Chapter Fifteen #3
His lips brushed her cheek. “Parei is the Fey word for stop. Say it, and I will cease. No matter when, no matter why. Ku’shalah aiyah to nei.”
There was no possible answer but one. Despite a lifetime of modesty reinforced by her parents’ strict but loving guidance, ever since the moment Rain had given Ellysetta her first, searing taste of passion, she’d wanted more.
“Aiyah,” she said, and her breath caught in her throat as the pleasures of Rain’s touch multiplied exponentially. Real and Spirit hands held her, stroked her. Real and Spirit lips rained kisses on her mouth, her throat, the soft skin exposed by her gown’s modestly scooped neckline.
He tracked nibbling kisses around her ear and the sensitive nape of her neck.
His hand stroked a searing path down her side, then back up to cup her breast. Her back arched, filling his palm more fully with her flesh.
He ran a finger down the center of her bodice, and the fabric parted without protest, forming a long, deep vee that exposed the inner curves of her breasts.
The warm summer air felt cool against her heated flesh. Rain stroked the soft, exposed skin.
Invisible Spirit limbs guided her hands to his chest, as swirling Earth magic effortlessly peeled away his black leather tunic and Fey’cha belts, baring the pale, leanly muscled perfection of his Fey flesh. At last she could touch him as she’d wanted to do just moments ago.
Fevered heat and naked skin filled Ellysetta’s palms. Her fingers clutched at the rock-hard swell of pectoral muscles, felt the pounding drum of his heart. He brushed aside the remaining scraps of fabric covering her breasts and lowered his head.
Incredible, searing, glorious heat consumed her. Coherent thought eluded her. She could not think. She could not speak. With a helpless gasp of pleasure, she surrendered. Her arms twined around his neck, clutching him to her.
Kolis Manza locked his door at the Inn of the Blue Pony, closed the shutters, and activated the privacy wards he’d set into every surface of the room.
On the desk near the bed lay the paraphernalia he hated but was forced to use to avoid Fey detection: the silver salver, the sacrifice, and the Mage blade whose selkahr crystal pulsated with sated fullness.
It was time to return to Eld and make his report to the High Mage.
He prepared the physical ingredients of the spell, then began to murmur the Feraz witchwords he had long ago committed to memory.
Energy gathered, then pulsed in a bright flash.
If not for the blackout spell laid on the window shutters, passersby in the street would have seen a curious blast of light emanating from one of the windows on the third floor of the inn.
When the light dimmed, the inn’s bedchamber was empty.
The sensation of ice spiders came without warning, crawling up Ellysetta’s spine and dousing passion with brutal force. She tore herself out of Rain’s arms and jerked into a sitting position, gasping for breath and crossing her arms as violent shivers shook her body.
“Shei’tani?” Rain drew her back into his arms. He chafed his hands across her shivering skin. “What happened?”
“I—” Already the feeling was gone. She pressed a hand over her heart where a cold chill still throbbed with every beat. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing.” Suddenly conscious of her nakedness, she fumbled to draw the scraps of her gown over her breasts.
He spun swift Earth to repair her clothing. His eyes held hers, full of concern and worry. “Ellysetta, that was not ‘nothing.’”
“It was just another ghost treading on my grave.” She rose on unsteady legs. “I told you, it happens all the time.”
He rose to his full height, looking very intimidating as he towered over her, frowning. “This I do not like.”
She laughed without humor. “Believe me, neither do I.” She glanced up at the position of the dual moons in the sky. “We should go. It’s getting late.”
“Very well,” he conceded with obvious reluctance. “But we’ll talk of this again.” He dispersed the magic woven over the glade, then moved to the center of the clearing and summoned the Change.
Throughout the return flight, occasional, involuntary shivers that had nothing to do with the chill of the high-altitude air shook Ellysetta.
The ice spider sensations were happening too frequently.
In the past, they had often preceded the other, more frightening episodes.
The seizures that left her howling and shrieking like a wild thing, that made her family fear for her sanity and their own safety.
That made her terrified of her own existence.
Because when those seizures came, she knew there was something inside her, something dangerous and evil that must never be released.
The twin moons had reached their zenith when a knock on Vadim Maur’s door heralded the arrival of his apprentice. Kolis Manza entered and made a deep bow.
“Do you have it?” the High Mage demanded brusquely.
“I do, master.” The Sulimage straightened and held out a sheathed Mage blade. “Her blood, my lord—more than enough to strengthen your seeking spell.”
Vadim snatched the knife, half pulled it from the sheath, and inspected the ruby lights flickering in the pommel’s dark jewel.
