Chapter Ten #3
He held out his hand, palm down in the Fey fashion. She placed her fingers on his wrist the way he had taught her the day before. Now he did smile, the barest curve of his lips, but the warmth of his approval filled her with joy.
In a shadowed alleyway across from the park, two pairs of eyes had watched the passionate kiss, one gaze blazing with hatred, the other glowing black with hints of smug, satisfied red.
“You see how wantonly she displays herself? Would the Ellysetta you know do this? He uses Spirit to force her mind to his will. She is his puppet. He has taken your bride and made her his whore.”
“Demon-souled sorcerer,” Den hissed. “He’s got her so besotted, she’ll do anything he asks with her power.”
“Her power?” Captain Batay repeated with interest.
“She heals with a touch, finds things that are lost. And I’ve even seen her .
. .” He broke off, flicked a quick glance at his companion, and remembered caution.
“Never mind.” He frowned and turned his head to study the man beside him.
A moment ago, at Den’s quick first glance, Batay’s eyes had looked like dark pits filled with glowing red coals.
It must have been a trick of the light. Now they were their usual blue-green.
White teeth flashed in the shadowy darkness. “Come, my young friend. There is much to be done.”
A dark-sleeved arm wrapped around Den’s shoulders like a tentacle, making the butcher’s son shiver with a premonition of dread.
He shook off the feeling. To reclaim Ellysetta Baristani and all the riches that would come when he put her powers to lucrative use, Den would even deal with a Drogan Blood Lord.
Compared to those vicious blood-drinking cannibals, what was there to fear from the captain of a Sorrelian merchant ship?
“What would you like to do now, Ellysetta?” Rain asked as they left the park.
She flashed him a surprised look. She had been expecting him to go off to do whatever it was kings did when visiting a foreign city. Surely King Dorian and Queen Annoura had entertainment planned for him. “Don’t you have things to do?”
His eyebrows lifted. “You wish me to leave you?”
“Not at all. But I’m sure you came to Celieria for a purpose. Don’t let me keep you from it.” She bit her lip as his eyebrows rose higher. “That didn’t come out right. I don’t want you to leave, but I’ll understand if you must.”
“You think there is business I must attend to, which I put off so I may court you?”
“Yes.” She gave him an earnest look. “And you don’t have to. I’ll understand.”
He was silent for a moment, staring so intently into her eyes that she forgot to breathe.
His hand came up to cup her cheek, fingers sliding into her hair, the warmth of his palm cradling her jaw.
His thumb stroked the high ridge of her cheekbone.
“You are the reason I came to Celieria,” he told her. “My only purpose for being here.”
“How can I be the reason you came?” she whispered. “You didn’t even know I was alive until two days ago.”
“Three,” he corrected. “You called to me three days ago. That was when I first knew of you.” His thumb continued to brush across her cheek.
“Do you remember what I said when we first spoke? I told you that I had seen the mist of your reflection in the Eye of Truth. It was the Eye that sent me here to find you, though I did not know it until you called me from the sky.”
“But why would this ‘Eye of Truth’ send you to find me?”
He took his hand from her face. Her cheek felt cold and bereft at the sudden absence of his warmth. “You are my shei’tani. My truemate.”
“Is that what the Eye does? Sends Fey warriors to find their truemates?”
“Nei, but you are no ordinary truemate, if there is such a thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am the Feyreisen, the Tairen Soul, and yet you are my truemate. No Tairen Soul before me has ever had a shei’tani.”
“What about Lady Sariel?”
He shook his head. “We loved as children. She knew I would never have a shei’tani and loved me enough to join her life with mine, giving up her desire for a shei’tan of her own.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She was e’tani, the mate of my heart. We chose the bond. You are shei’tani, the mate of my soul, my truemate. A Fey doesn’t choose the truemate bond. It chooses the Fey. For me there will never be another, whether you accept the bond or not.”
“And for me?”
His eyes held an odd combination of remorse and satisfaction. “Nei. You would not be my truemate were I not also yours. If you do not accept our bond, perhaps one day there might be a man with whom you could find some measure of happiness, but there will be no other mate who can reach your soul.”
Why didn’t the prospect of never loving any man but him fill her with dread?
It should have frightened her, or at the very least made her cry out against the unfairness of it all.
And yet she could not help feeling an answering surge of satisfaction as her soul rose up to recognize and thrill in the bond between them.
She knew the instant her feelings reached him.
His eyes flared. Magic wrapped around her with sudden electric warmth.
