Chapter Sixteen #5
Tealah nodded. “A minor one, though. Not nearly as strong as Venarra or Marissya.”
“That explains why you can stay here, near the training ground, longer than the others who came.”
“That,” she agreed, then shook her faerilas flask, “and this. Nalia, Venarra, and Marissya could stay much longer than I—and without rejuvenation—but I doubt any of them could come and sit all day, day after day, as you do.” She cocked her head to one side, her teal blue eyes considering.
“There’s even a sense of energy about you when you’re here that you don’t have when you’re in the Hall of Scrolls or even in the Hall of Truth and Healing. ”
“Is there?”
“Mmm. You shine brighter here, and not because your shields are stronger. It’s almost as if some part of you thrives on the
violence.”
Ellysetta drew back in horror. “You think I enjoy seeing them hurt one another?”
Tealah clapped a hand over her cheeks. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. Of course, I don’t mean you take pleasure in their
pain. No shei’dalin, no matter how strong, would ever do so. I only meant . . .” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head and bit her lip. “Do
not listen to my babblings. I am a fool. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you shine brighter here. Your truemate
is here. It must be his presence that affects you.”
Despite Tealah’s belated reassurances, her comment about Ellysetta seeming to thrive on the violence of the warriors echoed
in Ellysetta’s mind throughout the rest of the day. Later that night, after she and Rain had retired to their rooms, she posed
the question to him.
“What does it mean, Rain, that I can watch you and all the warriors batter yourselves senseless and not feel horrified?”
They had bathed in the Feyreisen’s enormous silverstone tub—which involved more laughter, splashing, and love play than cleaning—and
were now lying naked amid the softly billowing silken sheers hanging about their bed, nibbling on a bowl of succulent redberries
and enjoying the cool jasmine- and honeyblossom-scented breeze blowing in through the balcony arches. The remains of their
private repast lay discarded on a nearby table, beside an uncorked bottle of blue Celierian pinalle on ice and a steaming
pot of keflee, which Rain had once again been trying unsuccessfully to convince Ellysetta to share with him—for the benefit
of all those Fey couples hoping for the blessings of fertility, of course.
Freshly washed and freshly healed by Ellysetta’s warm hands, Rain drizzled a trail of sticky redberry juice up the soft, flat plane of her belly from her navel to the tip of one small, round breast, then followed the trail with lips and tongue until she shuddered with a mix of pleasure and irritation.
“Parei. I mean it.” She grabbed his hands. “I’m worried, Rain. You’ve all said I’m a shei’dalin. Shouldn’t I be . . . oh, I don’t know . . . weeping and wailing over the warriors’ pain when they injure themselves?”
“Weeping? And wailing?” Rain’s brows shot up. “Poor Marissya, is that what you think she does?”
Ellysetta gave him a shove. “You know very well that’s not what I meant. Be serious.” She dragged a sheet over her body. “I’m
truly worried. Tealah said something about my thriving on the violence of the training battles, and I haven’t been able to
stop thinking about it. What if she’s right? And what if that’s some sign of the Mage’s power growing stronger?”
The teasing humor on Rain’s face faded in an instant. “Nei,” he said flatly. “It’s true you are more at ease within the walls of the Academy than any other shei’dalin, but that has nothing to do with the Mage’s power. You are a Tairen Soul, Ellysetta. And tairen are fierce, not frightened . . .
predators, not prey. Challenge is play to us.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ask any warrior out there on the training field if he is enjoying himself. Hard and painful as the training may be, every
one of them will tell you aiyah. We all feel the same rush of energy—of power and magic and life—when we match blades with one another. It is the tairen
rising. The tairen rises in you, too, kem’reisa. That is what you feel, not the Mage.”
She frowned at him. “What if you’re wrong and I’m not really a Tairen Soul? What if the High Mage only manipulated my soul
to make me seem like one so you would bring me back to the Fading Lands—and that’s the real reason the tairen can’t hear my song? What if I really am what Gaelen first thought and the Massan now fear: a creature the High Mage of Eld created to destroy the Fading Lands from the inside out?”
“You’re forgetting one very important fact, Ellysetta. Your soul called out to mine.” He caught her hands in his. “You are
my truemate. No matter what part of you the High Mage may have manipulated, shei’tanitsa is a bond of infinite love and unconditional trust. That is a power the Mages could never understand—and certainly never
create with their corrupt magic.”
Sincerity, unwavering and absolute, flowed from his fingertips to hers. She could not doubt him. The problem was, she had
little but doubts about herself. “I’m afraid of what I am, Rain. I always have been. Even here, I’m still different, still the odd one,
the dangerous one. The one people look at with suspicion. You can say they don’t, but I know they do. Venarra, Tenn, some
of the others. I hear it in their stray thoughts, sense it in their emotions.”
“Perhaps they fear because you do,” he suggested. “You live among powerful empaths now, not mortals. They can sense your self-doubt.”
“So how do I stop being afraid?”
He sighed and enfolded her in his arms. “When we discover that, shei’tani, I think we will have discovered the key to completing our bond.”