He pressed his thumb to the razor-sharp edge to test the blade’s hunger and glanced up sharply.
“You did not get this much blood without calling attention to yourself. How badly did you wound her?”
Kolis’s skin lost some of its color. Vadim made a mental note to himself.
Such a betrayal of emotion was a tell that Kolis would need to overcome if he was ever to become more than just a skillful tool.
The younger Mage was a mere two hundred years old.
Barely beginning his first incarnation. Gifted, but still too inexperienced to control his weaker emotions.
“How badly?” Vadim asked again. If the Sulimage had slain her . . . The temperature in the room grew notably colder. A tell of his own, but one he allowed himself to reveal. Showing fear was a weakness. Inducing it was something quite different.
The sudden chill had the desired effect.
Kolis’s reply spilled from him in a rush.
“My umagi struck her more deeply than he should have, but the Tairen Soul was with her. She was healed and had been returned to her home before I left. There was no lasting damage to her, and my umagi paid for his mistake with his life.”
“But now you have raised suspicions.”
“The suspicions were already there, master. The Tairen Soul has sensed our growing strength.”
Vadim’s brows drew together. “Impossible. We are warded by sel’dor, witchery and magecraft. No hint of our existence should be felt by any Fey.” He’d tested the wards on many subjects over the centuries. There was no doubt as to their effectiveness.
Kolis did not back down. “Possible or not, master, the Tairen Soul has Dorian half convinced the Mages have regained power in Eld.”
The Sulimage had regained his color. He was telling the truth—at least insofar as he knew.
It made no sense. Vadim had tested the shields of Boura Fell and the other Mage holds often enough throughout the years to be certain of their efficacy.
Had the Tairen Soul truly sensed the growing Mage power in Eld, or was he merely passing off suspicion as fact in an effort to revitalize his faltering alliance with Celieria?
The former was a troubling concern, the latter an encouraging sign of weakness but still an unwelcome development.
They had been making such excellent progress these last few years.
“Do not let the Tairen Soul trick you into acting rashly,” Vadim warned.
“Overt hostilities now will undermine decades of careful planning.” The girl might yet prove prize enough to capture even at the cost of revealing their existence, but failing that, he still had many months of preparation to complete before he was ready to move openly against Celieria.
He pinned his apprentice with a cold stare.
“I would not kindly view the ruination of those plans.”
“My every effort has been designed to turn suspicion away from us, master.” Kolis related how he’d arranged for the Fey to find vel Serranis’s blade on the dead boy, and how he’d used the boy’s death to accuse the Fey of murder.
“The warrior was released, but the seed of doubt has been sown. Already it is taking root. Our efforts to make the mortals fear Fey power are working.”
“But not well enough yet to countenance haste,” Vadim cautioned.
“Patience must be our watchword.” Much as he longed to conquer Celieria, such things took time.
The world was full of useful fools; the trick was cultivating the right ones .
. . and carefully encouraging them to usher in their own destruction.
“How go your efforts to turn Celieria’s queen? ”
Kolis’s eyes flickered. He drew a breath. “Not as well as I’d hoped, master. She’s proving much more resistant than I’d expected. As proud and power-hungry as she is, I thought she would be an easier mark.”
The failure didn’t please Vadim, but Kolis’s honest admission of it did.
“Kin of the Fey don’t wed easy marks, young Mage.
There may not be a shei’tanitsa bond between them, but it’s as close as a mortal bond can come.
She loves her husband. Make her doubt that love, and you will break its hold on her. ”
The Sulimage bowed. “You are wise in all things, master.”
“As will you be, in time, Kolis.” Of all the apprentice Mages who had served him over the years, Kolis was the one most like him.
Powerful, inventive, hungry for advancement and conquest. One day, Vadim might have to kill him.
For now, however, he had proved more useful than most veteran Primages with a host of jewels on their sashes.
“Continue your efforts to discredit the Fey, make it difficult for the nobles to support them. I want those borders open. When we control Celieria from the inside and have isolated the Fading Lands from her allies, then we will strike. As powerful as the Fey are, they cannot stand alone against us.”
“And the girl, master?”
Vadim held the Mage blade up to his nose and breathed in as if he could detect her scent still clinging to the metal. “You have not seen proof of strong magic?”
“Not enough to be certain.”
“Then continue testing her. If she is what I suspect, her existence changes everything.” He wrapped the blade carefully in a silk scarf and set it on his desk. “Dorian and his queen are hosting a dinner for their Fey guests tomorrow, are they not?”
“Yes, master, they are.”
“Good. Come, and let’s discuss what I would like you to do.”