“I don’t do this to hurt you, Ellysetta.” His whisper had a sharp edge. “Would you rather I take the free will of every noble in Celieria and bend it to my own? I’ve tried everything else to convince them, but they won’t believe the Eld are as great a threat as I know them to be.”
“Then make them believe it,” she snapped back. She yanked herhand away from his with such force that she knocked over a stack of wedding presents on the hall table, sending gifts skittering across the floor. Muttering a mild curse, she knelt to pick them up. “You’re a Master of Spirit. I know for a fact your weaves feel entirely and vividly real.”
“All Fey have sworn never to manipulate Celierian minds with magic.” Rain knelt to retrieve a small silver-ribbon-bedecked blue box that had fallen beneath the table.
“I’m not suggesting you manipulate them,” she snapped. “I’m sayingshowthem what the Mage Wars were like, just as you’ve shown me the Fading Lands. Convince King Dorian to let you address the Council directly, before the vote. Make them see the results of Mage evil for themselves, firsthand. Here, give me that.” She held out her hand for the small package.
As he passed it to her, their fingers touched, and she flinched at the contact. Grimly he stepped back to put a little distance between them.
Inside the parlor, Rain heard Lorelle ask, “Lillis, what’s wrong with Love?”
There was a loud hiss, then a screech, followed by a short cry of pain. Love came tearing out of the parlor, skittering across the hardwood floor, little paws pedaling as she made a sliding turn, scrambled up the stairs, and disappeared.
Rain peered into the parlor. Lillis sat in Kieran’s arms, her hand bleeding from deep furrows while the young Fey examined the wound. “What happened, Kieran?”
“I don’t know.” There was shame on his face for allowing one of the females under his care to come to harm. “The cat just went crazy.” He glared at the other warriors. “Which one of you was calling magic?”
Rain glanced at each of his men, all of whom were shaking their heads and denying that they had done anything to set off the kitten. He turned back to Ellysetta, who wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her sister but was instead focused entirely on opening the package in her hands. A chill stole over him. “Ellysetta?” He started towards her.
Before he could reach her, she lifted the lid of the box, revealing the small music box within. Now Rain could feel the subtle Spirit weave that had sent Love running. And as Ellysetta touched the music box, he also sensed the first cool, sweet blossom of Azrahn.
He leapt the remaining distance, tearing the package from her grasp and flinging it to the farthest corner of the room. The music box spilled out onto the floor, and the two black crystals in its lid began to glow with flickering red lights. A tinny melody began to play, and a shadow rose in the air, a chilly darkness that began to take shape.
He thrust Ellysetta behind him. “Bel! Get her out of here!” He didn’t look to see if his command was obeyed, but kept his attention focused on the dark thing in the living room. Demon. A being who’d willingly surrendered his soul to evil before he died.
Rain felt the tingle of magic behind him as Ellysetta’s quintet raised a five-fold shield to protect her. There was a brief scuffle—for some reason she was struggling against the five warriors who were trying to force her out of the room. “Ellysetta, go!”
The front door crashed open and a dozen Fey flooded into the room.
Taking advantage of Rain’s brief distraction, the demon hissed and shot towards Ellysetta and her quintet.
The commotion brought Lauriana and Sol rushing down the stairs. “What in the Haven’s name is—” Lauriana’s furious question broke off, her face going blank with shock at the sight of magic blazing and the demon streaking towards her daughter. “Gods protect us!”
“Ti’Feyreisa!”With a fierce cry, Dajan, the young warrior who stood guard outside the Baristani door, leapt in the demon’s path. Fire blazed in a red nimbus about him, and he threw himself forward to meet the demon’s oncoming rush.
“Nei, do not!” Rain’s sharp warning was too late.
The first dark edge of the demon pierced Dajan’s Fire shield as if it weren’t even there and touched the Fey’s skin. The warrior went gray as the deadly creature siphoned his life’s essence from his body. His lifeless form fell to the floor, and the demon screamed in triumph.
Whispering a quick prayer for the Fey’s soul, Rain reached for his power, quickly plaiting Air, Fire, Earth, Water, and Spirit into a single, solid fist of power that he rammed towards the creature.
The demon was no longer there.
Rain froze, power flashing around him, eyes scanning the room in rapid sweeps, but he could not see the creature.
The cool sweetness of Azrahn whispered across Rain’s flesh again, raising the hairs at the nape of his neck. The whisper became a stunning rush of power, filling the room with a gagging, sickly sweet stench. A dark rift appeared in the air above the music box. With a tiny cry, Ellysetta fell to her knees inside the protective bubble shielding her. Then, to Rain’s horror, she staggered to her feet and lurched towards the growing black maw.
Rain slammed a new blast of power into the music box and the two black stones that were the focus of the Azrahn. The box exploded; the crystals shattered. The rift collapsed, and Ellysetta halted, shaking her head as if she were coming out of a trance.
From the ceiling above, an unearthly shriek ripped the air. Rain looked up. A barely perceptible shadow that blanketed the ceiling from corner to corner condensed into a fathomless pool of darkness. It shot across the room towards Rain. He wove power a third time, using the four elementals and one mystic to form a single shining blade so dense with magic that it was a solid thing in his hand.
He spun away from the demon’s oncoming rush, missing it easily as his body moved into the light, fluid patterns of Cha Baruk, the Dance of Knives. As he came out of the spin, his blade bit intothe creature’s dark form. It howled and condensed a little more, shrinking in order to maintain its strength.
A second blade formed in Rain’s free hand, a long, thin blade the length of his forearm. “Come, dark one. Dance with the tairen if you dare.”
The demon lunged again, this time towards Ellysetta rather than Rain.
Rain leapt, blades flashing, slicing the creature to half its original size, drawing its dark rage to himself and away from Ellysetta. “Your master was foolish to send you for my mate. You are little more than a child of the darkness. No match for the Tairen Soul. Come. Accept your death and find peace as you should have when first you died.”
