Lord of the Fading Lands: Chapter 19

Flaming gods, Rain was never going to survive this courtship.

Lying on his back on the still-warm sands of Celieria’s Great Bay, he stared blindly at the sky as the salty, rolling surf of the Pereline Ocean washed over him. Every muscle in his body was still drawn tight in throbbing knots, desperate for the release he was beginning to doubt would ever come. Or if it did come, it would be too late to save him from insanity.

His need for Ellysetta was an intense, living, driving thing, a relentless torture that kept him near to screaming on the razor-sharp edge of his control.

Gods rot the soulless bastards who invented pinalle. Plague take the servant who kept pouring the bottled blue frustration into her glass. And Rain hoped to all the seven bitter hells that Dorian mated the very life’s essence out of Annoura tonight for her thrice-cursed, sowlet-stupid idea of plying Ellysetta with pinalle in the first place.

Because Ellysetta had not only roused Rain’s passion with her sensual, heavy-lidded glances and unguarded emotions. Oh, no, it went far, far beyond that. In her uninhibited, pinalle-induced and keflee-enhanced daze, she had woven a Spirit web of carnal hunger so subtle and yet so scorchingly strong that she had sent every breathing person in the banquet hall—mortal and Fey alike—spiraling into an abyss of driving sexual need before anyone knew what was happening. When last he’d seen his fellow dinner attendees, they were falling upon one another like ravening wolves, some couples staggering off to find privacy while others shed every last ounce of reserve they ever possessed on the very spot where they stood.

Bel and the rest of Ellie’s quintet had barely managed to make it to the Baristani home before pleading for Rain to release them from their duties. He did, of course. They would have been useless in the state they were in. They’d all five taken off walking towards Celieria’s brothel district, but by the time they reached the end of the block, they were running.

After leaving Ellysetta in Ravel’s care, he’d thrown himself into the sky and flown here, to the silver beaches of the southern coast, hoping to find some respite—or at the very least a lessening of the weave. He’d found none.

The gods alone knew how long the effect of her weave would last, but it was still going agonizingly strong three bells after its inception. Even with hundreds of miles separating himself and Ellysetta. Lying in the surf, Rain shrieked his fury to the open skies above and pounded his fists in the wet sand around him.

Torel paced restlessly as Sian attempted for the sixth time in the last two bells to contact Belliard vel Jelani and relate what they’d discovered.

‘You still can’t reach him?’ Torel asked in concern. He ran his hands through his dark hair and blew on his fingers. The woods seemed colder than they had just chimes ago.

Sian shook his head and dissolved his weaves.

‘Try someone else.”

‘I already have. I can’t reach Bel or any of the Feyreisa’s quintet, nor Dax, Lady Marissya, or any of her quintet. I even tried to contact the Feyreisen. None of them are answering me. They must still be at that palace dinner Bel mentioned earlier today. We dare not pass the information on to anyone else.”

Although Brind Palwyn had steadfastly insisted he knew nothing about a redheaded child, Sian had woven Spirit between them and retrieved the man’s memories. Those memories had contained exactly the information Sian and Torel had been sent to find, but not at all what they’d expected.

As a child of ten, Brind had seen his parents tortured and killed by an Elden Mage looking for an escaped slave and a flame-haired child. A child the Elden Mage had claimed was the stolen daughter of his master, the High Mage Vadim Maur.

Even now, Torel wanted to cry out that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. He’d seen the Feyreisa with his own eyes, seen her brightness. But Brind’s memories were so vivid, he couldn’t doubt they were real.

The Paldwyns had only offered a night’s shelter to the slave and the child, but afterwards, unbeknownst to his parents, Brind had agreed to hide the baby in the woods while the slave drew off her pursuers. That task had kept Brind from dying with his parents. The slave girl, he later discovered, had set her own body aflame and thrown herself off the cliffs of Norban’s quarry to avoid being tortured and questioned by the Mage. Brind had retrieved what little remained of her burned and broken body, and had buried it alongside his parents. As for the baby, Brind had followed a Celierian couple traveling through the woods and put the baby beneath a tree where they would find her. He’d stayed hidden until he was sure they would take the child, and then he’d spent the rest of his life trying to forget everything that had happened.

He’d been relatively successful, too, until recently. While searching Brind’s memories, Sian discovered another disturbing image of local villagers bringing treasured Fey-gifts passed down through generations into the town square to be destroyed in a huge bonfire, while a white-haired priest in a voluminous, hooded blue cloak stood by and collected shards of Tairen’s Eye crystal from the villagers Brind had inquired about the bonfire later, but none of the villagers remembered anything about the Fey-gifts they’d thrown into the fire, or the Tairen’s Eye shards they’d given to the blue-cloaked priest. It was as if those memories had been wiped clean. But Brind, who’d watched from the woods rather than participating in the bonfire, remembered—and he’d suffered nightmares about his parents’ deaths ever since.

Sian had erased all memory of Mages, death and Ellysetta from Brind’s mind, then gave the poor man what he’d wanted his whole life: memories of a happy childhood, unmarred by tragedy, memories of parents who died happily in their sleep after a satisfying life. It wasn’t legal. It broke the Fey-Celierian treaty and several Fey laws, but Sian did it anyway and dared Torel to say a word.

Torel wouldn’t, of course. He’d still been young when the Mage Wars started. He hadn’t even completed his first level of the Dance of Knives. But he, too, had seen his parents slaughtered by the Eld, just as Sian and Brind had, and there were days Torel wished someone would weave Spirit to remove his memories of that horror.

‘Come on, then,’ Torel said, clapping his friend on the back. ‘With a little effort, we might just make Celieria City by moonset tomorrow.”

‘Do you think it’s true?’ Sian didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to.

Torel didn’t want to believe it, but Fey didn’t lie, so instead, he forced a chiding look on his face and said, ‘She made Bel’s heart weep again. Do you think she could have done that if even the smallest part of her were tainted by Elden evil?”

‘Of course. You’re right’ Sian nodded and stared at his booted toes.

‘Silly pacheeta’ Torel grabbed his friend around the throat and scrubbed his knuckles against Sian’s skull through his wavy brown hair. ‘Come on, then. All doubts are forgotten. Let’s get back to our brothers.”

