Flames scorched him. She wasn’t begging any longer. She was commanding—and not only by sharing her essence. With the same instinctive, unintentional yet astonishingly powerful weave of Spirit he’d seen her use before, she waspushinghim, urging him to fulfill her. Compelling him.
He could not deny her. In truth, he didn’t want to even if he could.
In his weave, Rain’s body sank deep into hers, and she cried out at the glorious fullness of it, the feeling of wholeness and completion. Their Spirit bodies began a fierce rhythm, limbs twining, hips rising and falling in unison.
Rain’s throat strained as the need grew and skin stretched taut over bunching muscle. Every soft cry wrenched from her lips was a flame cast upon tinder. He poured himself into his weave, poured his magic across her senses.
Without warning, the wild force of her own untamed magic erupted around them both. Spirit threads dense with power exploded from her, writhing, twining, merging with his weave, driving him with the same relentless mastery as his Spirit drove her. Spirit Ellysetta locked her legs about his hips and rolled on top of him. His breath caught as he looked up at her: wild, glorious, fiercely female, her eyes blazing, her hair a nimbus of living flame around her. An ancient warrior goddess from the time before memory.
She rode him, her silken hips rising and falling, her inner muscles clasping him so tight each movement was an agony of delight. His weave surged around her and he gave himself up to hers.Nothing else in the world existed except him and her, and this breathless dance of Spirit that grew faster and wilder, until pleasure shattered them both and their cries merged with the rhythmic crash of the surf tumbling across the sands of Great Bay.
“I don’t know what came over me,” Ellysetta muttered yet again as she and Rain alit in the cobbled courtyard at the back of her family’s home. The hot blush in her cheeks hadn’t faded since they’d left Great Bay.
“I don’t know either, but I hope it comes over you again. Soon.” Rain grinned and dodged her slap with a warrior’s rapid reflexes.
His grin faded quickly when he caught sight of Bel standing grim and silent in the back doorway of her parents’ small home. The look in Bel’s eyes was one Rain recognized, and it never boded well.
“Ellysetta.” Rain lifted her hand and pressed a quick kiss in her palm. “Give me a moment,shei’tani. I’ll be in shortly.”
She frowned at them both, realizing something was up, but then nodded and stepped past him into the house.
When she was gone, Bel spun a quick privacy weave. “I’ve heard from the quintet we sent to Norban. They found Sian and Torel’s steel, along with scores of barbedsel’dorarrows, scattered over what was obviously a battlefield.”
Rain’s mouth tightened. The news wasn’t unexpected—they’d already presumed the worst—but thesel’dorarrows... Barbedsel’dorarrows had been the Eld soldier’s weapon of choice against Fey for millennia. “Has Dorian been informed?”
“Marissya brought him the news a bell ago. He says it’s not enough proof to act. That anyone could have made the arrows—or even dug them up from an ancient battlefield.”
Anger and frustration curled in Rain’s belly. Dorian was determined not to see the truth before him—as if by ignoring the signs of the growing Eld threat, he could make it simply go away.
“There’s more,” Bel said. His face was grim. Whatever more there was, it wasn’t good.
“Tell me.”
“One of the men they were seen talking to in Norban—a pubkeeper—is missing, too, and is now presumed dead. Sebourne’s already calling for an investigation of the Fey.”
Rain closed his eyes. That was all they needed. More weapons in Lord Sebourne’s anti-Fey arsenal.
“That’s not the worst of it, Rain. Our warriors found another Fey’cha where Sian and Torel were slain. A red blade, bearing the mark of Gaelen vel Serranis.”
“Does Sebourne knowthat?”
“Nei, thank the gods. None know but our warriors. I told them to destroy it.”
Vel Serranis. Again. Had thedahl’reisenslipped so far down the Dark Path that he’d thrown in with the greatest enemy of the Fey? Had he slain all those Celierians in the north, murdered Sian and Torel, and sent that boy to stab Ellysetta after all? Rain’s heart clutched at the thought.
Gods help Celieriaandthe Fading Lands if thedahl’reisenand the Mages had joined forces. And gods curse Rain for an unworthy fool if he didn’t get Ellysetta and Marissya both out of Celieria and to the safety of the Fading Lands without further delay.
“Thank you, Bel.” Rain dispersed Bel’s weave and went inside, heading immediately to Ellysetta’s side.
Sensing his turmoil, she brushed her fingers across the back of his hand. Tendrils of peace and concern wafted over him. “What is it, Rain?”
He stroked her fingers with his own and lifted them to his lips for a kiss. “Do you trust me, Ellysetta? To do what is best for you and your family?”
She searched his gaze, then nodded. “Yes, of course I do, Rain.”
“Then there is a thing I would ask of your father, but I want your approval first.”
“I wish to be released from my pledge to wed Ellysetta next week, so we may instead wed tomorrow, after the completion of the Bride’s Blessing.” Rain announced the request baldly as he, Ellysetta, and her parents sat at the small Baristani kitchen table. Bel and the rest of the quintet had taken the twins into the parlor to occupy them with unwrapping the last few dozen wedding presents and give Rain a measure of privacy for his discussion.
