Chapter Nine #3
The High Mage ran a hand through Elfeya’s silky curls.
Such bright, distinctive hair. She really was an incredibly beautiful woman.
He’d not brought her to him for several years now because she’d been so fragile and had needed time to recover her physical and mental strength.
She was stronger now—his visit to her earlier this week had proved that.
His fingers stroked her neck. She didn’t glance at him, didn’t shiver, didn’t even catch her breath.
She merely stood there and endured, her eyes locked with the eyes of the man on the table.
“You may go to him now,” the Mage told her, knowing that everything in her body, everything in her soul was drawing her to that man, even as her brain—educated by centuries of torment—screamed for her not to give in to her desires.
Torture was so much more excruciating when the memories of pleasure were fresh in one’s mind.
Fear was so much stronger when one remembered what, exactly, one stood to lose.
If these two had robbed him of his greatest triumph all those years ago, as he suspected they had, their punishment would be worse than anything they had yet endured in his keeping.
And they would have this time together, this small bit of happiness, to make the pain all the more exquisite.
“Touch him.” The High Mage bent close to her ear and whispered, “I know you want to. How long has it been? Three years? Five?” And he knew she would know exactly how many years, months, days, bells, even instants had passed since last she’d touched this particular man.
“Look at him. Look how his body begs you to touch him.” The man on the table was fully, helplessly aroused, no more able to fight his body’s instincts than she was.
“Go to him. Touch him. Mate with him as you are aching to do.”
With a low cry, the sound of a soul in torment, Elfeya flung herself forward, racing across the room to the imprisoned man.
She grabbed his face between hands that trembled.
Tears rained down her face, falling upon his lean cheeks and merging with the answering tears that streamed from the corners of his eyes.
Her flame-colored hair spilled across his chest like liquid fire.
She kissed him with frantic, helpless need and sobbed into his mouth, “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tan. Kem surah.”
Lauriana went about her errands in a dazed fog, her body automatically carrying her from shop to shop while her mind kept playing and replaying those brief moments in the kitchen when she’d entered and seen .
. . what? She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d seen.
It had happened so fast, and she’d been tired after yet another night spent tossing and turning and waking from dreams she couldn’t remember but which left her with an awful feeling of impending doom.
Had Ellie moved the flowers . . . or had they moved themselves, as it had seemed at first glance? She didn’t know. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was magic. That Ellysetta, her sweet kitling, had been weaving evil, unnatural magic, just like the Fey she’d always been so enamored of.
Oh, gods, why had she ever let Ellie nurture her fascination with the Fey?
She could have stamped it out years ago, but she hadn’t.
To see the way little Ellie’s eyes shone when Sol told her Fey tales of princesses and magic Fey giftfathers and the heroic quests of legendary Fey warriors of old .
. . not even Lauriana’s deep aversion to magic had been impetus enough to rob her daughter of those happy moments.
What was the harm, she’d thought, in letting a child enjoy a few stories?
You reap what you sow, Lauriana, and just look what your indulgence has wrought. A daughter betrothed to the worst Fey of them all . . . a daughter who is turning her back on everything you taught her and abandoning the Way of Light.
The thoughts preyed on Lauriana’s mind, beating at her relentlessly.
In desperation, she headed to the small West End chapel where she and her family worshiped, hoping Father Celinor might be able to offer some sort of guidance.
She should have known better. The young priest was as enamored of the Fey as Ellysetta.
No sooner had she begun to explain her fears than he’d begun defending the Fey, extolling their virtues and cautioning her not to condemn them for the extraordinary graces the gods had granted them.
“We are all the gods’ creatures, Madame Baristani,” he said. “Magic exists in the world because the gods deemed it should be so. Would you despise a flower for its perfume? No? Then why would you despise the Fey for possessing the magic they were born to have?”
“You’re from the south, aren’t you, Father?”
He looked a bit surprised, but nodded. “Yes, from the Tivali Valley, near the Elvian border. I’ve spent more than a few years in and around the company of magical races, and on the whole I’ve always found them to be honorable and worthy folk.”
“Well, I’m from the north,” she countered, “from Dolan near the Eld border. And I know for a fact that not all magics are good. Nor are all gods, for that matter.”