They were still smiling when the sel’dor shrapnel ripped through them.

Sian and Torel staggered, fell, then leapt back to their feet with red Fey’cha steel bared, automatically assuming the slightly crouched battle stance of a Fey warrior. Only then did they detect the reek of Azrahn and see the red-black glow of it around them. Only then did they see the shadowed mob of attackers lying in wait for them.

There were fifty or more, Torel estimated. Too many to beat. He and Sian were already surrounded, so there was nowhere to run. It was a fight to the death, then, his and Sian’s.

‘Where did they come from, Torel?’ Hands moving at incredible speed, Sian fired red Fey’cha into the surrounding mob with deadly accuracy.

‘Scorched if I know. Guard my back.’ Torel cursed as a barbed sel’dor arrow pierced his thigh, then gritted his teeth and sent four of his own red Fey’cha whirling into the shadows that surrounded him. Muffled shrieks, quickly silenced as tairen venom did its job, made him grin with savage victory. He would take as many with him as he could before he died.

Though he had yet to see the face of a single attacker, Torel was certain they were Eld. The sickly sweet reek of Azrahn was too strong for them to be anything else. He and Sian should have sensed them miles away—if only through their Fey instinct for danger—yet neither of them had detected the Eld even when standing virtually on top of them.

The sel’dor piercing their flesh prevented Torel and Sian from summoning magic to their defense. The black metal of Eld burned Fey flesh like acid and twisted even the weakest weave into agony. They could not weave Spirit to cry out a warning to the Fey warriors in Celieria.

But they could fight. With naked steel, deadly skill, and grim determination, Torel and Sian fought like the Fey warriors they were.

Within mere chimes, dozens of their attackers lay dead about them, and more fell dead each moment. It wasn’t enough. Torel and Sian were bleeding heavily, both from the

hundreds of tiny shrapnel wounds and the numerous arrows bristling from their bodies like quills.

Torel heard his cradle-friend grunt in pain as another of their attackers’ arrows pierced his body. Sian fell heavily to one knee.

«I hear the tairen calling, Torel.» Sian’s breath wheezed out of lungs rapidly filling with blood. His hands, though, still fired Fey’cha daggers with the fierce precision perfected over a thousand years as a warrior.

«I know, my brother,» Torel replied. Even the small thread of Spirit required to mindspeak over the short distance between them caused agony to rip through him as each tiny piece of sel’dor shrapnel in his body twisted his Spirit weave into pain.

It would all be over soon. When Sian fell, Torel’s back would be open to attack.

And they had not even had a chance to let Belliard vel Jelani know what they had found.

«It’s beautiful, Torel. So beautiful.» The sending was a whisper of sound.

«Save a piece of the sky for me, Sian. I’ll fly with you soon.» Torel heard the rattle of his cradle-friend’s last breath followed by the low, heavy thud of his lifeless body falling to the ground. A tear slid from Torel’s eye. Over a thousand years they had known each other. Soar, Sian. Soar high and laugh on the wind.

Dark, shadowy figures moved closer, circling.

Torel pulled his two seyani longswords free of their scabbards. ‘Come, then!’ he shouted. ‘Come dance with the tairen, if you dare! Miora felah ti’Feyreisa! Joy to the Feyreisa! And death to you all!”

And he became a whirling blur of motion—black leather, shining steel, red blood—spinning in the moonlight, delivering death to all he touched until he moved no more.

It was time. Dawn was only a few bells away and the Daughter moon had nearly set. The sky was as dark as it would become tonight.

Vadim Maur entered his spell room. Rings gleamed on three fingers of each hand: five colored cabochon stones and one gleaming black selkahr, each surrounded by a rainbow of smaller cabochon stones in repeating six-color patterns. Rings of power, worn in the most powerful configuration possible: Earth, Water, and Spirit on his left hand, mated by Air, Fire, and Azrahn on his right. On each wrist, he wore thick gold bands that held dark, gleaming selkahr crystals— Tairen’s Eye altered by Azrahn to unleash its vast, dark power. He carried Kolis’s Mage blade, placed it on the stone table, and began the cleansing ritual.

When he was finished, he plunged the Mage blade into the clear water in the offering bowl and murmured the spell to release the rich blood stored in the dark Eld metal. Streamers of red billowed out from the blade, tinting the water. He added a fresh vial of blood from his prisoner in the levels below and submerged the Tairen’s Eye crystal to complete the spell. When the water cleared after his last incantation, he dipped his cup and drank.

Magic flowed over him in a rush of near-sexual pleasure, making his eyes flutter half closed. She was powerful. With just that little bit of her blood to strengthen the spell, he could feel the promise of her power coursing through his veins.

He summoned his own magic, wove the camouflaged rope of Azrahn, and sent it spiraling upwards through the pipe and into the world.

‘Girl,’ he whispered in the darkness. He sensed her frightened flinch, felt the brief twinge of his own muscles as her blood reacted in his veins. Oh, yes, she was there, and still trying to hide from him. She would not be able to hide any longer.

A smile widened on his rapidly chilling lips.

Rain swam down to the deepest depths of Great Bay’s main channel, where the water was only a few degrees above freezing. Even that did not cool the need that had driven him for nearly seven full bells now. Giving up, he swam back to the surface and made his way to shore.

He was close to the city, less than twenty miles away, and desperate to keep that distance. Already he’d let the tairen draw him back towards Ellysetta. Control was but a ragged illusion, a bare thread he clung to with desperate hope.

If the weave didn’t end soon, gods help him. He had no more strength to resist.

Ellysetta dreamed of heat. Rain was with her, eyes glowing like lavender suns, arms holding her close. His hands and Spirit weaves played over her skin in endless, breathtaking torment. Dear gods, she wanted … so badly. What she wanted, she didn’t know, but the need for it burned inside her, hungry and yearning, desperate for fulfillment.

They were in the glade overlooking Great Bay. Soft, cushioning grass lay beneath her back. The warmth of Rain’s body pressed against her. His lips tracked down her throat, leaving a path of fire in their wake. ‘Ku’shalah aiyah to nei.”

‘Aiyah,’ she breathed. Her fingers threaded through the silky thickness of his hair as his head lowered. Cool air rushed across her breasts. She gasped, then arched her back as his mouth closed around her. ‘Rain,’ she cried.

