Chapter Ten #4
“Not yet.” His face was fierce, his eyes blazing like the sun, as he began driving her with relentless determination towards yet another orgasm.
She didn’t want this again. She wanted him, not making her fly apart, but flying apart with her.
Conscious thought shredded, and wild, insistent instinct rose in its place.
She reached for the rigid bulge of his sex, cupping him through the heated leather.
Using the technique he’d shown her, she shared the essence of herself with him.
Energy leapt from her body to his in a streaming rush: hot, electric, exquisite.
He gasped, nearly losing control of his weave as the dazzling force poured into him.
“Now,” she insisted.
Flames scorched him. She wasn’t begging any longer. She was commanding—and not only by sharing her essence. With the same instinctive, unintentional yet astonishingly powerful weave of Spirit he’d seen her use before, she was pushing him, urging him to fulfill her. Compelling him.
He could not deny her. In truth, he didn’t want to even if he could.
In his weave, Rain’s body sank deep into hers, and she cried out at the glorious fullness of it, the feeling of wholeness and completion. Their Spirit bodies began a fierce rhythm, limbs twining, hips rising and falling in unison.
Rain’s throat strained as the need grew and skin stretched taut over bunching muscle. Every soft cry wrenched from her lips was a flame cast upon tinder. He poured himself into his weave, poured his magic across her senses.
Without warning, the wild force of her own untamed magic erupted around them both.
Spirit threads dense with power exploded from her, writhing, twining, merging with his weave, driving him with the same relentless mastery as his Spirit drove her.
Spirit Ellysetta locked her legs about his hips and rolled on top of him.
His breath caught as he looked up at her: wild, glorious, fiercely female, her eyes blazing, her hair a nimbus of living flame around her.
An ancient warrior goddess from the time before memory.
She rode him, her silken hips rising and falling, her inner muscles clasping him so tight each movement was an agony of delight.
His weave surged around her and he gave himself up to hers.
Nothing else in the world existed except him and her, and this breathless dance of Spirit that grew faster and wilder, until pleasure shattered them both and their cries merged with the rhythmic crash of the surf tumbling across the sands of Great Bay.
“I don’t know what came over me,” Ellysetta muttered yet again as she and Rain alit in the cobbled courtyard at the back of her family’s home. The hot blush in her cheeks hadn’t faded since they’d left Great Bay.
“I don’t know either, but I hope it comes over you again. Soon.” Rain grinned and dodged her slap with a warrior’s rapid reflexes.
His grin faded quickly when he caught sight of Bel standing grim and silent in the back doorway of her parents’ small home. The look in Bel’s eyes was one Rain recognized, and it never boded well.
“Ellysetta.” Rain lifted her hand and pressed a quick kiss in her palm. “Give me a moment, shei’tani. I’ll be in shortly.”
She frowned at them both, realizing something was up, but then nodded and stepped past him into the house.
When she was gone, Bel spun a quick privacy weave. “I’ve heard from the quintet we sent to Norban. They found Sian and Torel’s steel, along with scores of barbed sel’dor arrows, scattered over what was obviously a battlefield.”
Rain’s mouth tightened. The news wasn’t unexpected—they’d already presumed the worst—but the sel’dor arrows . . . Barbed sel’dor arrows had been the Eld soldier’s weapon of choice against Fey for millennia. “Has Dorian been informed?”
“Marissya brought him the news a bell ago. He says it’s not enough proof to act. That anyone could have made the arrows—or even dug them up from an ancient battlefield.”
Anger and frustration curled in Rain’s belly. Dorian was determined not to see the truth before him—as if by ignoring the signs of the growing Eld threat, he could make it simply go away.
“There’s more,” Bel said. His face was grim. Whatever more there was, it wasn’t good.
“Tell me.”
“One of the men they were seen talking to in Norban—a pubkeeper—is missing, too, and is now presumed dead. Sebourne’s already calling for an investigation of the Fey.”
Rain closed his eyes. That was all they needed. More weapons in Lord Sebourne’s anti-Fey arsenal.
“That’s not the worst of it, Rain. Our warriors found another Fey’cha where Sian and Torel were slain. A red blade, bearing the mark of Gaelen vel Serranis.”
“Does Sebourne know that?”
“Nei, thank the gods. None know but our warriors. I told them to destroy it.”
