the feelings he unearthed in her as well as filled with a surprising desire to approach him again.
And not run this time.
A slight disturbance in her water magic coming from the other direction has Tierney stiffening even as she lets out a small sigh over the fulsome sensation of another Water Fae’s power rippling against her own in a decadent attraction.
“Are you going to take the Death Fae as your lover?” a deep, chiding voice inquires in the Asrai tongue.
Ire churns through Tierney over the intrusion into her private space.
And because she recognizes that voice.
She wheels around to find Fyordin Lir standing there in all his Asrai Fae glory, tall and shockingly handsome, his Asrai skin mirroring the nighttime hues of the Vo River. Tierney glances down at her own hand, resting on the gleaming onyx stone.
Surprise ignites when she finds that her skin has become a reflection of the Vo as well, a changeable dark current eddying over it.
A bit overcome, she glances back up at Fyordin. He’s idly balancing a roiling globe of water above his palm as he leans on the terrace railing, his expression arrogant. His dark lips twist as he gives her a poignant look and bobs his head at something behind her, as if inviting her to see.
Tierney follows his line of vision and surprise flashes again, a deeper disturbance shivering through her water magic.
Viger has rematerialized at the far edge of the terrace, his long, lean figure now perched on its stone railing, his focus unmistakably on her.
And then he again morphs into black smoke, twining up into the night sky.
“I think he’s besotted,” Fyordin teases as he pulls the globe of water back into his palm.
Tierney glowers at Fyordin as she struggles to ignore how blastedly good-looking he is, but it’s impossible. At least he’s not half-naked anymore, blessedly garbed in his sapphire Wyvernguard tunic. Tierney forces aside the memory of how gorgeous his muscular body looks underneath it.
“I’m glad you put some clothes on, Fyordin,” she tosses out in an attempt to seem unfazed by him even as her heart hammers and her water magic strains toward his, a prickling flush heating her cheeks.
Fyordin cocks a dark brow in question, and even that is dauntingly entrancing.
Tierney sighs, irritated by his powerful draw. “Men don’t go around shirtless in the Western Realm,” she explains in a barbed tone. “And I have very Gardnerian sensibilities. Since I was raised by Gardnerians. I’m quite polluted, you’ll find.”
Fyordin’s eyes flash, his lips tightening as his vast water magic grows as unsettled as hers, and Tierney notices, once again, that they’re both a visual mirror of the Vo.
“What do you want, Fyordin?” Tierney finally snaps, struggling not to stare at his matching night-river skin in beguiled fascination. “I thought I was shunned.”
Fyordin turns and leans over the stone railing and surveys the Vo, which seems to be watching them both.
Which seems to have claimed them both.
“I don’t seek to shun you.” He sets his piercing dark blue eyes back on Tierney with a fervid gaze that she can feel eddying straight through her power.
Hurt flares inside her, intensified by his magical pull. “I thought I don’t belong,” she challenges, her cursed voice breaking as she pointedly speaks in the Western Realm’s Common Tongue.
Fyordin’s jaw ticks, a flash of what looks like reluctant chagrin momentarily tightening his dominant gaze. He glances back over the Vo, clearly unsettled by her, as well. Tierney can feel it in the jostled currents of his power. “You belong,” he states in clipped, almost impatient Asrai, as if apology is something foreign to him and this is as close as he’ll edge up to it.
Tierney glares at him, and he begrudgingly meets her stare as she’s swept up in the fierce, sudden urge to grab hold of his arm like before—not in Asrai-greeting this time, but to really show him the storm inside her.
Roiling with hurt, Tierney is tempted to not give this arrogant Asrai one second more of her time. To jump off the railing and spend the night at the bottom of the Vo, surrounded by the river’s all-encompassing embrace.
“There’s great power in you,” Fyordin notes in that deep-current voice of his that seems accentuated by the night. Tierney reluctantly glances at him as he peers up at the star-blasted sky. “Enough power to control the weather, I’d wager.” He gives her a significant look.
Tierney inhales, her ability to affect the weather so chaotic and linked to her storming emotions