He laughed softly against her skin. ‘You are so sweet,’ he murmured, ‘so very, very sweet.’ His teeth nipped at her with just enough force to make her gasp in surprise and shiver from the resulting tumult of sensation. His hand slid down her side, found the hem of her skirt, and ducked beneath. His fingers swept up her leg, towards the tight ache burning inside her.

Alarmed and shocked, she caught his hand. For the first time ever in his company, a feeling of wrongness came over her. ‘Rain?’ She shivered again, but this time from cold, not pleasure. The night air had grown chill and biting. Rain’s body no longer offered the warmth it had only moments ago.

He acted as though he had not heard her. His fingers dug into the soft skin of her thigh. ‘Give yourself to me. Open up and let me in, my sweet.”

‘No,’ she said, pushing at him. The arms that had held her close now seemed like shackles, imprisoning rather than embracing her. ‘No, this is wrong. You promised my father …”

He laughed again, but the sound was ugly this time, mocking. ‘You think any oath to a mortal could ever keep a Fey from taking what he wants?’ He lifted his head, and ice rushed through her veins. His eyes! Instead of the glowing lavender eyes she’d come to love, there were only pits of blackness, flickering with malevolent red lights.

She screamed and shoved him away.

Mocking laughter rang in her ears, and Rain disappeared in a swirl of black smoke. The twinkling glow of the fairy flies was extinguished, plunging her into darkness.

‘Bright Lord protect me,’ she whispered. She knew where she was, knew what was happening. This was a place she’d been many times before. This was the malignant womb from which all her nightmares sprang, the dark home of monstrous horrors and unspeakable evil.

This was the pit where the Shadow Man dwelled. Haunting her. Hunting her.

Hide deep and well. Never let him find you. If you reveal yourself to him, all will be lost. The urgent directive that had guided her from her earliest memories now shrieked from the depths of her soul. Hide, child! Hide now!

It was already too late.

She tried to flee, as she’d fled so many times in the past, but something held her fast, trapping her in the dark nexus. Panic rose, swift and sharp. Unable to escape, she tried to make herself small and invisible and tried to direct her consciousness, her thoughts, her entire being inward—hoping silence could conceal her. But she could feel him coming closer.

Cold enveloped her. Terror choked her. Each beat of her heart became a painful blow, as if someone were hammering spikes of ice into her chest.

Whispers snaked around her, the sibilant voice ancient and sinister and harrowingly familiar. ‘Girl … I know you’re here … I can taste your nearness … Show yourself”

Something brushed against her, something small and furry with sharp little claws. A rat running across her hand. She bit back a scream, knowing the Shadow Man would hear. Knowing, somehow, it was what he wanted. If she made a sound—even the tiniest whimper—she would seal her doom.

The rat brushed against her again. Its sharp claws scratched her skin. The long, naked tail slithered across her hand, twitching back and forth like some hideous pendulum as its pointed snout poked and sniffed at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, shrieking in silent horror and revulsion as the verminous creature crawled over her. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare fling the filthy thing away.

Something else brushed her hip. Another rat had joined the first. A third climbed over her leg, then a fourth brushed her foot. Soon there were dozens, circling around her, crawling over her skirts and up her arms, growing bolder as she offered no resistance.

‘I sense your fear. Have my little friends found you?’ When she didn’t respond, his voice hardened, ‘Come, now. Show yourself. I can use much more unpleasant methods to get what I want.”

Sharp teeth sank into her finger as the first rat closed its jaws and bit. Agony lanced up her arm. Another rat bit, then another. Oh, gods! The silent scream ripped through her soul. She was being eaten alive!

Her flesh was on fire. Though her eyes were blind in the utter darkness, she could feel each tiny scrape and bite, the pierce of long sharp teeth, the agony of skin peeling back from bone in bloody shreds.

With frantic urgency, she began to whisper the Bright Lord’s devotion in her mind, reciting the words again and again. Holy Adelis, Lord of Light, shine your brightness upon me. Glorious Father, Sun of my Soul, grant me strength to stand against darkness. Adelis, Bright One, Lord of my Heart, bless me and keep me always in the Light. The devotion offered only a fraction of the peace it usually did, but even that little bit she grasped with desperate gratitude.

Again and again, she repeated the devotion, and with each repetition, the pain in her flesh grew slightly more distant. Still there, still agonizing, but muted. As if she’d managed to push it into a small corner of her mind and lock it there.

Time crawled by. Moments stretched out for what seemed like bells. She clung to her silence with ragged determination. No matter what he did to her, she mustn’t reveal herself.

‘You are stronger than I believed.’ The Shadow Man sounded triumphant, almost … proud. `But your efforts are in vain. You will reveal yourself to me.’ His voice became a cold whip of compulsion, battering at her mind, eating away at her defenses as relentlessly as his vermin gnawed at her flesh. ‘You want to reveal yourself to me. You can feel the darkness within you, demanding release.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed a silent cry, trying to block out the sound of his voice, the insidious words worming past her defenses. She wanted to scream out that he was wrong, that she wasn’t dark, that she didn’t feel the evil inside her. But she couldn’t. Such a claim would be a lie. Deep, deep inside, in a place she had long ago refused to look—in a place so terrifying she’d never spoken of it to anyone, not even her father—something monstrous lived. An evil thing she’d always feared, a terror that dreamed of rending flesh with fangs and drinking blood rain from the sky.

It shifted inside her now, restless and hungry, its rage growing by the moment. Her skin felt stretched. Her hands clenched in fists. She mustn’t let that thing out. Not now. Not ever. The world would fall to darkness if she ever set it free.

‘You think the Fey can protect you. But who will protect them from you? Shall I show you what you will do to them?”

Around her, the pure, blind blackness began to lighten. Shadow became gray fog, swirling in eddies. Smells rose up, thick and overpowering: smoke, scorched flesh, blood, death. Gradually the mists began to clear, enough to see the aftermath of a terrible battle stretched out before her.

She was standing in a field of corpses. Shattered swords lay useless in dead, decaying hands. Torn pennants of a once proud army fluttered on broken shafts. Blood soaked the ground and congealed in dark pools. The stench of death filled the air, so thick each breath made her gag.

