We stream into a sheltered rocky cove, then drift into a cave, its dark, glimmering walls closing in around us. Eventually, we reach a barrier made of solid-black opal, its bottom edge bridging the water streaming underneath it. Ni Vin pilots the skiff close to a prominent ledge, and Kam Vin hops onto it, striding to the opal wall. She reaches into her tunic’s pocket and pulls out a rune stone marked with a single, emerald rune, then presses it to the wall.

Bright green Smaragdalfar varg runes appear all over the wall’s surface in multiple, whirling circles before the opalescent wall vanishes. And there on the ledge, just past where the wall once stood, two figures stand before a heavily varg rune–lit cavern.

My heart leaps in my chest as I let out a sound of surprise.

Sagellyn Gaffney meets my gaze with an emotional look of recognition, her violet form resplendent in purple garb. She’s holding a lavender wand aloft, a small orb of lilac light hovering above its tip, her arm looped through that of the tall, young Smaragdalfar man by her side.

CHAPTER EIGHT

OPAL SUBLANDS

Elloren Grey

Eastern Sublands
Eastern Realm
The night before Xishlon

“Elloren!” Sage calls from the black opal ledge. Her purple face is tense, and the expression of the man beside her—the man who I imagine is her Smaragdalfar love, Ra’Ven Za’Nor—mirrors her intensity. An awareness rises of the gray Elfhollen glamour cast over me by my Smaragdalfar runic necklace—the very same necklace once worn by Ra’Ven to glamour him Keltish so he could hide undetected in the West for years.

The turn of events is incredible.

Sage and Ra’Ven move toward our rune skiff as Ni Vin drifts it closer to the ledge. “We don’t have much time to get your power unbound,” Sage cautions, her words echoing off the cavern’s glistening black-opal walls.

“The Vu Trin have sent search parties into the sublands,” Ra’Ven warns, his words inflected with a flowing Smaragdalfar accent reminiscent of Professor Hawkyyn’s. I take note of Ra’Ven’s silver eyes, his Wyvern ancestry evident in his pupils, which are vertically slit like Yvan’s. He holds his tall, muscular form in a similar way as well, all contained, coiled power. His attire is the traditional emerald garb of the Smaragdalfar, his ears high points, green hair cut short, a green-glowing rune stylus sheathed at his hip.

“This location is cut off from the main Eastern Sublands,” Sage says as our skiff bumps against stone, inky water sloshing, “but it might not be safe for long.”