Chapter Thirteen #2
“Nei, Rain,” Dax countered. “If anyone is responsible for the deterioration of our relations with Celieria, Marissya and I are. We’ve come every year since the Mage Wars and never realized what was happening.
We were too complacent, thinking vol Serranis blood in Celieria’s royal family would ensure our alliance. ”
“You are not the Defender of the Fey. I am. The responsibility is mine.” His jaw clenched.
“You and Marissya should leave tonight. Take a hundred men and go. Ellysetta and I will follow as soon as we can complete the marriage rites.” He gave a curt, humorless laugh.
“At least her father agreed we could hold the ceremony tomorrow.”
“We’re not leaving until you do. We—” Dax frowned suddenly and turned to his truemate. “Marissya, you are not well?”
The shei’dalin had retreated to a chair in the corner of the room. She was rubbing her temples, her skin paler than usual. “There are too many strong emotions around me tonight. It has been very difficult to block them, and I haven’t managed as well as I’d like.”
Dax was at her side in an instant, curving his arm around her waist. “Shei’tani, why did you say nothing? Come lie down. You should rest.”
She patted his arm and smiled wearily. “There will be time enough for rest when we reach the Fading Lands.”
Concerned by the shei’dalin’s pallor, Rain added his insistence to Dax’s. “There is time now, Marissya. We can do nothing tonight to alter our course.”
“I don’t think I could sleep even if I tried. There’s too much anger, too much sorrow. Such pain . . .” She closed her eyes.
Rain and Dax exchanged a worried look.
?Marissya!?
?Rain!?
The blasts of Spirit hit Dax, Marissya, and Rain simultaneously, the urgency unmistakable: Talisa’s quintet calling for the shei’dalin, Rowan summoning his king. Rain, Dax, and Marissya bolted for the door and raced down the palace corridors towards Cannevar Barrial’s chamber.
The High Mage brought his whip down in a brutal blow, shredding flesh from bone.
Shan’s body arched, every muscle seized in agony. His scream was a roar that echoed off the carved rock walls of his prison. Beside him, sobbing, Elfeya screamed too.
Despite his best efforts, pain blasted beyond his control, screeching down the link that tied him to the unfortunate girl in Celieria.
Clad in a simple blue-gray nightshift, Ellysetta paced her room.
Jeweled hairpins lay scattered like rain across her dresser, and her hair tumbled down her back in an unruly mass of curls and braids.
Her silk ballgown lay crumpled in a heap in the corner, the golden Fey crown tossed carelessly atop it.
Kill him.
Except during her childhood exorcism, when pain had driven her to the brink of madness, she’d never consciously had such a desire in her life. Where had it come from? How could she ever have even thought such a thing, so coldly and with such frightening venom?
Kill him.
Dear gods, if her father hadn’t come outside, she might have given voice to the thought, and Kieran would have obeyed her. Den would be dead. At Kieran’s hand but by her command.
She pressed her hands to her temples. Her head hurt again. It was throbbing with a steady, squeezing pain that set her teeth on edge.
Without warning, agony slashed across her nerves, flinging her to the floor. She clapped her hands over her ears to block out the screaming, but the horrifying sound came from within and would not be silenced.
The attack didn’t last long, a handful of seconds at the most, and when it ended, Ellysetta scrambled to her feet and ran, racing down the stairs, past her startled quintet, and through the kitchen to the tiny walled garden at the back of her parents’ house.
There she stopped, hemmed in, heart pounding.
Desperately she dragged in deep gasps of cool night air and shivered as the clammy sweat that had broken out across her body evaporated.
Calm down, Ellie. Calm down and get control of yourself.
It was hopeless, of course. Once an episode started, nothing could hold back the violent seizures that ensued. Demon possession, the priests had proclaimed when she was a small child. Something not right in her soul had left a doorway for evil to gain access.
The sounds of fighting reached Rain’s ears long before he turned down the final corridor.
He rounded the corner at a dead run to find Lord Barrial’s door barred by Talisa’s quintet, and scorch marks from blasts of Fire on the walls around them.
