Chapter Nineteen
Elvia ~ Navahele
Ellysetta watched Bel’s eyes go wide and heard his breath leave his lungs on a stunned gasp.
The face before her had been Vadim Maur’s. She was certain of it. Only it had changed at the last moment to Bel’s.
She shrieked in horror and denial, feeling the dagger tear through skin and bone to pierce the beating heart beneath as if the blade had ripped through her own chest.
In the same instant, a wall of heat and stone slammed into her side and swept her off her feet.
The black Fey’cha flew from her hand and went skittering across the glossy, timeworn surface of the chamber floor.
Behind her, the veil of suspended water abruptly splashed back into the mirror pool like a lead curtain suddenly released from its anchors.
The spray of chilly droplets spattered across Ellysetta’s face.
She was screaming…screaming…screaming. Death crouched at the periphery of her senses, grinning with malice while voices howled in a savage chorus of fear and agony.
Burn! Destroy! Scorch the world! Flame them all!
Yes! Yes! A terrible, dark, hungry part of Ellysetta’s soul howled with dreadful eagerness.
She’d killed before. She knew the taste of blood and death, remembered the searing thrill of slaughtering a hated enemy.
When Mama died, the ones who’d killed her had paid in blood and screams, and their dying wails had sung through Ellysetta’s veins like a visceral symphony.
Ellysetta.
Something held her captive, pinned to the floor. Her arms flailed, fingers curving into claws. The power rose inside her with wild demand, burning, boiling, tearing at her body with brutal hands until she shrieked with pain and madness.
Ellysetta!
The force inside her was too great for her body to contain. The need to rend and destroy clamored for freedom. Why else had she been born with such power if not to rain death and destruction upon the ones who’d hurt those she loved?
“Ellysetta!” ?Shei’tani!? In voice and in Spirit and through the powerful bond threads that even now tied so much of her soul to Rain’s, the sound of his call broke through her madness.
Those were his arms wrapped around her, his body pressed tight against hers, pinning her to the ground, yes, but covering her with a mate’s protective care as well.
His hair, smelling like spring rain and shared secrets, fell across her face in warm, silky streamers as his cheek pressed against hers and his lips murmured entreaties of peace and love against her skin.
Sanity returned in a rush. Her eyes flew open and she dragged air into her lungs on a sob.
“Rain?” Shaking hands traced the familiar curve of his head and spine.
Fingers dug into the beloved bulwark of strong shoulders, clinging with desperate fear.
“Oh, Rain.” Tears gathered, hot and burning, and her throat closed up as if clutched in the strangling grip of a tight fist. ?Oh, Rain… what have I done? Bel… ?
“Shh…las, kem’reisa…he is unharmed.”
?I stabbed him. I stabbed him through the heart. I felt it.?
?Nei,? he soothed. ?I reached you in time. You didn’t hurt him. Your blade didn’t even break his skin.?
Her eyes closed and tears of relief spilled down her cheeks. Though the sensation of her knife plunging into Bel’s chest and piercing his heart had been so vivid, Rain would never lie. Especially not to her. Bel was unhurt. She hadn’t slain him after all.
“Beylah sallan. Beylah sallan.” She wept.
Her arms curled tight around Rain’s neck, and she burrowed close.
The frightened, timid Ellie-the-woodcarver’s-daughter part of her soul yearned to dive inside his skin and live there, surrounded by him, part of him, kept safe from the world and the world kept safe from her; but after a few moments of comfort, the fiercer instincts of Ellysetta Feyreisa surged to the fore and forced her to pull away from the comfort of Rain’s embrace, forced her to make sense of what had just happened.
The moment she lifted her head, Gaelen was there, hand outstretched, to help her to her feet.
Bel, visibly shaken but otherwise unharmed, was half a step behind him.
Ellysetta took one look at Bel, flung her arms around him, and burst into fresh tears. “Sieks’ta, kem’maresk. Forgive me. I don’t know what happened. I would never hurt you.”
He pulled back and met her eyes soberly. “There is nothing to forgive, kem’falla. My life is yours. My death is yours, too, should you ever require it.”
His simple, unequivocal acceptance nearly broke her heart.
“What happened?” Gaelen interrupted. “When you touched the mirror, what happened to you? To Lord Shan?”
“I…” She glanced back at Rain and reached for his hand instinctively.
The warm strength of his fingers closed around hers, and fresh vitality infused her flagging courage.
