Vothe lands and I leap off his back while he shifts to human, drawing black-scaled armor over his still winged and horned form. Our battalion’s captain, Heelyn, meets my gaze, a rune-stripped sword gripped in her fist, a slash of blood across her hawkish face. We rush toward her through the Shadow smoke.

Heelyn raises her palm in a halting gesture as the Vu Trin surrounding her nock arrows and ready blades and stars in lethal unison, all their rune-stripped weapons aimed at me.

I skid to a stop.

“Heelyn, there’s no time for this!” Vothe thunders, lightning crackling through his power.

“Don’t make a move for that wand, Crow!” she orders me, ignoring him.

“No, Hee Muur,” I emphatically return, careful to use her formal name. “I really should make a move toward this wand!”

“Hear him out!” Vothe insists before she can spit out a protest. She knifes a murderous look at him.

“During our weapons training,” I call out over the surrounding din, paying no heed to the weapons aimed at my chest, “do you remember how my magic knocked the sorcery out of your weapons and filled them with my power?”

The hate in her eyes intensifies. “So, you’re looking to overtake us with your magery? Is that it, Crow? Was that the plan all along?”

“No,” I level back at her, just as vehement, “but it should be the plan now!”

Confusion twists Hee Muur’s features as Vothe steps toward her. “Heelyn, let him link his power to yours and charge it so you can set up a runic barrier!”

Her eyes swing toward his. “Are you mad?”

Jules Kristian and Lucretia Quillen shoulder through the surrounding Vu Trin, the two of them surprisingly holding hands, but there’s no time to wonder at the sight.

“There’s historical precedent,” Jules calls out to Heelyn, holding up a text. “Accounts of Dryad power being linked to a variety of magics during the Elfin wars to form barriers against demonic power. And Trystan’s power is, essentially, Dryad power.”

Heelyn meets this with an outraged look at Jules’s hand, linked with green-glimmering Lucretia’s.

Lucretia calmly meets Heelyn’s glare. “Trystan has enough of a storm in him to draw everyone’s power into any framework of a barrier you can create,” she offers.

“And any Smaragdalfar varg power you get hold of,” Jules adds.

“Help me wall off the city!” I press Heelyn, emboldened by the support.

Heelyn’s acid glare swings back to Vothe. “He’s lying!” she snarls. “They all are!”

“Have you completely forgotten that I’m a power empath?” Vothe snarls back in glaring disbelief. “They’re not lying!”

“Trystan!”

I turn toward the familiar rugged voice, relief swooping through me to find my blood-streaked brother, Rafe, jogging toward us, his tunic thrown off.