“You can help most by doing as yourshei’tantells you.” Bel glanced at Rowan and Adrial, then added silently,«Ellysetta, listen to me. You saw Adrial summoning Air without realizing it. He wields Earth, too, and some Fire. He could hurt you, badly. The shei’dalin in you wants to help him. But you are also the Feyreisa. You cannot put yourself at risk.»
With every muscle in her body protesting, Ellie backed away from Adrial. She hated the Fey’s rigid belief that the Feyreisa must be protected from all harm, hated watching Adrial’s pain and being refused even the chance to try to help him. The one thing she’d always been good at was easing the wounds and emotions of those she loved.
“Talk to me, Adrial,” Rowan urged again.
“I can’t think.” Adrial pressed his hands over his eyes. “It’s so flaming hard to think. My mind is going in a thousand different directions.” He leaned his head back against the couch and gave a soft, despairing groan. “Last night it was as if there was someone else in my mind, and now it’s as if part of me, part of my soul, is missing. I keep searching but I can’t find it. I’m lost. Gods, I’m so lost.” His eyes opened. Hollow, devastated eyes. He grabbed his brother’s tunic. “Help me, Rowan.”
Rowan was weeping. “I will, Adrial. I’ll help you. On my soul, I swear it.”
Ellie was weeping too. She had done this to him. Whatever now tortured Adrial, it had entered his soul because of her, because she in her ignorance and drunken daydreams had spun a weave that left him vulnerable.
It was too much. She couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Adrial’s pain was ripping at her, tearing her heart. She stared hard at him, took a deep breath, and for the first time in her life, deliberately tried to use her magic. She thought about the shining threads she’d seen Marissya weave. Imagined glowing ribbons oflight and power, weaving together in a net of healing magic. Imagined the net settling over Adrial. She concentrated, trying to turn the images into reality.
Nothing happened.
She tried to remember what she’d done last night, emboldened by pinalle and keflee, but it was all still so hazy. She hadn’t intentionally woven magic, she’d just let her mind wander. Ellie cleared her thoughts and tried letting her mind wander now. She took deep, calming breaths and thought soothing things, calming thoughts, trying to project them onto Adrial.
Again, nothing happened.
What good was magic if she couldn’t use it on demand? Frustration and empathetic pain beat at her. Adrial’s Fey-beautiful face was carved with lines of anguish, his warrior’s body shaking as he clung to his brother and wept, pleading for someone, anyone, to help him.
Biting her lip, desperate to repair the harm she’d somehow done him, Ellysetta closed her eyes and prayed. “Gods, please, help him. Make it stop. Take away the pain.”
Chapter Four
“You took away his memories, Ellysetta.”
“I said I was sorry!” Ellie met Rain’s angry look without flinching. Well, with only a little flinch. Still, it was easier to face Rain’s anger than the sad disappointment in Bel’s face. Anger let her get angry back. Bel’s disappointment made her feel like a belly-crawlingporgil,as if she’d somehow betrayed him. “You told me not to go near him, and I didn’t.” She glared at Bel. She hadn’t betrayed anyone. “I didn’t! You never said I couldn’t try to heal him.”
When Marissya, Rain, and Dax had arrived, they’d found Adrial resting quietly, with no memories of the previous night or the emptiness that had haunted him this morning. The last eighteen bells were a blank slate in his mind, wiped completely clean. And when Marissya had made that announcement, a dozen pairs of accusing eyes had turned on Ellie, who had only been able to bite her lip and say, hopefully, “I’m sorry?”
It was, of course, the wrong thing to say. It started off a firestorm of recriminations from Rain, an angry tirade that was still going full steam even now, a full quarter bell later. Adrial had already returned to the palace, accompanied by Marissya, Dax, and Rowan. Teris and Cyr, two warriors from Ravel’s quintet, had returned to replace Adrial and Rowan. And Rain was still lecturing Ellie furiously.
She was starting to get angry. All this time, they’d been telling her, “Use your magic. Embrace your magic.” She didn’t think itwas exactly fair of Rain to blame her for following his advice. She had taken away Adrial’s pain, after all. Maybe not the way he would have liked, but the pain was gone and other than a few missing memories, Adrial was perfectly fine. She’d even healed him of all remnants of last night’s excesses. Lady Marissya herself had said the healing had been masterfully done. You’d thinksomeonewould be at least a little grateful for that!
“I didn’t mean to take his memories. I only meant to help him.”
“You should not have touched him,” Rain said for what must have been the twentieth time. “Not inanyway!”
“You didn’t specify. Weren’t you the one who told me, ‘When you wager with tairen, take care with your words’?”
His rush of anger was so hot, so fierce, Ellie half expected to see flames shooting out of his head. “That was a game! This could have cost your life. You knew what I meant when I said to stay away from him.”
“Iknew? Am I supposed to be able to read your mind now?”
“You could,” he snarled. “If you would accept the bond between us, you would know every thought in my mind as if it were your own.”
Angry that she was being yelled at for trying to help a friend, angrier still that she hadn’t even been able to dothatright, Ellie shouted at Rain, “Then maybe I don’t want to accept this stupid bond! Maybe I don’t want your thoughts in my brain. Maybe I prefer to keep my mind my own!Maybe you should just go back to the Fading Lands and leave me alone!”
The echoes of her shout rang in the dead silence that ensued. Every member of her quintet found a reason to inspect the ceiling, the floor, the bare walls.
Rain said softly, “You don’t mean that, Ellysetta.”
“Don’t I?” she snapped, but already her flash of anger was fading away. His voice had trembled ever so slightly when he’d said her name just then, and even if their bond hadn’t allowed her to feel the uncertainty rising in him, that faint tremble would havegiven it away. She’d struck him deeply, in a spot vulnerable to no one but her, and she knew it.
Ellie closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. She was tired. Her head hurt. Her heart ached. She’d made a mess of things last night, and that mess had somehow resulted in Adrial’s pain. Then she’d tried to heal Adrial, only to make a mess of that too. And now, with angry words that she didn’t really mean, she’d hurt Rain as well. His pain was like a burning hollowness inside her, as real to her as if it were her own.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course I don’t mean it. I’m not myself this morning.” Then she laughed at the absurdity of that remark. “This morning? I haven’t been myself since the day you came out of the sky and frightened me half to death.” She crossed her arms over her chest and forced herself to meet his gaze. “Perhaps it’s best if we don’t go out today. We’re both tired and angry. I don’t think there’s any point in being alone with each other.”
