we can manage.”
With the taste of electricity lingering on my tongue, I lifted a hand. Magic poured out of me, ready to be molded and used. Sand crested over the water and curved until it reached the other side and solidified.
Poppy paused for a beat. “Nice bridge. It better hold us, girl.”
Eventually I accepted her offered elbow. She shifted to better accommodate my weight and carried me to the base of the bridge. The sand held firm, grains glittering beneath the sun.
“Hell, if this whole reluctant savior thing doesn’t pan out, you’d have a good career ahead of you as an architect. Look at those railings. Pretty and functional. You’ve got quite a gift.”
I glanced at the diamond pattern of the railings. “It’s a footbridge like the one in the park where I grew up.”
I knew the design intimately, each whirl of iron hammered into something beautiful. It stretched across a small stream in the park where I’d met Elfwaite. It had taken no effort at all to replicate it here.
I limped to the other side with Poppy supporting most of my weight and the furious tempest raging against the prison of my ribs. She ignored the small snaps of friction releasing ozone where we touched.
A trio of Dryads met us on the other side. The one leading the trio stretched taller than his fellows, with rough patches of bark in a lighter gray stretching toward the base of his trunk like a beard.
Thick vines wrapped around its ears and gnarled skin formed odd arched eyebrows.
Its eyes were a dark green, as rich as an emerald, a riot of leaves at the crown of its head.
“The storm is gone. How did you do it?” His voice brushed against my senses with the warmth of a summer day in the forest, as dry as logs in a fireplace. “My people and I saw you struck by lightning,” he added. “Are you all right?”
Poppy scoffed and I spared her an uncertain sideways glance. “Let’s save our questions until we get inside, Lesheno. My knees are having a pretty hard time holding both of us upright and poor Tavi is about to drop. I assume you’ve got someplace safe and dry for us to crash?”
As usual, Poppy’s brusque demeanor cut right through any tension.
The Dryad leader, Lesheno, gave a curt laugh. “All right, fine, we’ll dispense with the pleasantries until you’ve rested. Welcome to Areia, Tavi. Although the company you keep leaves something to be desired.”
So Dryads had a sense of humor?
Lesheno gestured for us to follow. He beckoned with a branch of an arm, fingers tipped in old growth and wreathed in tender vines, and the others clustered close behind him.
If Dryads had kings, Lesheno was theirs. Other Dryads moved out of his way with an easy flow and bowed their heads in deference.
“In our culture,” he called over his shoulder as we walked, “being struck by lightning is a blessing from the gods. Those who watched you take the blast will speak of this for years.”
“Somehow it doesn’t feel like a blessing,” I muttered.
“To survive the strike means you are treasured by the One Who Rules Us All.”
Lesheno stopped at a doorway and the two Dryads with him opened it then stepped aside to let him through first. They waited for Poppy and me to follow, and then the sand building swallowed all of us.
A door of solidified sand sealed us inside. The floor was polished glass and the walls glinted with dozens of tiny gemstones.
We stopped in a circular room with sand seats protruding from the walls. Poppy dropped me unceremoniously into one of them before claiming the spot beside me for herself.
“Hey, there’s no passing out in the castle,” she warned me. “Not until we get to our room. We’ll call this a detour.”
“We’re in a castle?”
Lesheno chuckled again and his contingent of trees circled us, their knotted faces twisted with curiosity.
“Dryads are a warrior culture,” he said. “And for your deeds, however they were done, we pledge our fealty to you.”
He dropped to his knees and the movements spread out to the others in a wave.
“No, no.” I tried to stand and somehow managed, steam and static discharge curling from my outstretched hands. “I caused the problem to begin with. There’s no reason for you to do this.”
Poppy covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes narrowed by mirth.
“Please don’t. I don’t deserve it. Will you—please, get up!”
The Dryads ignored me in favor of kneeling alongside their king.
“We dedicate ourselves to you, Tavi…” Lesheno started.
“Tavi Alderidge,” Poppy supplied. Her hand muffled her voice.
“Tavi Alderidge. We’re yours if the need should ever arise. You have our eternal gratitude.”
I shrank back into the sand seat but there was nothing to cling to and no way to escape. I didn’t want this. The lightning strike meant nothing, not when the storm was a direct result of my quest to unlock my magic.
Lesheno rose first and settled a look on me. I’d never been close to a Dryad before. Any inflection in his facial expressions were lost on me. The best I could do was hope the way his bark stretched was a smile. He seemed like a composed, intelligent individual.
Couldn’t he see right through me?
“Now, as my old friend said, this isn’t the time for questions. We have plenty it later tonight. We’ll get the two of you settled upstairs and we’ll meet in the dining room for dinner along with a formal recounting of your deeds. My court will want to pledge themselves to you as well.”
“The smartest thing you’ve said since we arrived, Lesheno,” Poppy answered for both of us. “Dinner. We’d be grateful.”
He didn’t seem to mind her attitude. How long had the two of them known each other?
Poppy was the strangest witch I’d ever met. She had more friends in high places than King Tywin, I bet.
Two Dryads led us out of the entry hall on the bottom floor of the castle. It stretched around us in a W shape, assorted wings with walls of sand and carved-out windows.