Rowan lay dazed against one wall, and Adrial stood in a crouched fighting stance in the center of the hallway, teeth bared in a snarl, red Fey’cha in each hand.
Rain absorbed the entire scene in an instant and launched himself at Adrial.
A five-fold weave spun from his fingers, knocking the venomous blades to the ground and melting them to harmless slag even as Rain slammed into Adrial.
They landed hard on the marble floor. Adrial’s collarbone snapped and he grunted in pain, but Rain still pinned him with both muscle and magic.
Fey warriors were taught from early adolescence to fight through pain, through debilitating and even mortal wounds, to keep fighting until their hearts no longer beat.
A sudden driving pain and shrieking roar in his ears made Rain gasp, and he almost lost his hold on Adrial. When had the younger man learned to do that? Quickly Rain wove a block, tight threads of Spirit barricading his mind from illusionary and mental attack.
Immediately Adrial struck again.
The air around Rain thickened, and a breathless feeling invaded his lungs.
Adrial was weaving the oxygen out of the air around his king.
Rain narrowed his eyes and growled a warning.
“Careful, Fey, or you’ll make me do something you’ll greatly regret.
” He rebuffed Adrial’s weave with a firm, steady push of his own.
It wasn’t an easy task. The Fey’s mastery of Air was as strong as Rain’s own, perhaps even stronger since Adrial had spent his years honing his primary talent while Rain had worked to master five.
But despite that mastery, Adrial was wounded, his concentration scattered by the recent shei’tanitsa claiming.
Gaelen groaned. His head was pounding and he couldn’t be sure if the most recent fall had knocked him unconscious or merely dazed him.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the narrow slice of starlit sky visible between the hulking buildings on either side of the dark alley.
The twin stars of the Great Serpent constellation still shone almost directly overhead. He’d been merely dazed, then.
He took a breath and wished he hadn’t. Something was rotting in the darkness, and it wasn’t just him. He rolled over onto his hands and knees. A soft, bloated lump squished beneath one palm. All at once, his stomach revolted and his body convulsed in racking heaves.
The spasms passed, the agony slowly faded, and his head drooped down between trembling shoulders. He panted in deep, uneven gasps.
If the Eld could see him now . . . the Dark Lord, weak as a babe, puking his guts up in a rank little alley. That would give those soul-twisted Mages a good laugh.
Gaelen started to wipe his mouth, then thought better of it when he caught wind of the better-to-remain-nameless muck coating his hands.
Gods, this was ridiculous. Pathetic. When he found the High Mage’s daughter, his stench would bring her guards down on him long before he got within range of attack.
He rose to his feet, wobbled, and slapped a hand against the dark wall to steady himself.
His feet shuffled forward and he staggered out of the alleyway into the dimly lit streets of one of Celieria’s lower-class districts.
Keeping to the shadows, he made slow progress through the narrow, winding streets.
Old memories and instinct would have steered him towards the royal palace and Marissya, but he resisted the temptation of seeing his sister one last time.
She was in the palace under guard of her cha’kor and close to a hundred Fey.
In his current state, there was no way he would reach her alive to issue a warning.
Nei, his first task must be to slay the High Mage’s spawn.
He stretched out his senses, seeking the pull of Fey magic, the natural affinity that drew him to others of his kind.
He sensed the concentration of the Fey in the palace, and another concentration in a humbler district of the city.
Gaelen turned and staggered towards the West End, clinging to walls, forcing his feet to move step after dragging step.
He followed his senses into the heart of the West End until he reached a barrier that shone to his eyes with a faint lavender glow.
Spirit weave. He examined the weave, recognizing the redirection pattern meant to keep unwanted mortals out.
Beyond the barrier, he saw a faint lavender glow on a rooftop, then another atop a building just across the street.
Fey warriors, cloaked in Spirit to hide them from mortal eyes. Guarding something. Guarding someone.
He stepped back into the shadows and marshaled his strength, managing a loose weave to hide his presence from them. It wasn’t a strong weave—the sel’dor shrapnel in his body prevented that—but it was enough to make their eyes skim past him without seeing unless they knew just where to look.