“He and Or’myr were freed when we blasted back Vogel’s magic,” Yvan tells me. “Raz’zor horded himself to me, giving me access to his tracking bond to you. He stayed behind to fight the Mages and attempt to gather Naga’s horde to your side.”

My lips part in astonishment. “So...you and Raz’zor and I...we’re all a horde now?”

He nods as his fire whips passionately around me.

But Sparrow...he gave no mention of Sparrow. I wince, remembering how Vogel ordered her brought back West. Is she being brought back to Gardneria? Or was she destroyed in the explosion? A host of other anguished worries rise. “My brothers and family...”

“I saw Trystan before I left for you,” Yvan assures me. “The battle had turned—Naga’s horde and the Vu Trin were taking out Vogel’s remaining forces. It’s likely the Lupines survived, as well.”

I cling to the hope he’s offering. Yvan has never been one to turn away from painful realities. He reaches up to caress my shoulder, his fire aura blazing through mine, but it’s no longer anchored in my lines. The bittersweet pang cuts deep.

“Our bond...” I say. “It’s gone.” I search his eyes, freed not just from all fasting and Sealing bonds, but from him, as well.

“I know,” he says, a flaring pain in his fire aura that my own flame rushes out to echo. A more liquid heat enters his gaze. “What I can sense of your fire...it’s different now. Like green sunlight.” He reaches up to gently brush his fingertip along the edge of my ear. “And your ears...” His lips lift in a pained, affectionate smile. “They’re pointed. Like mine.”

I reach up to touch a point, marveling. “I feel...reborn.” I look to Sylvan, the fierce-eyed Dryad, to find him and the other Tree Fae watching Yvan and me with expressions of pure incredulity and, for a moment, I see Yvan and myself through their eyes.

The dread Black Witch and the revered Icaral of Prophecy, improbably both alive.

Embracing as staunch allies.

“I... I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” I say to Sylvan, the Dryadin language rolling off my tongue. It feels more natural on my lips than the Common Tongue ever did, an effortless breeze, the words the truer names for things. “Why am I so altered?” I ask. “And why can I suddenly speak your language?”

“Do you not know your own history, Mageling?” a resonant male voice sounds out, its odd vibration seeming to tug my lines straight down toward Erthia’s core.