I turn to find the pale, lime-hued Dryad I’ve named Darkness staring at me, his hood-shadowed dark eyes locked on to mine, all the colors of the world seeming to dim around him. I notice that he is the only one here who has black eyes instead of green, and that he lacks the others’ tree-imprinted armor.

I brush away my reflexive wariness of this Fae, desperate for answers. “I know Gardnerians have Dryad blood.” I reach up to touch my ear. “But...why am I so transformed?”

A slight smile forms on his lips, but it does nothing to dampen his aura of danger. On the contrary, it heightens it. Along with the way his black-clad form remains shadowed, even in dawn’s bright light.

“You were dormant,” he says, a hard edge to his words. “Like all Gardnerian Mages. Kept unrooted from the Forest.”

His biting words trigger a disturbance through the Dryads’ collective elemental power and I can tell from Yvan’s shuddering flame that he senses it too.

Vicious’s green glare turns incendiary. “You’re twisting things, Hazel!”

I tense my brow at Darkness—Hazel—in confusion. “What do you mean when you say ‘kept unrooted’?”

He narrows his midnight gaze and pins me in what feels like a thrall, everything around us fading and darkening, the sunlit world dimming. “Hundreds of years ago,” he seethes, “the Dryads shunned your people. They set their elemental power against the Mages to keep you dormant and cut off from the source of your lentulym.”

Lentulym. I instinctively understand this Dryad word—our affinity roots. The elemental lines inside me that I finally sense, now that I’m connected to the trees. And to III.

“Why would the Dryads cut us off from the Forest?” I ask, thrown as Yvan’s fingers thread reassuringly through mine.

“For the same reason the Kelts despised you,” Hazel rejoins. A jaded scowl twists his mouth. “Your blood isn’t ‘pure.’”

“That’s not the reason!” Vicious growls.

Hazel bares sharp teeth at her, a bloodthirsty look entering his eyes that sends a chill racing down my back. “It is the reason,” he snarls. “The Kelts hated the Fae and the Fae hated the Kelts. So, when a few Kelts and Dryad Fae paired to create the Mages, those Mages were cast out by everyone. Like the Death Fae were cast out.” His dark eyes remain fixed on Vicious, glinting with outrage. “Isn’t that true, Oaklyyn?”

Vicious’s name falls into place in my mind, her acorn-festooned hair and River Oak staff signifying a kinship with oak trees.

Oaklyyn’s look of sweltering ire turns scathing. “Our people were almost wiped out by the Kelts. Or has that escaped your halfling memory?”