Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Is that why you came back?” she asked. “Because you had no choice?” She saw him wince, felt the surge of remorse and shame.
A day ago, she would have rushed to apologize and soothe him.
Now, she pulled away and put several steps between them.
“Gaelen and the others told me the soul hunger would drive you back to me. That you would not be able to deny it. Is that why you returned?”
“I was a coward to leave you as I did,” Rain admitted.
“I wasn’t thinking. All my life, I’ve hated nothing so much as the Eld.
And when Gaelen said you were Eld . . . when he revealed the Mark .
. . it was more than I could bear. I didn’t know what I might do if I stayed, so I fled.
” Sorrow darkened his eyes. “I know I hurt you. I know I’ve made you doubt me, and I regret it deeply, but the decision to return was my own, made freely. ”
“Because without me, the tairen and the Fey will die?”
He shook his head. He spread his hands, searching for the words to explain.
“The further away from you I flew, the louder grew the voices of the souls I bear, reminding me of my own unworthiness and how bravely you accepted me despite the blackness of my soul. The tairen reminded me how much they and the Fey sacrificed to save me, when I was more unworthy of salvation than Gaelen when you restored his soul. And I realized if I failed you, I would fail in everything. My life would have no purpose. No honor. No hope. I would have no soul worthy of redemption.” He reached for her hands, gripped them tightly, forcing her to feel the emotion, the truth, pouring from him into her.
“When Sariel died, I longed for the day another Tairen Soul would be born, so I could at last join her in death. And here you are, a Tairen Soul, but death is my dream no longer. You’ve made me want to live again, Ellysetta. ”
As declarations of devotion went, it was beautiful, stirring. Ellie, the girl who’d drunk Fey-tale dreams like water, would have near swooned. Ellysetta, the woman who’d learned better, gently extracted her hands from his.
“You think because I am a Tairen Soul that everything Gaelen said is untrue, but it isn’t, Rain. The High Mage confirmed he was my father. At the cathedral, during the exorcism, he gained access to my mind and he told me.”
“He is a father of lies,” Rain answered without hesitation. He cupped her face, thumbs feathering across her cheeks. “You’re a Tairen Soul. No Eld halfling could bear that power.”
She covered his hands with hers, stopping the caress.
“He isn’t the father of my flesh—even he admitted that—but neither is he entirely a liar.
Something of him does live inside me, not in my body, but in my soul.
Something more than a Mage Mark. I can feel it even now.
” That bit of the High Mage was still there, cold and dark, lying like a stalking demon in her mind, waiting to pounce.
“I wield Azrahn, Rain. I used it today, trying to save Selianne.”
She sensed the fear that immediately consumed his thoughts.
He, too, remembered Gaelen’s warning about the dangers of weaving Azrahn on the Mage-claimed.
She clenched her jaw and met his gaze. “The High Mage put another Mark on me. When I wove Azrahn.” She said it almost defiantly . . . and waited for his revulsion.
The expected recoil didn’t come. He drew her into his arms instead, and would not let her pull away.
“You should never have known such horror,” he whispered.
“I should have protected you better. I will protect you better.” He laid his hand over her heart, and the warmth of his palm penetrated the chill of the Marks.
“We will find a way to unmake the Marks, just as Marissya unmade the mark that worthless rultshart Brodson forced upon you.”
When she looked up at him in disbelief, he smiled sadly.
“I deserve your doubt. I rejected you when you needed me most, and I will live with that shame forever. But I will not make the same mistake again, Ellysetta. I will not turn from you. I am yours, no matter what magic you wield, no matter how many Marks you bear.”
“The High Mage will try to use me to destroy the Fey. To destroy you.”
“He will try, but we will not let him succeed.” When she didn’t respond, he gave a small sigh.
“Wait here. I have something for you in the other room.” He slipped through the bedroom door and came back a moment later, carrying a bulky, silk-draped object.
“I asked your father to make this for me, that first night. I meant it to be a wedding gift, but I think it’s more fitting now as a courtship gift.
” He drew the silk cover away, revealing an exquisitely carved statue.
Ellysetta’s breath caught in her throat, and she reached for the gleaming treasure in Rain’s hands.