Horror mounted as she realized all the bodies strewn around her were either Fey or Celierian. King Dorian, Queen Annoura, Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, Bel, Kieran, Kiel: faces she knew, and thousands more that she didn’t. Flies filled the air in swarms so thick they darkened the sky. Rats and crows flowed over the bodies like hideous rivers, feasting on the dead.

‘Do you think it’s only the Fey who will suffer on your behalf?”

A loud caw drew her attention. Atop a piled mound of bodies, a pair of crows were fighting over something long and pink, tugging it between their beaks and flapping their wings angrily. Their clawed feet hopped back and forth over a tangle of bloodless limbs.

Ellysetta’s heart clenched with dread as she saw a child’s hand. The fingers were still plump with youth, the lifeless grip clutching a small Stone painted in a pattern she recognized. Oh, gods, please, please no. Her gaze climbed up, following the slender child’s arm to the tangle of mink-brown curls. Lillis lay dead upon the pile of bodies, Lorelle beside her. Mama and Papa lay close by, faces etched with expressions of horror, dead arms still reaching protectively towards their children.

Ellysetta wept with voiceless grief and denial. Although some part of her knew this was just another of the Shadow Man’s tricks to force her to reveal herself, the sight of her parents dead before her, of Lillis and Lorelle’s small bodies being ripped apart and fought over by carrion birds, was more than she could bear. She tried to close her eyes against the hideous vision, but even that escape was denied her. The scene played relentlessly against the backs of her eyelids, refusing to be shut out.

A shrouded figure stood on the hillside. Behind the figure, black- armored soldiers stretched out towards the horizon like a stain upon the earth. The Shadow Man’s army. The dark promise of what was yet to come.

‘You’ll kill them, girl. You’ll kill them all. It’s what you were born for.”

Something brushed against her ankle. She looked down and found Rain lying on the ground at her feet, his throat and chest slashed open, his eyes milky and dead. A crow perched on his head. The dark wings flapped and covered his face like some hideous shroud, brushing against her ankle again as the bird bent to peck at one dead eye.

It was too much.

The scream ripped from her, the sound a shriek of anguish and despair.

‘Get away from him! Don’t touch him!’ She flung herself at Rain’s body, tearing in hysterical revulsion at the birds and vermin feasting on him. Fury gathered inside her and pulsed in a_. fierce, hot blast of rage. The rats and crows burst into flame. ‘Liar! Foul, evil liar! I’d die before hurting the people I love!”

A hand clamped hard around her throat. The Shadow Man who had been on the hillside just a moment ago now stood before her, shrouded in black, his face hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. Ice froze her blood in her veins.

‘Bright Lord save me,’ she whispered, more from instinct than hope, knowing it was already much too late. She’d given herself away, revealed herself to him.

Worse, she’d revealed her magic.

The Shadow Man laughed, the sound triumphant. ‘The Bright Lord doesn’t live here, girl. And he wouldn’t save you even if he did.’ Her tormentor threw back his hood, and Ellysetta cried out in denial. Instead of the monstrous visage she’d always expected, her own face stared back at her, pale and ravaged, with twin black pits— bottomless and flickering with red lights—where her eyes should have been.

‘I see you … Ellysetta.’ The voice came out of her own mouth, but the sound was a familiar, malevolent hiss. ‘You can’t hide from me any longer’ The cloaked Ellysetta lifted a wavy black blade and sent it plunging towards her heart.

‘No!’ She shrieked and threw her hands up. The savage thing inside her howled with wrath. Fire boiled from her hands in voracious incendiary clouds. The cloaked Ellysetta shrieked in agony as the flames enveloped her.

Hot wind blew across Rain’s face. He stared with dazed incomprehension at the flames leaping all around him as pella trees crackled and burned. The sand at his feet smoked and shattered as a wave tumbled over molten glass. Some small part of his mind registered the memory of furious heat rolling through him, but all that remained now was fear.

‘Ellysetta’ Oh, gods. «Ellysetta!»

No answer.

«Ravel! Fey! Ti’Feyreisa! Ti’Feyreisa!» Rain sprang into the sky, shooting high over the trees in a stream of sparkling gray mist that solidified instantly in tairen form. Air- powered wind filled his wings. He wheeled west towards the glow of Celieria City in the distance. A command barked on a dagger of Spirit sent the Fey rushing to reinforce the protective weaves around Ellysetta’s home, and check on his truemate. Something had attacked her, but none of them had sensed it.

«She is here. She is unharmed,» Ravel called back, «but hurry.”

Rain streaked across the sky, covering the miles in a handful of chimes. He reached the Baristani house and arrowed out of the sky, Changing as he descended. The Fey hurried to pull down their weaves to grant him access, but those threads they didn’t have time to unmake shredded before him, curling back from the buffeting force of his power as he streamed through Ellysetta’s bedroom window and reclaimed Fey form at her side.

She sat huddled on her bed, pressed into the corner, eyes squeezed shut, her body racked with violent shudders. Her fists were clenched, her arms crossed protectively over her head and chest as if to ward off an attack. Ravel and her parents stood beside her, distraught and helpless. Her room was a shambles, her mirror shattered and smoking, the walls shredded as if great razor-sharp claws had sliced through the wood and plaster in a rage and scorched as if by sudden searing flame.

‘She was like this when I came in,’ Ravel said. ‘She won’t let any of us near her.”

‘What have you done to her?’ Lauriana burst out. ‘What have you done that sleep would bring such torments?”

‘Laurie, shh.’ Sol tried to calm his wife, but she batted him away.

‘No, Sol! I won’t hush. I’ve held my silence too long already! I told you this was a mistake. We were meant to protect her from magic, and instead we’ve flung her back into its teeth! Her nightmares have returned, Sol. Because of them.”

She jabbed an accusing finger in Rain and Ravel’s direction. ‘You can’t deny it any longer! And you know where it’s going to lead!”

Ignoring her, Rain knelt on the floor beside Ellysetta and laid his hand on her shoulder. She cried out and tried to fling herself away, but he caught her and held tight as she struggled against him. Her skin was cold as ice. ‘Shei’tani. Ellysetta. Las, las, kem’san. Ke sha taris. Ke sha avel vo. I am here. I am with you.’ He held her close, rocking her, whispering a soothing litany of words into her ears while in silence his heart swore bitter vengeance against the monster who had visited this torment upon her.

