Page 6 of Realm of Wind and Vines
The Dryad Queen blinks at her.
“Azaroth’s flame, I’m so excited to meet you!” Lyra continues,the words spilling out of her mouth so fast that she almost trips over them. “When they told me they had actually met you last year, I was honestly a little skeptical because, like, no one has met a dryad. Well, no one I know, at least. Anyway, part of me was thinking that maybe they were just messing with me. But now here you are and here is your city and here we are and oh my god it’s so exciting to meet you!”
To be honest, I didn’t think that this wise and ancient dryad was even capable of looking shocked. Mabona’s tits, was I wrong.
The Dryad Queen stares at Lyra with such a comically stunned expression on her face that I have to swallow down a very untimely burst of laughter. Her mouth is slightly open, and it looks like she had an entire speech planned that she can no longer remember because this grinning dragon shifter just threw the entire interaction off its logical course.
“Uhm, did you miss the part where she was in the middle of threatening us?” Alistair says, and arches an eyebrow at Lyra.
And that’s when I notice that there is an entire circle of dryads surrounding us with drawn bows and arrows pointed at us. They, however, look equally stunned and keep glancing between Lyra and their queen.
“Oh, right!” Lyra slaps her forehead, as if she just realized that she interrupted a threatening monologue, and then waves her hand at the Dryad Queen. “Sorry. Go ahead and finish.”
Galen lets out something between a sigh and a chuckle while Draven shakes his head and tries his best to suppress a smile.
In front of us, the Dryad Queen works her mouth a couple of times before she manages to recover. Drawing herself up to her full height, she fixes us with a wary stare.
“What is this?” she demands. “Why have you come?”
“We have come to ask you to help us fight,” I reply, holding her suspicious stare.
She narrows her eyes. “Fight? What fight? I am not interested in helping you win your Atonement Trials.”
“The Atonement Trials?” I blink at her. “What? No. Those happened months ago.”
She just continues watching me with creased brows, which is when I realize that the dryads might have a very different perspective on time than we do. Compared to humans, we have very long lifespans, so they feel time more acutely than we do. But I’m starting to wonder if the difference between us and the dryads might be even bigger. Are they actually immortal?
Giving my head a quick shake, I clear my throat and try to push the conversation back on track. “Last time we spoke, you told me that you hate the Icehearts.”
A hiss, like that of a furious viper about to strike, rips through the dryads around us. Isera snaps her gaze to them, ice forming in her palms. But none of them fire any arrows at us.
“We do,” the Dryad Queen replies, her voice now cold and sharp.
“As I told you back then, we hate them too,” I continue. “And now, we are fighting back. Both fae and dragon shifters.” I motion between my friends before shifting my attention back to the Dryad Queen. “And we need your help. Will you fight with us?”
Dead silence falls across the grass. Behind us, trees of more normal sizes ripple faintly as another warm wind sweeps through the forest. It makes the twisting vines swing from the branches. Up ahead, shapes are moving inside the giant trees, as if the dryads who live in there are moving closer to peer out the windows.
The ring of archers around us remains motionless, but a few of them cast questioning glances at their queen. She, on the other hand, is watching me intently, as if she is trying to read my entire life history on my face.
I hold her gaze, barely daring to breathe.
“No.”
The air is sucked out of my lungs as if she had punched meinstead of speaking one simple word. Dragging in a sharp breath, I blurt out, “What?”
“No,” she repeats, her voice now devoid of emotion.
A snarl rips from Isera’s throat, and her voice cuts through the air like a whip as she demands, “What do you meanno?”
“We will not fight with you.”
“Why the hell not?”
Fury suddenly crackles like lightning in the Dryad Queen’s eyes, but she doesn’t reply to Isera’s question. The sight of that raw fury makes ice skitter down my spine. But Isera doesn’t back down.
“You’re just going to hide in here?” she snaps. “While everyone else fights?”
The Dryad Queen seems to grow taller, and her voice gets deeper and more commanding as she declares, “We do not go to war. We are the guardians of this world. We cannot die of old age, but we can be killed. And it takes a thousand years for a new dryad to be birthed by this world. So we do not go to war.” Rage flickers in her eyes again as she adds, “Without good cause.”