But the warmth changed in an instant as a powerful primitive force invaded her mind, calling to her, roaring with triumph and searing hunger, battering at the privacy of her soul.
She felt something inside her start to give way, and fear rose hard and fast. With a cry, she flung herself out of Rain’s arms.
Rain groaned aloud, a raw hoarse sound. His hands fisted and he closed his eyes. Sparks flashed around him like fireflies.
“Sieks’ta,” he apologized tightly. “Do not be frightened. It is the tairen in me that frightens you, but I can control it. I will control it, shei’tani. I promise you. Please, do not shrink from me.” Even as he spoke, the sparks began to fade.
“The tairen?” Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
“The tairen lives in all Fey warriors,” he replied, opening his eyes.
Relief flooded her as she saw that his control was back.
His magic no longer sparkled around him, the glow in his eyes was dimming.
“In most it is dormant, but when a Fey is born with full strength in all the Fey magics, the tairen awakens. These Fey become Tairen Souls. The tairen is conscious within them, leashed by their will, but always driving the Fey with the same instincts of a true tairen.”
“It-it attacked me.”
“Nei. It did not attack, it tried to claim.” His hand reached out, but stopped shy of touching her face.
He pulled his hand back, thrust his fingers through his hair, and sighed.
“Mating and the claiming of a mate is the fiercest of any tairen instinct. I have recognized you as my shei’tani.
A moment ago your soul reached out, willingly, to mine.
I felt it. The tairen in me responded as any tairen would to its mate.
I should have been prepared. I was not.” His eyelids lowered.
“For this, I apologize. I have dishonored myself.”
Even though she was still frightened, her heart could not bear to see him humbled.
He was the Tairen Soul, the hero of her life’s dreams. And for some strange reason, some joke of the gods she could not hope to fathom, he had claimed her as his mate.
She bit her lip in indecision, then dragged a deep breath into her lungs and stepped forward to clasp his hands.
At her touch, his eyes flew open and fixed on hers. “Shei’tani?”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she told him. “You asked me not to fear you, to understand that you would never hurt me, but at the first test, I let myself be terrified. I’m afraid I’m not going to be a very good truemate for a Tairen Soul. I’m a coward at heart.”
“You are all that a truemate should be,” he told her firmly. “Never think otherwise.” The harsh line of his mouth softened. “Come,” he said. “The afternoon is ours to enjoy. What would you like to do?”
She bit her lip. “Actually, I have another appointment with the queen’s dressmaker to review fabric samples for my wedding dress.”
“This does not appear to please you.”
“No,” she admitted. She wasn’t looking forward to yet another half day of sneering dislike from the cold, haughty tradesmen recommended by Queen Annoura.
She’d particularly hated standing in the presence of Maestra Binchi, the queen’s dressmaker, this morning, being measured—both physically and figuratively—by a woman who obviously found Ellie lacking.
“But she’s making a special effort to fit me into her schedule.
Besides, I have an appointment at the palace with the queen’s Master of Graces after that. ”
Rain glanced at Bel for a moment and his face grew still.
A hint of anger entered his eyes, and Ellie realized Belliard had just related the morning’s events.
Rain’s next words confirmed her suspicions.
“Bel has told me of this dressmaker. You are the Feyreisa. She will attend your pleasure, not the other way around. As will the queen’s Master of Graces. ”
Ellie blinked at the implacable finality of his statement. “Oh, but—”
“Ellysetta.” He gave her a look that made her close her mouth and swallow her objection.
“I despise Celieria. I remain here only to fulfill my oath to your father and to give you a little time at least to grow accustomed to me before I take you from all that is familiar to you. I will not cut short my time with you merely to indulge the self-importance of a foolish woman who insults the Tairen Soul’s truemate—and I am speaking of both the queen and her servants.
The dressmaker will attend you tomorrow morning.
Early, before I come to you. The Master of Graces will tutor you after that, while I am there to observe him.
And, Ellysetta . . .” He lifted her chin with a gentleness that somehow made the fierce look in his eyes even more terrifying.
“If anyone insults you again, you—not Bel—shall tell me of it.”
Ellie gulped and nodded. She would promise almost anything to stop him looking at her with those eyes that leapt with flickering lights of cold fire.
“Beylah vo. Thank you.” The hard lines of Rain’s expression softened and his eyes calmed. “Now, what would you like to do?”
“I—” She wet her lips and tried to still her rapidly beating heart. “I don’t know.” She’d never been courted before, didn’t have the first idea of where to go or what to do. Inspiration struck. “You could take me flying. After all, I did win that wager.”
“You did, indeed. Very well, then. Flying it is.”