In what was apparently the guest wing, wooden doors warped by desert heat and wind provided the illusion of privacy. None of the windows had glass, but the beds were actual beds and not mounds of sand.
Poppy waved off our escort and closed the door in their faces before turning to me.
“Sit your ass down so I can look at your injuries. It was good of you to make nice with the Dryads but I’m not about to let you pass out or die. I won’t have my grandson calling me negligent.”
Sitting was a damn good idea. “He wouldn’t. He knows I don’t listen, anyway.”
“True. And the servants will be back to help us clean up any minute now. I want to make sure you’re ready for what we’re up against. Lose the jacket. You’ve singed your shoelaces, too.”
I pried the shirt off one arm at a time. “What are we up against?”
“Dinner. Dedication. Ceremony.”
That wasn’t what I meant. I opened my mouth to say I’d never had a problem with dinner before but it wasn’t exactly true, considering the disastrous meal where I’d officially met Kendrick Grimaldi.
As I stripped off my shirt, I caught a flash of dark, a swirling mark over my heart where the lightning struck. Spirals of black wound out like desiccated vines from the impact point.
Poppy blew into her hands and rubbed them together, heating them before holding them above the area. Her eyes fluttered closed, words too soft to hear lighting her lips and magic popping in the air.
Relief spread across my chest and up along my neck.
“Areia is different,” she explained as she healed. “What Prospi takes, the city gives back. It’s the culmination of so many Dryads in a single area.” She examined the effects of her efforts. “My healing magic isn’t potent but it works well enough to make sure your heart doesn’t stop.”
Well, that was something at least.
Dinner was an experience not soon forgotten.
The gold and red granules of sand making up the castle walls stretched up into the endless ceiling of the turret.
An oval dining room split into two sides, a massive granite table spearing through the center and reflecting the ceiling with a polished sheen.
Plates and bowls of thrown pottery held an assortment of dishes with steam rising from the depths. Garlic, onion, the scent of green things sautéed and steamed made my mouth water.
Poppy and I were escorted to the massive table. I sat on a stool with a curved indentation, more comfortable than the sand seats from earlier, and stared around at this new and wondrous place.
Lesheno took his place at the head of the main table, the towering limbs at the top of his head twisted together in the splinters of a crown. The rest of his court followed, and I realized too late that protocol demanded I should have waited to sit after he did.
I had a lot to learn.
Poppy was content to let me learn it on the fly, a trial by fire. But I’d already had a trial by lightning. I could use a break.
“Welcome to our honored guest. You have done us a noble service that was no small feat,” Lesheno announced for the benefit of all.
The crowded hall came alive with rustling limbs and branches—their form of applause, perhaps.
Deserved or not, being the center of attention landed wrong.
“We would not have been able to overcome the storm without you,” Lesheno went on.
“It hit without warning. Within a week, we would have run out of supplies and the flood would have taken everything.” He inclined his massive head in my direction.
“Tavi Alderidge, what can we do to pay you back for your bravery today?”
Poppy kicked me under the table to get me to speak. I realized this was the opening I needed.
But how did one address the Dryad leader? I couldn’t use the same tactics I’d used with the Fae king.
“Actually…” I cleared my throat. “How would you feel about joining a rebellion?"
The word rang out in the silent hall.
Lesheno stared at me, his knotted bark brows drawn together. “Against?”
“The Fae king, Tywin Thornwood.”
I held my breath as a murmur of voices went around the hall. Had I made a mistake in letting the other Dryads in the room hear me speak it out loud?
“It’s no secret,” Lesheno began, branchlet fingers tapping the table, “that Dryads have never been seen as equals to the high Fae of the Seelie king’s court.”
Feeling encouraged, I went on. “King Tywin has been waging war against anyone he deems inferior. Others have risen up against him, it’s true, but they’re no better. It’s two sides of the same coin as far as I can tell.”
My voice hardened the longer I spoke, and even with the food delivered to the table, those tantalizing heaps of vegetables, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t drop my gaze from Lesheno’s.
The leader of the Dryads seemed to mull it over, taking his time.
“King Tywin treats the races on the outskirts of his golden city like they are nothing but animals. The Dryads have done our best to carve out a life in these conditions, but at what cost to us?” He paused again, thinking.
“But a rebellion? How would this make things better?”
I opened my mouth to elaborate, but Lesheno hadn’t finished.
“Wouldn’t it be best to let someone else take the lead? There is always Dorian Jade and his Unseelie—”
Oh goddess, no.
I jumped to my feet, hands clenched, and held Lesheno’s gaze. “I’ve been to Dorian Jade’s camp. He’s made slaves of high Fae. His side is no better. He wants to dominate and oppress instead of promote peace and equality.”
Lesheno’s gaze bored into mine. I held my breath, a chill skating up my spine. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let the people I cared about be hurt anymore. He has to say yes.
“We have already begun,” I told him. “We are assembling as many as possible to join us in overthrowing Tywin. But our rebellion needs Dryad warriors if we are to have any hope of succeeding.”
The whole room seemed to hold its breath. Even Poppy stopped eating, fork paused halfway to her mouth.
At last Lesheno spoke. “After the miracle you performed today, I have no need to ask how you plan to accomplish the impossible.” Lesheno stood to his full height. “If anyone can do it…Tavi Alderidge, I believe you can. How many troops do you need?”