Kam Vin pockets the stone before she and Ni Vin depart.

I look to Sage. “The trees have an incredibly strong hold on me. Chi Nam, Lukas, and Valasca couldn’t break it, even working together. And I think it’s getting stronger.”

She nods. “Which is why we’re gathering allies who possess a great deal of elemental magic.” She hesitates. “Even so, freeing you is a dangerous task, Elloren, there’s no way around it.”

“How dangerous?” Yvan interjects, protective concern rising in his fire.

Sage eyes him evenly. “Dangerous. Elloren’s elemental power is Dryad based. It’s completely linked to the trees.”

I touch Yvan’s arm and a spark ignites between us, his fiery eyes meeting mine. I drop my hand, my pulse thudding with renewed contrition over our effect on each other.

I turn to Sage. “I want my power back. Get me free of the Forest.”

Sage gestures toward a tunnel up ahead. “Come, then.” Intensity fires in her purple eyes. “We’ll gather with the others and get your power unbound.”

We follow Sage and Ra’Ven down a series of stony, spiraling staircases, then through a narrow tunnel that eventually spills into a shimmering cavern that widens my eyes. Black crystalline stalactites hang from the cave’s low ceiling, another inky river lazily streaming beside us, everything ethereally lit green by the varg runes marked on the walls.

Relief spreads through me to find Trystan, my uncle Wrenfir, and my cousin Or’myr already waiting there.

Along with the most outlandish Alfsigr Elf I’ve ever seen.

The Elf leans casually against the cave wall, an irreverent smile on his ivory mouth. That alone is deeply surprising—the Alfsigr are generally such an enigmatically blank-faced people. And his sculptural, bone-white features and short, snow-hued hair are streaked with a rainbow of colors, which strikes me as revolutionary—it’s written right into the Alfsigr faith that they are to wear nothing but silver and white, just as Mages are bound to our sacred blacks and permitted hues. There’s an outrageous splash of rainbow glitter decorating the Elf’s silver eyes, and his finely tailored ivory tunic is covered in silvery Alfsigr runes that light him up with their shimmering luminescence, his tunic edged with a riot of gems of every prismatic hue. This has to be the rune sorcerer Elf that Or’myr told me of. The Elf skilled in tracking spells who joined the Western Realm Resistance.

Rivyr’el Talonir.

The Elf who can help me find a path to Lukas.

The memory of being inside Lukas’s dream rises, a flash of longing for Lukas searing through my core. I startle from the force of it. Yvan’s Wyvernbond is such a potent thing, it’s difficult to think or even feel anything past it when I’m near him, my emotions cast into fiery chaos.