Fingertips touched grainless ebonwood and satiny fireoak.
The carving seemed so real, she could almost feel the warmth of life in the wood.
“Papa did this? It’s the most beautiful piece he ever made. ”
“It is a masterful work of art,” Rain agreed. “No Fey could have done better.”
Beneath Sol Baristani’s skillful hands, a tairen matepair had come to life in fireoak and ebonwood.
The female was a lithe and lustrous creature with emerald eyes and gold-veined wings folded against her back.
She sat on her haunches, a feline queen.
At her side, a larger male Tairen carved of almost grainless ebonwood had extended one wing, curling it protectively over his mate, the underside of his shadowy wing sparkling with diamond dust. Ebonwood and fireoak tails were entwined in an utterly tairen gesture of devotion, but the twining was so intricate that Ellie could scarcely believe her father had managed it without magic.
Both tairen wore a look of tender pride as they gazed down on a pair of round little kitlings playing at their feet, one black, one a rosy auburn, both slightly mottled.
“The matepair look exactly as I imagined them,” Rain said.
“From that very first night, shei’tani, I saw you more clearly than I knew.
I saw your true soul—and my true place at your side, protecting and defending you from harm.
The kitlings were your father’s touch,” he added.
“He called them a father’s wish for his daughter.
When I went to see him in the chapel just now, he gave me the statue and told me I should tell you that. ”
Outside, the sun hung low on the western horizon.
Night was approaching. Rain held out a hand.
“Come, shei’tani. Let us see your mother’s soul safe to rest. When it is done, I ask that you consent to be my wife.
Not because your father pledged to me your troth, and not because the gods declared it should be so, but because you wish to bind your life to mine. ”
Ellysetta looked up from the exquisite tairen family in her hands. Rain’s eyes were filled with open longing and shining with promise. Perhaps the girl who loved Fey tales wasn’t completely gone, after all.
She slid her fingers into his. “Aiyah, Rain, I will marry you.”
Lauriana’s body was placed on a gilded litter and borne by Ellysetta’s quintet down the cobbled roads to her funeral bier outside the city walls.
Sol walked behind the litter, holding the twins by the hand.
Rain and Ellysetta followed them, then Marissya and Dax.
Bringing up the rear marched all the Fey in Celieria, clad in full ceremonial dress, steel gleaming in the waning light, silken banners of red, violet, and gold waving in the breeze.
It was a funeral procession worthy of a queen.
“I never thought you would so honor her,” Ellysetta whispered, brought to tears by the unexpected tribute. “I thought you would despise her for arranging my exorcism.”
“If honor were reserved only for those who never err, none of us would be worthy,” Rain answered. “When she saw how she’d been used against you, she gave her life to set you free. There is much to honor in that.”
As they walked through the city, Fey voices rose in crystalline waves to sing an ancient Fey lament for valiant, fallen heroes.
The song was one Ellysetta recognized, usually reserved for warriors who died performing great deeds, and she wept with a mix of love and sorrow and pride.
She could not have held back her emotions even if she’d tried.
They poured forth like a river overflowing its banks, weaving into the notes of the song.
Ellysetta wore no shei’dalin’s veil. She’d refused when Marissya made the suggestion, saying she’d already spent too much of her life hiding who and what she truly was.
Her unveiled brightness shone like a beacon.
Now unleashed, her innate magic, the compassion and healing peace of a shei’dalin, spread out in waves of light all around her.
In the wake of the procession, the Celierians who had spent their last week in growing turmoil and groundless anger found themselves sobbing as if their hearts would break.
The Shining Folk, who’d seemed so threatening of late, now appeared like heroes of old, noble and gracious and good.
In their midst walked a woman of incomparable beauty, bright as the Great Sun, her hair like coils of sacred flame.
Just the sight of her banished the shadows from their minds, and those who caught her verdant gaze felt seeds of love and hope bloom in their breasts.
The procession wound through the streets and through the western gates to the last unlit pyre.
Ellysetta’s quintet bore Lauriana forward and laid her body gently on the oiled wood, then stepped back as Father Celinor began the Celierian service for the dead.
When he was done, Sol stepped forward with a lighted brand to ignite his wife’s pyre.