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. It’s as if the moment I touched the mirror, I was suddenly there, with my…
with Lord v’En Celay…as if I were a part of him. ”
“You were.”
The Fey all turned towards Hawksheart.
The Elf king regarded Ellysetta with an inscrutable expression.
“The mirror is a viewing portal—but it is also a transport of sorts. You have not been trained in its proper use, so without me to guide you this time, when you touched the water, a part of your soul and your consciousness traveled through the mirror and entered Shan’s body. ”
“Oh, gods.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Was it my fault he turned into that…thing? Did I do that to him?”
“Anio,” Hawksheart said instantly. “Don’t let such a fear even cross your mind. As I showed you earlier, you were not the first of the High Mage’s experiments. In his earliest attempts, he used adult hosts to house the soul of the tairen.”
“Blessed gods,” Rain breathed. “He tied a tairen’s soul to Lord Shan. That’s why Shan’s eyes were tairen.”
“He was one of many captive warriors of the Fey,” Hawksheart confirmed, “but the others did not have the anchor of a truemate, as Shan does. When the Mage grafted a tairen’s soul to theirs, they all went mad and died.
Shan was the only one of those early experiments to survive.
And he has thus far been the only one of the High Mage’s experiments powerful enough to summon the Change—though, as you witnessed, he has never managed to successfully complete it. ”
Ellysetta clasped her hands over her mouth. Her stomach roiled as she remembered, with vivid clarity, the horror and pain of the twisted monster Lord Shan had become. “Bright Lord have mercy on him.”
“You said adults were the Mage’s earliest experiments,” Gaelen interrupted.
The Elf nodded. “Bayas. The Mage’s experiments at merging two unborn souls have been much more successful. Many of those children survived to adulthood, though none have yet been powerful enough to summon the Change.”
“Ellysetta will be the first.”
“I believe so. More to the point, the High Mage believes it.” He glanced at Ellysetta. “Most important, she has not yet fallen prey to the wild savagery that overcame the others when they reached maturity.”
“S-savagery?” Ellysetta echoed in a faint voice. Her mouth went dry, and she swayed on her feet. If not for the arm Rain quickly wrapped around her waist, she might have fallen.
“Bayas. The others cannot Change even to the extent your father does, but when their sel’dor manacles are removed, they still become every bit as wild and vicious as he.”
For one horrible moment, she thought she might heave up the contents of her stomach. “You mean I’m turning into some sort of…monster? Is that why I’ve had those seizures and horrible, bloody nightmares all my life?”
“I cannot speak to your nightmares, but most of your seizures come from your father, not from what lives inside you.”
“Explain,” Rain commanded.
“As best I can tell, when the High Mage performed his soul manipulations on Ellysetta and Shan, he unwittingly created a bridge of sorts between them. A pathway forged by Azrahn and amplified by the biological affinity of father and child…perhaps even a bond between the two tairens’ souls tied to them.
That connection is how you were able to join with him through the mirror a moment ago…
and how your parents were able to help you in the Well of Souls—both when the Mage tried to claim your soul in the Cathedral of Light and again, more recently, when you saved the tairen kitlings. ”
Ellysetta’s heart skipped a beat. “That was my—” She broke off. Calling the two strangers her parents seemed strangely awkward. Mama and Papa—Lauriana and Sol Baristani—were the only parents she’d ever known. “That was Lord Shan and Lady Elfeya?” she amended.
She remembered the strong, calming presence that had filled her when she’d traveled into the Well of Souls to save the tairen kitlings.
Radiant with warmth and love, that presence had helped her spin her weaves with confidence, setting aside the fear and self-doubt that had shadowed her all her life.
She’d thought the Bright Lord had been guiding her hands.
“They were with me in the Well?”
“They’ve always been with you, Ellysetta. Prisoners they may be, but they’ve always done whatever they could—no matter the cost to themselves—to protect you.”
Ellysetta recalled the dream she’d had by the Bay of Flames, of a woman’s voice begging forgiveness as a shining veil closed around Ellysetta like a blanket. “They’re the ones who bound my magic.”
“Bayas. They knew what you were before you were born, and they knew what the Mage intended, so they bound your magic to hide it from him and arranged for you to be smuggled out of Eld at the first chance.”
“But I don’t understand…if my parents have used this connection to watch over me and protect me, how can my father be responsible for my seizures?”
“Did you not feel the beginnings of a seizure come upon you when you looked into the mirror and saw the Mage torturing Shan?”