His hand comes up to caress my cheek and I shiver from the warm contact, my breath quavering as I lean into his palm. “I don’t just want to subvert it,” he says, a rebellious glint flaring in his eyes. “I want to burn it to ash.”

I nod, my warrior resolve rising hot around his own. I’m certain, too, that Lukas would want this for me. He would want me to rise as a warrior, as strong as possible, with every advantage possible.

In defiance of all the prophecies of all the lands.

“All right,” I say as I open my power and my heart to it all. “Let’s burn the Prophecy to ash.”

A collective sense of the momentous ripples through our magic as Yvan draws me closer, his wings arcing tighter around us. He leans down, eyes molten, and brings his lips to mine.

We ignite like wildfire and I gasp against his kiss as his fire bond bolts through me, the intensity overtaking us both. My body arches against his, our powers fusing and blasting into a conflagration of Dryadfire and Wyvernfire combined, his hard body shivering against mine from the sheer strength of the heated rush.

I tremble against him as we send a spiraling inferno of flame through each other, my Dryad and hordefire heightening his blaze as the defiant heat of our rebellious, unquenchable alliance strengthens the conflagration, the two of us once more linked, bound.

Wyvernbonded.

But in a whole new way.

Icaral and Dryad Witch.

Ready to set the whole damned Prophecy on fire.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

MIGRATION

THE KESTREL

Voloi, over the Vo River
Xishlon night, twenty-first hour

Verdyllion.

The name of the Forest Wand sounds like a beacon in the indigo kestrel’s mind. It veers west over the Vo River, the Wand gripped in its talons—the Wand dropped by the green woman with gray-glowing eyes who was all wrong, the Shadow Thing twisting inside her.

But the bonding with this Wand was immediate, enough to override the bird’s fear of the Shadow Thing, its migratory draw suffusing the kestrel’s senses in a constant, satisfying rush.

Sweet migration. Sweet current of direction.

The kestrel swoops upward, led over the Vo Forest and Vo Mountain Range, flying unharmed through the storm band atop it, the Wyvern-crafted band magicked to allow nature’s children through.

The bird soars over the Zonor River and Dyoi Mountain Range, an expansive plain opening up below, Vu Trin soldiers and their military base spread across it. Swooping low over lines of rune-marked tents, the kestrel flies toward a central building hewn from purple wood.

Four portals are positioned in the building’s expansive center with frames of blue-sparking runes, their interiors rippling gold. Vu Trin soldiers, some on horseback, are moving toward the four portals, crone sorceresses bracketing the archways, glowing blue styluses raised.