Chapter Three #4
of their bond blazed to life. His tairen, Eras, roared with fury, sensing something else—someone else—there in her soul with
them. Before he could react to the threat, Ellysetta’s body flared bright with sudden power, and Rain’s limbs went abruptly
weak. Her pupils widened until no hint of green iris showed, and Rain reared back in instinctive shock and horror as, for
one brief instant, her eyes shone pure black, filled with whirling red sparks.
“Ve sha Desriel!” she cried. The combined power left her on a rush. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped, unconscious, in her
father’s arms.
“What in the Seven Hells just happened?” Dax demanded. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Rain snapped. “Something was there, inside her, something besides her tairen. I don’t know what—maybe a Mage, maybe a demon.
Whatever it was nearly brought out her tairen, and she can’t control it yet.
We need to get her to the Fading Lands. Right now.
” He spun a shout across the common Fey thread. ?Fey! Prepare for departure!?
“Rain,” Marissya protested. “You can’t mean to send her through the Mists now. We have no idea how they’ll react to her Mage
Marks, and if that seizure nearly brought out the tairen, the Mists may well finish the job.”
“Marissya’s right, Rain,” Bel agreed. “The Mists can brutalize a Fey. She needs time to recover, to rebuild her inner barriers
to keep the tairen in check.”
Rain turned hard, furious eyes on the pair of them. “We don’t have time. I don’t know what attacked her just now, but I’ll
be scorched if we’re going to stay around here one bell longer and give it a chance to come back. Marissya, the chime she
wakes, weave peace on her. Bel, Gaelen, you two help her build what barriers she needs to keep the tairen caged and protect
herself against whatever the Mists might try to do to her.”
“Rain?” Sol Baristani interrupted. The woodcarver was still holding his daughter’s unconscious body, stroking her hair and
rocking her as he had so many times since her earliest childhood. “‘Vaysha Dezrielle.’ She’s said that before during her seizures.
Is it also Feyan? Do you know what it means?”
Rain’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “It means ‘I am Death.’”
Teleon was a flurry of activity as the Fey rushed to prepare for departure. As Rain had commanded, the moment Ellysetta regained
consciousness, Marissya began weaving peace on her, while Bel and Gaelen helped her rebuild the internal barriers her seizure
had shredded. As soon as they had finished, the Fey began marching out of Teleon.
Ellysetta, still pale and wan from her seizure, desperately tried to hold back her tears as she knelt on the shining, silver-blue steps of Teleon to clasp the twins in yet another fierce hug.
She didn’t want to let them go, didn’t want to think of waking up to a morning when she would not see their sweet, smiling faces.
But her seizure and her duty to the tairen left her no choice.
“I will miss you both,” she told the twins, pulling back to press kisses on their soft cheeks and rosy lips. “I’ll think about
you every day—and miss you every chime. I love you so very much.”
Lillis and Lorelle were crying as much as she was. “Don’t go, Ellie. Stay here with us.”
“Oh, kitlings, if only I could.” She gave her father a pleading glance. ?Won’t you reconsider, Papa? Come with us. You’ll all be safer in the Fading Lands.?
He shook his head. Even if Papa thought the twins could actually be happy living as mortals in an immortal land, he wouldn’t
betray his wife’s last wishes. “Please understand.”
She bit her lower lip, ashamed that she kept urging him to break his vow. ?I’m sorry. I just want you all safe.?
“We’ll be safe here. The Fey will see to that. And as I promised you, if there is even a hint of trouble, we’ll come through
the Mists.”
Ellysetta dashed away her tears with the back of one hand and gave him a watery smile. “I know, Papa. I’m just selfish enough
to want you three with me always.”
Behind Sol’s spectacles, his brown eyes glistened with answering tears. “Oh, Ellie-girl, if that’s selfish, then I must confess
the same sin, for I would keep you by my side if I thought you could ever be safe or happy there.” He embraced her. As his
arms enfolded her, the love that had been her anchor all her life flowed into her once more, filling her with its warm reassurance
and strength. He cupped her face in his hands, then hugged her tight once more before stepping back. “Go, daughter. Find the
happiness you deserve. And may the Light always shine on your path and shelter you from harm.”
“Teleos.” Rain clasped the Celierian great lord’s forearm. “You guard our gates—both here and at the Veil—and you guard three treasures very precious to my mate.” He inclined his head towards the twins and Sol Baristani. “Your assistance is much appreciated.”
“It is the great honor of House Teleos to be of service to the Fey,” Lord Teleos replied.
“The first thousand blades I promised Dorian leave the Fading Lands within the week. I’ll bring reinforcements to Orest by
month’s end, along with that Fey steel I promised you for your own men. And, Dev?”
“Aiyah?”
Rain held the younger man’s Fey gaze steadily. “My friend Shanis would have been proud to call you kin.”