The convulsive shudders racking her slender form gradually diminished. ‘Rain?’ Her eyes opened, then flooded with tears when she saw him. She flung her arms round his body to clutch him tight and buried her face against the bare skin of his throat. ‘Oh, Rain. You’re alive. Oh, thank the gods.’ Wrenching sobs shook her.

Though her grief tore at his heart, his eyes closed with relief. She was safe and unharmed. She was whole and in his arms, where she belonged. ‘I’m here, shei’tani.”

‘Hold me,’ she whispered. ‘Hold me and don’t let me go. I’m cold, so cold.”

His arms tightened, pulling her closer, wrapping around her as if with his body alone he could shield her from whatever evil hunted her.

‘Ellie!’ Lauriana rushed forward, hands outstretched, but as she neared, Ellysetta flinched away, burrowing deeper into Rain’s arms. Desperation flooded his senses.

«Rain, tell her to go. Tell them all to go. I can’t bear for anyone to touch me right now. No one but you.»

‘Leave us, all of you,’ Rain barked. «Ravel, get everyone out.»

The Fey nodded and tried to usher the Baristanis out the bedroom door. Lauriana resisted the eviction. ‘Don’t you dare touch me! I’m not leaving my child here with you, not after this! I won’t do it anymore!”

Sol flung out an arm towards Rain and Ellysetta. ‘Can’t you see Ellie doesn’t want either of us here right now? He’s the only one who’s even been able to get near her. Clearly, he’s what she needs now, not us. For the gods’ sake, Laurie, if he can bring her peace, let him do it.”

‘He can’t bring her peace, Sol. He’s only brought all her old torments back, worse than they ever were before. How can you not see that?”

‘Mama.’ Lauriana and Sol both turned. Ellysetta was still in Rain’s arms, but she had lifted her head. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes as bleak as Lauriana had ever seen them. ‘Please go. You can’t help me. I’m not sure anyone can help me anymore.”

‘Ellie …’ Lauriana started forward, arms outstretched, tears in her eyes. ‘Killing.”

Ellysetta flinched away. ‘Don’t touch me. Just go. I need you to go.”

Weeping, broken by her daughter’s plea in a way no angry words could have done, Lauriana left. Sol and the Fey followed her out, closing the door behind them.

‘What happened, Ellysetta?’ Rain asked when they were finally alone.

‘It was a dream,’ she whispered. ‘A very, very bad dream.’

‘Will you tell me?”

In a slow, halting voice, she did. She stumbled over the part where he’d tried to coax her into mating with him and the horrible way he’d laughed, and her voice cracked when she told him about the bodies shredded into bloody meat, rats and crows flowing like a river of disease all around her. She broke into helpless tears once more when she told him about finding him dead at her feet, carrion for the crows. ‘Oh, Rain, gods save me, I was the one who’d led the army to destroy you. I saw myself there, leading them. I looked into my own face—and knew what I had done. And my eyes—oh, gods, my eyes—it was like looking into the fire pits of the Seventh Hell. It was … pure evil.’ A fresh bout of shuddering shook her. Nothing could block the memory of those dark, burning eyes.

‘Is this what you saw?’ He spun Spirit in the air between them, weaving an image of a pale face dominated by dead black wells where the eyes should have been.

She shrank back in sudden fear.

Rain’s mouth tightened. The nightmarish image dissolved. ‘Powerful magic always reveals itself. When someone weaves Azrahn, their eyes turn black and flicker with red lights, like the dying embers of a fire. Ellysetta, I doubt the dream was your own—or anything even remotely resembling truth. The purpose could be many things: an attempt to sow doubt between us where none can exist, an attempt to use my face to spring some sort of trap. Bel told me you’ve had other nightmares. Were they like this?”

She closed her eyes. The time for hiding the truth was past. ‘I’ve had nightmares all my life, some worse than others. Even when I was small, I saw horrible things no child should ever see. Wars, murder, people dying. I don’t know why I dream what I dream, but I’ve always known he was searching for me. And that if he found me, something terrible would happen.”

‘He who?”

‘The Shadow Man. He’s there in the darkness when I sleep. He was gone for years, but he came back again about a week before you arrived in Celieria. He’s been searching for me, calling to me in my sleep, urging me to show myself.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, chafing her hands on her cold skin. ‘It’s one of the reasons I’ve always feared and denied my own magic, Rain. I was afraid if I used it, he would find me. And now, I think he has.’ Her throat closed up. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I tried to stay hidden, but he knew I was there. He wouldn’t stop tormenting me until I showed myself. Everyone was dead: Bel, Kieran, all the Fey, Mama, Papa, the twins. And you—at my feet and the crows were .. . were … oh, Rain, I couldn’t bear any more! I screamed at him to stop. I revealed myself to him, and now he knows how to find me. And I think he intends to use me to kill the people I love.”

His arms tightened around her. One hand cupped her chin and urged her to look up at him. ‘I will permit no one to harm you or the people you love, Ellysetta. And if this Shadow Man thinks to try, I promise you he will regret it’ The look in his eyes was lethal. This was the man who’d once scorched the world, and for the first time she realized he was fully capable of scorching it again on her behalf. Would scorch it again, if the evil that stalked her laid claim to her soul. ‘I make you fear me,’ he said. The fire faded from his eyes. He pulled her tight against his chest and held her close. ‘Do not fear me.”

‘It’s not you I’m afraid of, Rain.’ She had to tell him about the exorcism, about the demons the priests said haunted her soul. Now that the Shadow Man had found her, she couldn’t afford secrets. Whatever evil lived inside her, he might find a way to use it against Rain and the Fey. ‘It’s not even the Shadow Man. Not really.’ She blurted out the truth before fear could silence her. ‘It’s me.”

He drew back and stared into her face. ‘What do you mean?”

She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Would he revile her? She pulled herself out of his arms and huddled closer to the wall, needing to put some distance between them.

