“I know,” she whispered, surprised to find it true. Though the cold power and deadly promise in his eyes frightened her, she knew it was not directed at her, and her fear was more for others than for herself. She would not want to be witness to the unleashing of that power. She did not want to think of it being exercised on her behalf.
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 firstspoke? 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 myshei’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 ashei’tani.”
“What about Lady Sariel?”
He shook his head. “We loved as children. She knew I would never have ashei’taniand loved me enough to join her life with mine, giving up her desire for ashei’tanof her own.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She wase’tani, the mate of my heart. We chose the bond. You areshei’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.