Vel Serranis. Again. Had the dahl’reisen slipped so far down the Dark Path that he’d thrown in with the greatest enemy of the Fey? Had he slain all those Celierians in the north, murdered Sian and Torel, and sent that boy to stab Ellysetta after all? Rain’s heart clutched at the thought.
Gods help Celieria and the Fading Lands if the dahl’reisen and the Mages had joined forces. And gods curse Rain for an unworthy fool if he didn’t get Ellysetta and Marissya both out of Celieria and to the safety of the Fading Lands without further delay.
“Thank you, Bel.” Rain dispersed Bel’s weave and went inside, heading immediately to Ellysetta’s side.
Sensing his turmoil, she brushed her fingers across the back of his hand. Tendrils of peace and concern wafted over him. “What is it, Rain?”
He stroked her fingers with his own and lifted them to his lips for a kiss. “Do you trust me, Ellysetta? To do what is best for you and your family?”
She searched his gaze, then nodded. “Yes, of course I do, Rain.”
“Then there is a thing I would ask of your father, but I want your approval first.”
“I wish to be released from my pledge to wed Ellysetta next week, so we may instead wed tomorrow, after the completion of the Bride’s Blessing.
” Rain announced the request baldly as he, Ellysetta, and her parents sat at the small Baristani kitchen table.
Bel and the rest of the quintet had taken the twins into the parlor to occupy them with unwrapping the last few dozen wedding presents and give Rain a measure of privacy for his discussion.
“Tomorrow?” Lauriana protested. “You can’t possibly be serious!”
Sol frowned in sharp concern. “Why the hurry?”
Rain glanced down at his hands. His fingers flexed, wanting to wrap around the comforting grip of sharp Fey steel and confront the faceless danger he’d sensed for so long.
“At twelfth bell tomorrow, Celieria’s Council of Lords will convene for the final debate and vote to open the northern border to Eld.
You know I’ve been working all week to prevent that from happening, but unless half a dozen lords change their minds or the king invokes primus—neither of which is likely—we know the vote will pass.
I want Ellysetta out of the city and on her way to safety before the sun sets on a Celieria that welcomes Mages within its borders. ”
“Safety?” Lauriana challenged. “You think we’re foolish enough to believe that’s what waits for her in the Fading Lands?”
“More safety there than here,” Rain said.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Madame Baristani, have you forgotten that someone tried to kill your daughter last week—or that something attacked her through her dreams just four nights past?”
“You Fey are magical creatures. Who’s to say you didn’t stage both attacks just to convince us Ellie’s in danger?”
“Mama!” Ellysetta protested.
“Laurie!” Sol scolded at the same time.
Rain’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Do not dare suggest the Fey would ever harm Ellysetta. Every warrior in this city—every warrior in the Fading Lands—would die to spare her the slightest wound. Two already have.”
Sol stared at Rain in shock. “What?”
“I sent two Fey north to find out what they could about Ellysetta’s origins.
They were murdered.” He covered Ellysetta’s hand with his own.
She’d been upset when he told her the news, but it had helped to convince her of the seriousness of the threat.
He hoped her parents would be equally understanding.
“I received confirmation of it today when we returned from our courtship bells.”
“Murdered . . . by whom?”
“We believe it was the Eld, which means if the trade vote passes—as it appears it will—the same folk who murdered my men will have much easier access to Ellysetta and your family.”
Unblinking brown eyes regarded him solemnly. A long moment passed in silence.
“Sol!” Lauriana protested. “You can’t seriously be considering his request.”
“How would you feel, Laurie, if she were hurt—maybe even killed—because we were too selfish to let her go?”
“Will it feel any worse than when we send her to the Fading Lands and she loses her soul to these godless sorcerers because there’s no one there to be her beacon?”
“Mama!”
“Laurie!” Sol stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “What’s gotten into you? The wedding’s already been agreed to. She’s going to the Fading Lands. The only question is whether she goes tomorrow or a few days after that.”
Lauriana bolted up from her seat at the table and rushed out of the kitchen. Sol gave Rain an apologetic look and followed his wife.
“Mama didn’t mean it,” Ellysetta said. “She’s just been . . . upset recently.”
Rain sighed. “She never wanted this marriage to happen. She made that clear from the start. I’d just hoped that she would have begun to accept the idea by now.”