‘Ellysetta … “

‘No. Listen to me. I’ve been afraid to tell you, but you need to know’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. She could do this. She could. She must. ‘He told me I was evil. He said he knew I felt darkness calling me. And he was right.’ The admission came hard, each word forced out of her through sheer will, but once the first secret found freedom, the rest followed in a rush. ‘From the time I was very small, I’ve had … seizures. There’s nothing particular that makes them happen. They just do. An unbearable pain engulfs me, and all I can do is fall to the floor, screaming. Sometimes it can go on for days.”

Memories, long buried, swirled in her mind, as vivid and terrifying as they had been the day she lived them. The echoes of her own wild screams rang in her ears. Her vision turned red as if veiled in blood. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes and whimpered.

Rain’s hand covered hers, offering strength and comfort. She clutched it tight and held on until the worst of the memories faded and she could speak again.

‘When I was little, the seizures came every few months, sometimes more often. They frightened Mama and Papa. They didn’t know what to do. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it. They said it was demon possession, something wrong in my soul. Mama brought in the exorcists from the Church of Light. I was very young … but I remember …’ She bent her head, and her hair fell forward to veil her face. She remembered the candles and the chanting and the fierce eyes of the exorcists as she screamed and her small body convulsed.

‘At first they just prayed and rubbed me with sago flowers. But the seizures began to grow worse, and they decided they must do something more … aggressive … to draw the demons out. They had a little box filled with needles …’ Long, shining needles lying on a bed of red satin. Needles to pierce her so the demon could escape her body, each topped with a tiny, dark crystal bead the exorcists claimed would draw the demon out.

‘They thought that if they drove those needles into me, they could trap the demon.’ Ellie rubbed her arms as the memories washed over her. She was screaming … screaming as the needle sank into her flesh.

‘Ellysetta … ‘ Rain pulled her closer, his body so warm against her chilled skin.

‘They put one needle through my shoulder and another through my leg before Papa made them stop.”

Papa, so fierce, snatching her up and shouting, ‘Are you mad? You torture her more? She’s only a child! Get out of my house!’ How she’d loved him in that moment. He’d pulled the needles out of her body and flung them away as if they were polluted things. He’d held her close, rocking her and weeping. ‘Papa’s sorry, precious kitling. They’ll never come back, sweetheart. Papa won’t ever let them hurt you again.”

Never again did he allow them to enter his house, never again did he allow Mama to speak of the exorcists, not even when seizures flung Ellysetta howling to the floor. Thereafter only Papa could get near her when the seizures came, and he would hold her and rock her as every muscle in her body clenched in agonizing pain. He would sing to her, softly, his tears spilling on her skin, his love wrapping around her. And she would cling to him, finding refuge in his unwavering love, anchoring herself to him until the torturous seizures passed.

‘He is a good man, your father,’ Rain murmured.

‘Yes. The best I’ve ever known.’ But she knew … she’d always known … that as much as Papa loved her, he also feared the thing that lived inside her.

And she knew he was right to fear it.

‘Rain, if he hadn’t stopped the exorcists, I don’t know what would have happened, but it would have been bad. Very bad.”

‘What do you mean?”

‘I wanted to kill them, the men who drove those needles into me. I was only a child, but I’d already seen death through my nightmares. I saw it again then, in my mind, but this was different. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was what I wanted to happen, what I wanted to do to them. I saw those men torn apart, screaming as their limbs were ripped from their bodies. I saw myself laughing, dancing in a shower of their blood, drinking it like a child drinks rain as it falls from the sky.’ She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh, Rain, what kind of monster am I?”

She waited for his horror or revulsion, but it never came. Instead his arms enfolded her and pulled her close against his chest. ‘Ellysetta … Shei’tani … You are not evil to have wished those exorcists dead for torturing you as they did. And do not believe you could have killed them, even though you dreamed of it. Fey women cannot kill, not even to defend their own lives. Their natural empathy prevents it.’

‘But Rain—”

‘Shh. Hear me out. Even though your physical appearance seems mortal, there is little doubt in my mind that your blood is Fey. Who your parents are and why they did not return to the Fading Lands before your birth, I cannot say, but your soul shines too brightly and your magic is too strong for me to believe you are anything else.

‘When those men hurt you, adding more pain on top of that you were already suffering, your Fey heritage must have stirred in anger against the crimes done against you. The tairen lives in us all, and it is not a tame creature.’ He smoothed her hair back from her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. ‘Do you think Marissya has never wished death upon another? Nei, Fey women are not so timid as that. They are gentle, aiyah, and compassionate, but even they feel the tairen rouse when pushed hard enough.”

Hope flickered in Ellysetta’s heart. ‘Do you really think that’s what it was?”

‘I have no doubt’ The unwavering certainty in his eyes made her consider, for the first time in her life, that perhaps the dark, dangerous thing inside her wasn’t evil after all.

‘But … even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain why all my life I’ve suffered those horrible seizures and nightmares.”

‘That is a separate matter.’ Cold anger flickered in his eyes, making them glow. ‘If I am right, this Shadow Man of yours is a Mage, and he’s been hunting you all your life. Definitely in your dreams. Night is the time when Azrahn grows strongest, and dreams are one realm where Azrahn lives in us all. I suspect your nightmares, your seizures, and probably those wandering souls, those ghosts you feel walking across your grave, are all connected, and all in some way spawned by the Mages.’ He stroked her hair.

‘But why would they do that to me?”

‘You are a Tairen Soul’s mate. Your magic, though you keep it locked away, is powerful beyond measure. Even as a child, they must have known something about you—or known enough to hunt for you. Soon we will be wed, and I will take you back to the Fading Lands. We will search for answers there. When I discover who has been tormenting you, I will make certain they can never do so again.”

This time, the cold, implacable promise of death and retribution did not frighten her. It made her feel safe instead. She’d told him the worst nightmare of her soul, and he had not reviled her. She turned to him, burrowing into his arms, pressing her face to the warmth of his throat. ‘Hold me, Rain. Keep me safe.”

‘I will give my life before allowing harm to come to you, shei’tani.’ He rested his cheek against the soft spirals of her hair and closed his eyes, breathing in the delicate scent that was already imprinted on his soul. The tairen in him stirred to life, but this time with fierce protectiveness rather than hunger, solicitous of its mate and her fragile state.

With more instinct than thought, Rain began to croon a soft, wordless, purring song, a song of thought and magic and emotion all woven together in silken, resonant waves.

