Chapter Two #3
Rain hadn’t liked that either, but since the practice saved precious Fey lives, he had grudgingly allowed it. After all, a Fey king banished from his own country for weaving the forbidden magic himself to save his mate could hardly protest the use of the same magic to save someone else.
“So what happened?”
“I couldn’t reach Aartys. He’d fallen too far into the Well. I was going to lose him. Gaelen’s magic wasn’t enough. And then…” Her voice trailed off.
“Then what?”
She wet her lips and pushed spiraling coils of flame red hair behind her ears. “Then something started…pushing me to weave my own Azrahn.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “The Mage? He sensed you in the Well?”
“Nei, I don’t think it was him. I think it was me. Some part of me wanted to weave Azrahn, Rain, even knowing what would happen if I did.”
She lifted a troubled gaze to his face, and he knew she was searching for the horror she feared would be there.
Months ago, she would have found it. Months ago, he’d believed Azrahn could never be woven for good.
But he’d watched her save four tairen kitlings trapped in the Well of Souls by spinning that forbidden magic.
He’d spun it himself to save her. Most of all, he’d seen the dazzling blaze of her unshielded Light.
“If you hadn’t come,” she admitted, “I would have spun it.”
“But you didn’t, Ellysetta.”
“But I would have, Rain. I would have.”
He gripped her slender shoulders and held her gaze with unwavering confidence. “But you didn’t.”
She was still so afraid of herself, so afraid that the dark taint she sensed within wasn’t just the shadow of the High Mage but proof that some part of her own soul—a part unrelated to the High Mage’s Marks—was evil, just as her mother had once feared.
“When we get back to Orest, we’ll talk to Gaelen,” Rain said.
“He was there in the Well with you. Maybe he sensed something you didn’t.
Or maybe he can explain what happened and help keep it from happening again.
” Vel Serranis was more familiar with Azrahn and Mage Marks than any other Fey.
The infamous former dahl’reisen had spent a thousand years outcast from the Fading Lands, living on the borders between Celieria and Eld, secretly fighting the Mages to protect the homeland that had banished him.
And though he’d broken more Fey laws than Rain cared to count, the skills and knowledge he’d acquired while living his lawless existence had already proven invaluable to the Fey.
Ellysetta smiled crookedly. “So stop worrying until Gaelen says I should?”
He feathered a thumb across her lower lip. “Something like that.” He dropped a kiss on her lips, then stepped away before the kiss turned into something more. “We should go. I don’t want to fly you over Elden land after dark.”
He summoned the Change, tossing back his head as the familiar blast of energy shot through his veins, searing and sundering him.
His body was unmade, his consciousness flung out into the rainbow-shot gray mist of the Change; then both body and mind gathered back together in his other form… his stronger, more savage form.
The black tairen, Rainier-Eras, flexed the hands that had become paws large and strong enough to pluck fully grown cattle from a field.
Long, razor-sharp claws curved out and dug deep into the rock and shale of the lakeshore.
Whiskers twitched and the nostrils of his sensitive nose flared as he scented both the warm, Fey sweetness of Ellysetta and the deeper, richer presence of the as-yet-unseen tairen that dwelled within her soul, the mate to the tairen he was now.
The Source must have brought that powerful magic much closer to the surface.
He had never sensed her tairen so clearly.
His chest filled with a low, rumbling growl, the need to claim and dominate rising swiftly.
Tairen were intelligent creatures, but they embraced their most primitive instincts, living by the laws of the pride, not the civilized world.
They claimed their mates, defended their pride, protected their young, and slaughtered their enemies without regret.
And right at this moment, Rain’s tairen was very much aware of the mate he recognized but could not yet claim.
His tail thumped the ground and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning in and dipping his head down to sniff Ellysetta, nudging her with his nose while the growl kept rumbling softly in his chest.
The light, silky-soft fur on the membranes of his wings registered the shifting of the winds mere instants before a new scent reached his nose.
Faint. Very faint. But the scent was familiar and made his hackles rise.
The claiming growl vibrating in his throat became the louder, more threatening growl of a tairen preparing to attack.
Tairen lips pulled back, baring his deadly fangs, each easily as long as a man’s leg. Venom gathered in the hollow tips.
“Rain? What is it?” Ellysetta took a step closer to him, unafraid of the aggression coiling within him.
?Get in the saddle,? he commanded. ?Now.
? He didn’t wait for her to spin the weave.
Instead, he spun it himself, whisking her off her feet on a gust of forceful Air and depositing her in the saddle strapped to the juncture of his neck and shoulders.
?Steli-chakai… ? He started to sing his discovery in tairen song, but there was no need.
The white tairen was growling with as much menace as he. Her fur was ruffled, her venomous tail spikes fully extended. ?Steli smells the poison on the wind, Rainier-Eras.?
“What is it, Rain?” Ellysetta asked again. “What poison?”
?From Eld.? The autumn winds had shifted westward, and they carried the tang of smoke and the distinctive odor of sel’dor—the foul black metal of the Eld—being smelted in white-hot fires.
He gave a roar and spewed a jet of fire into the sky.
His hind legs bent as he crouched, energy gathering in the great ropes of powerful muscle.
With a scream of fury, he launched himself into the air.
His wings snapped taut, extending forward and drawing back in mighty, sweeping strokes that propelled him high into the now-cloudless blue autumn sky.
Behind him, with a roar and a blast of her own fire, Steli followed. Together, they cleared the mountaintops and soared higher, speeding east, towards the borders of Eld.
As the tairen disappeared over the mountains, still silence fell once more over the basin of Crystal Lake.
In one of the narrow passes leading between the surrounding mountains, a small party cautiously rose from the cover of the rocks.
Following the gestured commands of their leader, the men made their way down the narrow path to the shores of the lake.
They walked single file, each careful to place his feet in the steps of the man before him, and their boots, wrapped in thick swaths of wool, made no sound even on the loose shale and rock of the shore.
They skirted the north end of the lake and continued westward into the Feyls, the formidable volcanic range that formed the Fading Lands’ northern border.
A gust of wind made the edges of their thick gray and brown woolen coats flutter against the dull, black sheen of sel’dor armor.