“I’ll grant you that,” he agreed. “The Shadow Lord is evil, as are his followers—but we’re not talking about Shadowfolk. We’re talking about the Fey, and they have always been noble creatures. Not perfect—no living creatures are—but they do strive to be good. They follow the Way of Light.”
“How do you know that, Father? No human has set foot in the Fading Lands in a thousand years. None of us know what goes on behind the Faering Mists.”
He rose to his feet and held out a hand to help her up as well. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Madame Baristani. What I can do is offer you the use of the chapel’s Solarus. It’s not as grand as the one at the Cathedral, but I still find peace there when I am troubled.”
It wasn’t the advice she’d hoped for, but it was apparently the best he had to offer.
She followed him to the chapel’s small Solarus and stepped inside.
The door closed behind her, granting her privacy, and she moved to the altar at the center of the round room.
Overhead, the mirrored ceiling and tiny dome set with numerous windows shone light down on the small statue of Adelis perched on the altar slab.
With a sigh, Lauriana knelt, bowed her head, and began to pray. For more than half a bell, she prayed. Sometimes kneeling, sometimes pacing, sometimes weeping, but the peace she sought was more elusive than smoke.
Father Celinor didn’t understand. He’d never seen the ugly side of magic.
Not even Sol, a northerner like herself, truly understood.
He’d lived his early years in the sheltered town of Callowill while she’d grown up in Dolan, a small and unfortunately strategic logging hamlet nestled in the shadow of two great forests, Greatwood and the dark Verlaine.
Far too many fierce, magical battles of the Wars had been fought on Dolan’s doorstep, and the terrible by-products of those clashes haunted Dolaners still.
They knew firsthand the evils of magic. They suffered the attacks of lyrant, the vile, mutated descendants of long-tailed treecats corrupted by black Magery.
They witnessed the horrors of children born with ungodly powers, and suffered the agony of giving them up for the good of the town because they knew a worse fate awaited them all if they did not.
Lauriana’s own sister Bessinita, a normally laughing, sweet-natured child of two, had been abandoned in the dark shadows of the Verlaine after she’d thrown a fit of childish temper while playing with a neighbor’s child.
That fit had sparked a fire that burned down the neighbor’s house, nearly killed the neighbor’s wife, and left the neighbor’s child badly scarred.
So when Lauriana had found Ellysetta sitting under that tree north of Norban so many years ago, she’d known exactly what it meant.
She’d known she should just turn and walk away.
But the child’s cap of ringlets and big, solemn eyes had dredged up such tearful memories of sweet Bess that Lauriana couldn’t bring herself to walk past.
She’d made a bargain with the Lord of Light. If He would keep the child’s magic leashed, Lauriana would raise the little girl in the Way of Light and do everything in her power to ensure that the child never strayed from the Bright Path.
She’d asked Him for a sign, and a shaft of sunlight had broken through the canopy of trees and shone directly on the baby, illuminating her curls like a halo of gold and flame.
That was when Lauriana knew she’d been meant to find this child, that she’d been meant to save her as she could not save her sister Bess.
She’d kept her side of the bargain. She’d raised Ellie in the church, loved her with all her heart, and taught her to fear and reject magic.
And though it had been like driving knives into her own flesh, she’d even turned her precious child over to the exorcists when those evil childhood seizures seemed proof that darkness was winning its bid for Ellie’s soul.
And now the sweet baby girl whose soul Lauriana had vowed to save, the daughter she’d raised in Light, was turning her back on all that her mother had taught her, lured by the beautiful illusion of the Fey.
Lauriana wanted to weep and scream and snatch her precious child out of harm’s way, but she could not.
King Dorian had declared Ellysetta to be the Fey king’s bride, and there was nothing Lauriana could do about it.
A woodcarver’s wife could not flout the will of one king, let alone two.
She had Lillis and Lorelle to think of, too.
“Please,” she whispered, looking up at the shafts of sunlight shining in from the windows of the Solarus’s tiny dome. “Please, help me. Show me how to protect her. Give me a sign.”
But this time, the Bright Lord remained silent.