In his arms, Ellysetta went still. He felt her breath catch in her lungs, then release in shallow, delicate gasps filled with wonder. Within her soul, a tiny, unseen door cracked open. Communion, like a shimmering beam, fell upon him and in that shining sliver of warmth the first, fragile bond between them was formed. A tender, tremulous thing. A warm light where moments ago there had been only cold, dark solitude.

His ancient soul trembled, its fierce arrogance humbled. Tears—his first in a thousand years—glimmered in his eyes. He blinked. The tears spilled down his cheeks, and he marveled at the feel of them, warm and wet, cooling rapidly. One tear tracked to the corner of his mouth, and the long- forgotten flavor of salty wetness touched the tip of his tongue.

‘What was that?’ Ellysetta whispered when his song died away into silence.

He tightened his arms around her and buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, rubbing his skin against her, like a tairen exchanging scents with its mate. ‘Tairen song.”

She tilted her head back to stare up at him, her eyes filled with as much wonder as his own. ‘I could feel it. Inside me, in my heart and in my head.’ She raised a hand and touched the cooling tracks of his tears.

‘My song sang to you, as a tairen’s song sings to its mate.’ His voice sounded low and husky to his own ears, rough with longing and long-buried emotion. Hope was a fragile flicker that he wanted to cup with both hands to protect against the harsh winds of reality.

Ah, gods, I know I am not worthy, but I will devote my life to becoming so.

He bent his head to kiss her, mating his lips to hers, his breath to hers, mating even the beat of his heart to hers. His lips tracked fevered lines across her face, her throat, her hands, then found her mouth again to give her back the passion and essence of his own self. He kissed her as if life itself lived in the wonder of her mouth, to be drunk from her lips lest he die.

Her hands fluttered against him, then clutched at him. Her fingers threaded through his hair, holding him tight. Her arms wound around his neck, slender, silken chains he knew he would never want to be free of. She kissed him back with an intensity to match his own, fearless and fierce, and the beast in his soul roared with triumph and desire.

‘Shei’tani. Ellysetta.’ He gasped her name and tore his lips from hers while he still could. It was no easy task, when his instinct, driving and powerful, was to lay his body over hers and claim her. His body shuddered in protest, muscles trembling with enforced restraint.

‘Rain?’ Ellysetta laid her hand upon his face. Her concern lapped at the ragged edges of his control, as did the innate, calming power that soothed him from her first touch. She was so gentle, so endlessly giving, and yet so strong in ways he was only coming to recognize. For all her outward timidity, she possessed an underlying will of purest steel, tensile and enduring. Her courage was so quiet, most would never see it. Even she did not see it. She would bend, but never break. She would not fight unless she had no choice, but when she did, there would be no defeating her.

He kissed her once, fiercely, then regretfully started to pull back. «1 should go. You have already been through too much tonight, and my control is not what it should be.”

She clutched his hand. ‘Please. Don’t go. Stay with me tonight.”

He shook his head. ‘Sieks’ta, shei’tani, but I cannot.’ He bent his head to hers and admitted softly, ‘This Fey aches to mate with his beloved, even if only in Spirit, and the need is more than I could bear if I stayed.”

Ellysetta tilted her head back and stared up into his eyes. ‘I don’t want to be afraid anymore, Rain,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to give him that much control over me. Teska.’ She guided his hand to her breast. ‘Take away the nightmare. Give me something else in its stead. Show me the wonders between a shei’tan and his mate. Ku’shalah aiyah to nei.”

‘Ellysetta.’ Pride and devotion set his eyes aglow. ‘Your warrior’s heart humbles me, shei’tani.’ Because he couldn’t bear not to, he ducked his head and took her lips in a passionate kiss. ‘Aiyah, shei’tani. A thousand times, aiyah.’ Green Earth swirled around him, depositing his swords and weapons belts on the table nearby.

More magic gathered inside him, and she felt the throbbing heartbeat of living energy and harnessed power. Spirit exploded from his hands in a complex weave of stunning mastery. The shinning mass surrounded them both, alive with form, texture, tastes, and scents, so real that even knowing it was a weave, she could not tell the difference. No longer were they lying on the narrow bed in her room. Instead, they were stretched out on cushioned divans, in a silken tent where perfumed breezes flapped long swaths of fabric in a sensual, hypnotic dance. The air was warm and dry, smelling of cinnabar oil and magic. Outside the tent, the low, feline roar of tairen sounded in the distance.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered.

‘This is my shellaba, a private retreat on my family estates, near the Feyls in the Fading Lands. When you accept my soul into yours and our matebond ceremony is complete, I will bring you here for the first night of our oneness, to mate with you on the lands of my ancestors, in the shadow of Fey’Bahren, and ask the souls of those who came before me to bless our union.’ Rain leaned over her, robes of purple satin sliding across her skin as he moved.

He trailed kisses down her throat, parting the satin of her own robes and laving devoted attention to each breast until her nipples were tight, aching buds and her legs fell open in restless invitation. Obligingly, the warm press of his palm cupped her. The dance of his fingers, so much broader and stronger than her own, caressed her most sensitive flesh. She kept her eyes open, fixed on his face, watching the play of emotion as he felt her body begin to respond. He took his time, patient and thorough despite his own needs, smiling into her eyes as he drove her body wild.

Her hips arched, bucking up against his hand. Weave or no weave, her response was utterly real. Heat raced through her veins, and her breath grew shallow. She reached behind her head to grasp the sides of the divan. Her fingers gripped the softness of cushioned velvet, and the smooth, polished hardness of wood. She squeezed, hanging on tight as waves of sensation washed over her.

‘I will touch you like this,’ he whispered. He kissed his way down her body, following the earlier path of his hands. The long, silken swaths of his hair trailed across her skin, adding yet another subtle friction to tease nerves left throbbing with heightened sensitivity in the burning wake of his mouth. ‘I will set your body afire, until you think you can take no more. Until you beg me to come inside you and unite our flesh as the matebond unites our souls.”

‘I’m begging already.”

He purred deep in his throat, the sound low and stirring. ‘Not enough. Not yet.”