The great lord blinked in surprise, then said in a low voice, “Beylah vo, Rain. I only wish I could have known him.”
“You do, Dev. You are much like him.” They clasped arms again in a warrior’s gesture of respect and friendship; then Rain
turned to Ellysetta’s family. “Master Baristani. Lillis and Lorelle.” Rain shook the woodcarver’s hand, then knelt and opened
his arms to the twins, who threw themselves into his embrace with as much weeping regret as they’d shown Ellysetta.
“Here now, kitlings,” he protested when their tears would not stop. “This is not good-bye. This is just farewell until we
meet again.” When they pulled back, he smiled and thumbed away their tears. “Be good, hmm? Listen to Kieran and Kiel, and
try to stay out of trouble.”
The twins nodded. “We will.”
Ellysetta put her hand on Rain’s wrist. As he led her away, down the steps towards Marissya and Dax and the waiting Fey, she
kept looking back over her shoulder and waving at her father and the twins, and at Kieran and Kiel standing guard beside them.
“Promise me you’ll keep them safe,” she begged Kiel and Kieran one final time as Rain stepped away to summon the Change.
“We will protect them with our lives,” Kieran vowed.
“You have our solemn oath.”
The wild, rich scent of the tairen swept over her.
She closed her eyes and breathed it in, then turned to take her place on Rain’s back.
A series of thick leather straps lashed her into place—in case she were to have another seizure while flying through the Mists.
Rain leapt into the sky, and her beloved family grew smaller and smaller as he bore her away.
She twisted in the saddle and watched even when she could no longer make them out.
?You will see them again, shei’tani,? Rain assured her. Would she? Ellysetta cast one final glance back at the shrinking silvery blue towers and ramparts of Teleon.
Then why did she have such a terrible, sinking feeling that this was the last time she and her family would ever be together?
Rain circled on an updraft as the Fey below approached the Faering Mists. With growing concern, Ellysetta regarded the bright
glow of magic that danced in undulating flows along the mountaintops and filled the pass between the Rhakis and Silvermist
ranges.
?I thought we might be able to fly over the Mists,? she said.
His wings dipped and he circled in the opposite direction. ?Nei, the Fey who made the Mists safeguarded against that. If you wish to enter the Fading Lands, there is no way to bypass
the Mists, no matter how high you fly or how deep you tunnel.?
?So we have no choice but to go through.?
?Aiyah.?
?What’s it like??
?I don’t know. I’ve only passed through it myself once, to come to Celieria to find you. The magic of the Mists cares only
who enters the Fading Lands, not who leaves.?
?Celierians tell tales about hunters and shepherds who wandered into them on a foggy day and disappeared, only to reappear
months or even years later carrying tales about meeting the Shining Folk inside the Mists.
Are those tales true?? There were hundreds of such stories, each one more fantastical than the last. Some adventurers claimed to have joined ancient Fey in a wild hunt through misty forests; others spoke of sharing an intoxicating meal in a crystalline hall filled with music and Fey maidens so beautiful even the stoniest heart would break to cast eyes upon them.
To accept such invitations, folk claimed, was to bid farewell to the life one knew, for time passed at a different pace for those feted by the Fey, and the deeper in the mist one wandered, the swifter time passed in the world.
?I suspect there may be some truth to those tales,? Rain answered. ?The ones who built the Mists would not have wanted to hurt innocents—but neither would they have wanted to allow those innocents
to be used against the Fey.?
But what of not-so-innocents? Shepherds and hunters might escape with lost time the only price for their transgression, but
others were not so fortunate. She’d heard of entire armies that had disappeared into the Mists, never to be seen again.
Below, the marching Fey narrowed to a column ten abreast, and the first rows of warriors plunged without hesitation into the
shining mist. Another few chimes and it would be Rain and Ellie’s turn.
Her heart beat faster as anxiety bloomed in her belly. ?How do you think the Mists will react to my Mage Marks??
Rain hesitated, then said, ?You are the Feyreisa and a Tairen Soul. The Mists will realize that.?
Her stomach lurched. She heard the evasion in his voice. ?But you aren’t certain, are you??
His ears twitched, and a small jet of flame seared the air before them. ?That is why we are flying through rather than walking. Just hold tight to the saddle. I will get us through as quickly as
I can.?
The last of the Fey below disappeared into the Faering Mists.
Rain banked a final time, then flew directly towards the shimmering veil of magic. Anything else Ellysetta might have said caught in her throat. The thick fog of the Mists dominated her visual field, endless white, ever-shifting, glimmering with rainbow lights.
She leaned over the front of the saddle and threaded her hands deep into Rain’s tairen pelt, clutching tightly, needing the
contact. ?Rain.?
?I am with you, Ellysetta.?
She had one last split second, time enough only for a swift, frightened gasp of air, and then they plunged into the Mists.