by C. L. Wilson
Ellysetta. Just the thought of her name made the tairen roar in fury.
When first she’d called him from the sky, he’d thought the gods had sent a miracle to save him. Now he realized they’d sent her to complete his damnation.
Daughter of the High Mage. Mage-claimed. Bound to his soul forever.
He would give his life before risking the Fading Lands with a Mage-claimed truemate.
Marissya and the Fey called frantically to him from Celieria, but he ignored them. Summoning a fierce tail wind to speed his flight, he raced across the sky towards the west. Towards the protection of the Fading Lands and the tairen’s waiting fire.
The tairen had other ideas. No more than a few bells into his flight, a rich, resonant chorus of golden notes filled his mind, tairen song from Fey’Bahren, authored by Sybharukai, leader of the Fey’Bahren pride. The rich notes poured through him, not soothing and restful as they so often had been in the past, but crisp with power and command.
«We sense your approach, Rainier-Eras,» she sang. «Why do you return alone? Where is the one you were sent to find? Where is your mate?»
He had not spoken with Sybharukai or any other tairen of the pride since leaving the Fading Lands, but it did not surprise him that she knew of Ellysetta. Quickly, weaving as much information as he could into his tairen speech, Rain explained what had happened.
«You left her, your mate? You left here there, among the humans?»
«What else was I to do? I could not bring her to the Fading Lands.»
«Tairen do not abandon their mates.» Even across the vast distance between them, the great cat’s disapproval vibrated down to Rain’s bones. The glorious symphony of tairen speech rang cold with deep, discordant notes.
«Sybharukai, did you not hear me? She is Mage-claimed.»
«Mages,» Sybharukai sniffed. «You think we fear them?» She sent an image of claws indolently shredding rock. «Did not a single tairen once drive Mage evil from the earth for a thousand years? Tairen do not abandon their mates. Tairen defend the pride. She is the one you were sent to find, Rainier-Eras. Bring her to us.»
As the Tairen Soul, Rain was king of the Fey, but he was also a tairen of the Fey’Bahren pride…which Sybharukai ruled. Still, he resisted. She did not understand the dangers. She did not understand what she was asking him to do.
«It is to defend the pride that I must not bring her. She is the daughter of the High Mage of Eld, and she is Mage-claimed. He will use her to destroy us. Through her, he can even use me. I cannot allow that to happen.»
The great cat’s response carried an image of Sybharukai’s ears and tail twitching with irritation. «Claiming a mate is never without challenge or risk. Only the strongest prove worthy. Such ways ensure the health of the pride. Bring her to us.»
Rain’s claws extended, curving and razor sharp. Venom pooled in his fangs, and licks of fire sparked in the night sky. «I cannot. I will not.»
«Rainier-Eras! Obey me! There is a reason you were chosen. Only she can save us, but only if you can save her. Do your duty, Tairen Soul! Guard her! Protect her! Bring her—”
Her voice was cut off in mid-sentence. For the first time in his life, Rain blocked the song of his tairen kin from his mind. He didn’t need Sybharukai’s censure to know his duty lay behind him, there in Celieria City. Without Ellysetta, the Fey and the tairen would surely die. But he also knew, with terrifying certainty, that if he did not turn from Ellysetta now, he never would. Even if that meant surrendering his own soul to the Mages.
And if the Mages gained control over a Tairen Soul, many more people than just the tairen and the Fey would perish.
After Rain left, the Fey spent several bells bitterly debating what to do about Gaelen and his knowledge of what was happening to Celierians in the north. Marissya wanted to take him to Dorian and have him tell everything he knew. Dax and Bel vehemently disagreed.
Gaelen’s presence was a double-edged blade. He could swear under shei’dalin oath that Celierians in the north were Mage-claimed, but if questioned, he’d also have to admit to leading the dahl’reisen and murdering Celierian peasants. Just having him in their company lent credence to Lord Sebourne’s claims of dahl’reisen-Fey collusion.
In the end, Bel and Dax convinced Marissya it would be best to keep Gaelen’s presence a secret, even from Dorian. The risk of revealing him was simply too great.
Ellysetta spent the entire night curled up in a deep wing-backed chair in Rain’s palace bedroom, staring out into the night, watching the Mother and Daughter cross the sky as the small silver bells of the night rang out in slow, lonely succession. A twenty-five-fold weave hummed around the room, enveloping her in buzzing power. Gaelen had offered to add Azrahn to the weave, saying it would protect her against the powers of the Mage Mark, but the others almost pulled red on him again for the suggestion.
What little sleep she got was tormented by new nightmares of Rain turning from her in revulsion, of Fey voices crying “Mage-claimed!” in the same way the accusers of all her previous dreams had cried “Demon-possessed!”
Worst of all, she dreamed of shining, grim-faced Fey legions throwing a thousand razor-sharp knives to pierce her, and of Rain Tairen Soul swooping down to scorch her with incinerating fire as she stood before them, crackling with dark power, her eyes bottomless pits of blackness blazing with red flame.
Powered by strong, unnatural winds from the west, the sky itself turned against Rain. Sybharukai was not pleased with his defrance, nor forgiving of his stubborn refusal to hear reason. Strong headwinds surged across the skies like waves on a stormy sea, doing their best to push him back towards Celieria City and Ellysetta, forcing him to wrest each mile from the sky through fierce, hard-powered flight.
Furiously he refused to turn back. The winds became a tempest. Towering thunderclouds blossomed. Buffeted and tossed about the sky, he kept his head turned into the wind and his wings stubbornly pumping. He flew for what seemed an eternity, with no idea how much progress—if any—he was making, but refusing to stop.
As he flew, drawing further and further from Ellysetta’s healing presence, he heard the rising murmurs of voices—of the millions he’d slain—hissing their accusations, as they had for centuries. Murderer. Destroyer.
Worse were the forlorn, grief-stricken voices of the friends and innocents who’d died beneath his scorching fire.
I had a family, children!
My Sahra…we were to be wed come spring.
Rain, my friend, how could you do this to me?
They reproached him, wept for all their lost happiness, the lost days of life he’d stolen from them, reminding him that he—not Ellysetta—was the one with the true taint on his soul. If ever any creature deserved to be reviled and condemned, it was he.
He raged against the voices, wanting to protest, knowing he could not. Gouts of flame spewed from his muzzle, turning rain to steam as it showered down from the thunderclouds, but still, stubbornly, he flew.
It wasn’t until much, much later, in the small bells of the night, that the clouds finally parted. And when they did, fresh fury swelled inside him. His wily tairen kin had used his stubbornness against him. He’d been so busy battering himself against their raging, tairen-spawned winds, that he hadn’t noticed those winds had changed their course. Instead of blowing him back to Celieria City, they’d blown him hundreds of miles north, towards Eld.
Below him, the wide, long ribbon of the mighty Heras River cut across the landscape like a scar, and beyond that the dark, dense forests of Eld stretched out as far as his tairen eyes could see. It was the first time he’d laid eyes on the land of his enemy in a thousand years.
Bitter memories flooded him. Some his own, some memories he’d never seen before, sung to him on a vibrant new melody of tairen song flowing on the winds from Fey’Bahren.
«Look, Rainier-Eras,» the new song urged. «Look and remember. And learn.»
Vivid, bloody visions filled his mind, despairing visi
ons of the terrible war he’d once fought, and the terrible price not only he but all the tairen and Fey had paid to end it. Devastating grief and loss. The grim determination and staggering sacrifice of so many Fey warriors, shei’dalins, mates, even truemates who’d lost their immortal lives battling the enemy they had mistakenly allowed to grow strong.
The tairen and the Fey had both been decimated in those wars, a blow from which neither race had ever recovered. Of the survivors, thousands more had willingly, selflessly sacrificed themselves again to build the Faering Mists. They’d given their lives…not just to protect the Fey, as he’d always thought, but to protect him.
He saw it now so clearly in the tairen song that his heart nearly burst from the pain. Despite the consuming darkness in his soul—despite the millions he’d slain when he scorched the world—neither the tairen nor the Fey had reviled him. Instead, they’d died to give him life.
They’d died so he, Rainier-Eras, the last Tairen Soul and the least worthy of them all, would not perish.
Even Ellysetta, who called herself a coward, had faced the terrible blackness of his soul, and offered him what he’d been too craven to give her: acceptance and healing through the quiet, steadfast courage of her love.
«Enough,» he cried to the winds. «I yield.»
The unnatural, tairen-spawned winds died instantly. The skies cleared. «If death is what you seek, it lies before you. We will not keep you from it. If life is your choice, you know where to find it, and you know what you must do.» Sybharukai’s final words resonated across the vast distance; then the tairen song, like the winds, fell silent.
Circling the calmed skies near the land of his enemy, Rain made his choice. His wing dipped. His tairen body wheeled north, into Eld.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ellysetta woke, exhausted, to the faint light of dawn. Still curled in the wing-backed chair. Still alone. No courtship gift lay beside her. No shei’tanitsa awareness warmed her senses. Rain had not returned.
Gaelen and Ellysetta’s quintet were waiting for her when she emerged from the bedroom. They regarded her in silence, their Fey eyes full of compassion and remorse.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“We don’t know,” Bel admitted. “He isn’t responding to anyone’s calls.”
Her chest felt as if a tight fist were squeezing slowly, inexorably around her heart and lungs. “It’s over, then. He isn’t coming back.”
“He just needs more time,” Kieran suggested. “He’ll be back as soon as he starts thinking clearly.”
“Of course he will,” Gaelen concurred, “but we can’t afford to wait for him. The High Mage is hunting you, kem’falla. You aren’t safe here. You must accompany the Fey back to the Fading Lands. It’s your only hope of survival.”
“The Fading Lands?” She stared at him as if he’d gone mad. “You made it very clear last night that’s the last place I can afford to go. I’m the High Mage’s daughter, you said. I bear a Mage Mark. You even planned to kill me to stop me from entering the Fading Lands.”
“That was when I thought you were corrupt. You are not. But you are in grave danger. Rain has left. We must assume the Mages know that by now. They will think to use his absence to their advantage, which means the attack will come soon.”
Ellysetta turned away. At the moment, she didn’t care if the Mages attacked. She just wanted the hollow pain in her heart to stop hurting. “My parents agreed to send me to the Fading Lands only on the condition that Rain marry me by Celierian custom in a Celierian church. Well, look around.” She flung out her hands to indicate the room. “Rain’s not here. It’s hard to have a wedding without a groom.”
“You can wed by proxy,” Gaelen answered without hesitation. “It was common practice among kings of old when they took a foreign bride. Belliard will stand for Rain so the wedding can take place today and we can quit the city before the Eld have time to attack in force.”
“Rain wanted the wedding to take place today, in any case,” Bel added. “Marissya has the warrant he obtained from the king to ensure the archbishop’s compliance.”
She stared at them in sudden understanding. “You’ve both been planning this all night, haven’t you?”
Bel and Gaelen glanced at each other and nodded in unison. “We are bloodsworn to protect you,” Bel said. “No matter what happens between you and Rain, the lute’asheiva bonds Gaelen and I both made to you remain. Getting you out of harm’s way is our greatest priority.”
She almost started weeping again. What sort of cruel irony was it that Gaelen and Bel would be more steadfast than Rain? “Bel, answer honestly. Do you really think the Fey or the tairen will be safer with the daughter of the High Mage residing in the Fading Lands?”
“Whatever the High Mage is to you makes no difference,” Bel answered. “You are the Feyreisa. And your soul is so bright, I cannot believe he could ever use you for evil.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You did not ask the right question,” he replied. “Would the Fading Lands be safer with the daughter of the High Mage living within? Perhaps not. But would our queen be safer with the power of the Fey, the tairen, and the Faering Mists standing between her and those who seek her harm? The answer to that question is now and always will be aiyah.”
There was certainty in his shining gaze, no doubt at all. She looked away. “I need to go home. I need to be with my family. I’ll give you my answer after I’ve spoken with them.”
Her quintet and Gaelen exchanged glances, then nodded. “We will take you.”
Whatever hope Ellysetta harbored for parental comfort shriveled the moment she reached her family home. Her parents were waiting by the door, their faces drawn tight with more anger and disapproval than she’d ever seen.
“What have you to say for yourself?” Lauriana snapped the moment Ellysetta crossed the threshold. Fists planted firmly on her hips, she glared at her daughter. Beside her, Sol stood puffing rapidly on his pipe, a sure sign of his agitation.
“Mama?”
“Gone all night, doing gods only know what.”
Ellysetta had spent the night in torment because she was the soul-cursed daughter of the High Mage, and Mama was worried about the appearance of impropriety? She would have laughed if she weren’t so close to crying.
“Mama, please. You’re upset for no reason. There was a…disturbance last night, and Rain thought I would be safer spending the night in the palace. Didn’t you get my note?”
“Upset for no reason, she says,” her mother growled. “An unmarried girl hies off to the palace to spend the night with a man, but her parents have no cause to be upset. Is this how we raised you? To act the slut for an immortal with a pretty face?”
“Mama!” She couldn’t have been more shocked if her mother had slapped her across the face. Never had Ellysetta heard her mother voice such an ugly accusation, let alone aim it at her.
“Madame Baristani—” Bel began.
“Silence!” Lauriana’s roar cut them both off. She turned the full force of her fury on Bel. “You Fey have no comprehension of decency. You’ve tarnished our daughter’s reputation beyond repair! No decent man would have her now.”
Bel stiffened, and Lauriana was angry enough to be pleased he was insulted. Ever since their arrival, these Fey had trampled on Celierian customs and honors, bit by insidious bit tearing away the lifetime of moral lessons Lauriana and Sol had worked so hard to instill in Ellysetta. Seducing her with their evil magic ways and deadly beauty. Endangering her soul.
“Nothing happened, Mama,” Ellie said. “Rain wasn’t even there—he left almost immediately after bringing me back to the palace.”
“You were seen, Ellie!” her mother exclaimed. “You were seen entering the Fey king’s suite at night in nothing but your nightgown! Look me and your father in the eye and tell us the Tairen Soul hasn’t mated you, tell us he hasn’t started you using magic. Tell us you’ve kept to the vows of your Concordia!”
Ellie went pale, then flushed bright, betraying pink.
Sol stiffened at Lauriana’s side. “He promised me…he swore a Fey oath—”
“It wasn’t like that,” Ellie protested quickly. “Rain kept his oath. He swore to you he wouldn’t mate with me, and he hasn’t—not really—and the magic was just little things. He was trying to teach me to how to control my magic. We just—”
“You need not explain nor apologize for anything, kem’falla. You have done nothing wrong.” An unfamiliar Fey with piercing pale blue eyes stepped close to Ellysetta, towering over her in a manner that radiated protective devotion. But the moment he shifted his attention from Ellysetta to Lauriana, his entire demeanor became one of palpable threat. He stabbed her with a look of such coldness, she actually felt the blood chill in her veins.
“There are none who could guard your daughter’s honor better than the Fey,” he stated in a voice dripping with disdain. “Even were that not so, she is meant for greatness, not for playing broodmare to a mortal or being shamed by filthy minds too blind to see her brightness.”
Lauriana stepped closer to Sol and instinctively clutched his arm. “Who are you?”
“My name,” the man said coldly, “is Gaelen vel Serranis.”
Lauriana had never paid much attention to Fey tales, but every Celierian knew the terrible history of Gaelen vel Serranis. “The Dark Lord?” Her tone rose, ending on a shrill note that made more than one of the Fey wince. She speared Ellie with a horrified look. “You brought the Dark Lord into my home?”
“Mama—”
“Madame Baristani—” Bel began.
“Out!” She pointed a shaking finger towards the door. “Get out of my house! You gods-cursed Fey sorcerers have put your last foot across my threshold. First it was magic, then demons and dead men and the ruination of my daughter’s reputation. And now you dare to bring the Dark Lord himself into my family’s home? I will not stand for it!”