He lowered his head, replacing the tormenting dance of his hand with the seductive heat of his mouth. His tongue stroked, hot and wet, deep, long laving strokes that made her groan, tiny, flickering strokes that made her shudder and gasp.

‘Rain … oh, gods save me … Rain! Please!”

«Not yet … » It was a thrill like no other to make her fly apart in his arms, even if only through Spirit. She was so open, so responsive, an alluring mix of innocence and sensuality. Again and again he brought her to shattering release, wiping out every remnant of fear from her nightmares, replacing each doubt and dread with passion and glorious sensation until there was no room in her mind for anything but him and the feelings he wove upon her.

Only then, only when no hint of fear remained in her eyes, did he draw upon every erotic thought and dream he’d had since her soul first called to him, spin them into each thread of the weave and slide his Spirit body deep into her waiting warmth. He poured his thoughts, his strength, his emotion, his very soul into the weave, fashioning touch, taste, smell, until she could feel his body moving on hers, in hers, until he could feel the tight, wet clasp of her muscles closing around him, pulling him deep. The tendons in his neck drew tight, the muscles in his arms clenched and shook. Part of him was aware of her wide, stunned eyes, her shallow, gasping breaths, the other part was only aware of the naked, sweat-glistening bodies of Spirit that mated in his mind and hers.

‘I want to be inside you like this. I would crawl inside your soul and live there if I could. Ver reisa ku’chae. Kern surah, shei’tani.”

‘Rain,’ she gasped. ‘Shei’tan!”

He pulled her to his chest and plundered her mouth, as the bodies in his weave arched against each other in screaming, shuddering release. He felt her quake in his arms, felt his own body give itself over to a powerful orgasm that ripped through him with stunning force.

The weave dissolved. The images of his shellaba faded into mist, leaving only Rain and his mate, still fully clothed and lying boneless as sated cats on the bed in her tiny room in the woodcarver’s house.

Much later, when he rose to leave, Ellysetta’s hand curled around his wrist. ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered. ‘Stay with me. At least until I go back to sleep.”

The glow in his eyes warmed to tenderness. Green Earth swirled in a fresh mist, smelling of springtime and blossoming life. His leather tunic dropped neatly beside the blades and weapons belts on her nightstand. Warm, pale flesh lay beneath her palms, strong arms wrapped tight around her, and the aching beauty of tairen song purred across the newly-forged first thread of their bond, singing a stirring vow.

Rain kissed her with exquisite care and smiled into her eyes. ‘I will stay with you for eternity, if you allow it, shei’tani.’

Bell: hour

Chime: minute

Dorn: Furry, round, somnolent rodent. Eaten in stews. ‘Soggy dorn’ is an idiom for someone who is spoiling someone else’s fun. A party pooper.

Keflee: A warm beverage that can act as a stimulant or aphrodisiac.

Lord Adelis: God of light. While Celierians worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses (thirteen in all), the Church of Light worships Adelis, Lord of Light, above all others. He is considered the supreme god, with dominion over the other twelve.

Rultshart: A vile, smelly, boar like animal.

Azrahn: The soul magic forbidden by the Fey for its corrupting influence but used and mastered by the mages.

Primage: master mage Sulimage: journeyman mage

Umagi: a mage-claimed individual, subordinate to the will of his/her master

Beylah vo: thank you (literally, thanks to you) Cha Baruk: Dance of Knives

Cha’kor: Literal translation is ‘five knives.’ Fey word for ‘quintet”

Chatokkai: First General. Leader of all Fey armies, second in command to the Tairen Soul. Belliard vel Jelani is the chatokkai of the Fading Lands.

Chervil: Fey expletive similar to bastard, as in ‘you smug chervil.”

Dahl’reisen: Literally, ‘lost soul’. Dahl’reisen are unmated Fey warriors who have been banished from the Fading Lands either for breaking Fey taboos or for choosing to walk the Shadowed Path rather than committing sheisan’dahlein, the honor death, when the weight of all the lives they have taken in defense of the Fey becomes too great for their own souls to bear. Dahl’reisen receive a physical scar when they make the kill that tips their souls into darkness.

E’tan: beloved/husband/mate (of the heart, not the truemate of the soul)

E’tani: beloved/wife/mate (of the heart, not the truemate of the soul)

E’tanitsa: a chosen bond of the heart, riot a truemate bond Felah Bark: Dance of Joy

Fey’cha: Fey throwing dagger. Fey’cha have either black handles or red handles. Red Fey’cha are deadly poison. Fey warriors carry dozens of each kind of Fey’cha in leather straps crisscrossed across their chest.

Feyreisa: Tairen Soul’s mate; Queen

Feyreisen: Tairen Soul; King

Ke vo’san: I love you.

Kem’falla: my lady

Kem’san: My love/My heart

Krekk: Fey expletive

Ku’shalah aiyah to nei: Bid me yes or no.

Las: peace, hush, calm

Maresk, mareska, mareskia: friend (masculine, feminine, plural) Mei felani. Bei santi. Nehtah, has desrali: Live well, love deep.

Tomorrow, we (will) die.

Meicha: A curving, scimitar-like blade. Each fey warrior carries two meicha, one at each hip.

Miora felah ti’Feyreisa: Joy to the Feyreisa Pacheeta: A silly bird; not very smart.

Sel’dor: Literally ‘black pain.’ A rare black metal found only in Eld that disrupts Fey magic.

Selkahr: Black crystals used by Mages. Made from Azrahn-corrupted Tairen’s Eye crystal.

Sheisan’dahlein: Fey honor death. Ceremonial suicide for the good of the Fey. All Fey warriors who do not truemate will either commit sheisan’dahlein or become dahl’reisen.

Shei’tan: beloved/husband/truemate

Shei’tani: beloved/wife/truemate

Shei’tanitsa: the truemate bond, a mating of souls Sieks’ta: I have shame. (I’m sorry; I beg your pardon)

Tairen: Flying catlike creatures that live in the Fading Lands. The Fey are the Tairenfolk, magical because of their close kinship with the Tairen.

Tairen Soul: Rare Fey who can transform into tairen. Masters of all five Fey magics, they are feared and revered for their power. The oldest Tairen Soul becomes the Feyreisen, the Fey King.

Teska: Please

Ver reisa ku’chae. Kern surah, shei’tani: Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved.