“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You wear it,shei’tani,” Rain said, taking the pendant from her and slipping it around her neck, “in honor of the warrior who gave his life in your service.”
There was a certain awful symbolism to that idea which didn’t escape her. Fey warriors wore the soul of every person who died at their hands like a burning stone around their necks. Now, it seemed, she would wear the “soul” of every warrior who died protecting her as a literal stone about hers.
Rain bent his head to take her lips in a gentle, reassuring kiss.
“Ahem.” The delicate clearing of a throat made them break apart. Master Fellows, looking bright as a newly minted coin in a perfectly starched linen shirt and ice-blue silk brocade breeches and coat, stood in the doorway. “I do apologize for interrupting such an obviously tender moment, but as we have only four short bells remaining to perfect Lady Ellysetta’s mastery of the Graces, we don’t have a moment to spare.”
When they both regarded him blankly, Master Fellows frowned. “The prince’s betrothal ball?” he prompted. “Tonight at eight bells?”
There was a strange, almost surrealistic feel to the remainder of the afternoon. Ellysetta danced in Rain’s arms, and curtseyed and practiced courtly conversation with Master Fellows, while all around her, Fey warriors carted off wedding gifts and deftly stripped Ellie’s bedroom bare and packed all her belongings in preparation for departure. Mama bustled about, scowling and snapping orders like an army general, as if that measure of control could restore normalcy to her household and conquer her fear of demons and other dangerous magical beings.
At the conclusion of their lesson, Master Fellows surprised Ellysetta with an unexpected compliment. “You have a natural, regal grace, my lady, and it has been the greatest of pleasures to teach you. Just remember, while some part of you may always be Ellie, the woodcarver’s daughter, you are also Lady Ellysetta, the Tairen Soul’s queen.” He bowed and kissed her hand. “At the palace tonight, let Ellysetta reign.”
Those words stayed with her the rest of the day. They were still echoing in her mind as she sat at her dressing table while one of the queen’s junior hairdressers turned Ellie’s long, unruly hair into an elegant confection of braids, poufs, and dangling curls.
Ellie glanced around at the barrenness of her room with a bittersweet sadness. She might once have been a woodcarver’sdaughter, but those days were already gone. She was a stranger in her own home now. All signs of her existence had been packed away and loaded on a wagon for transport to the Fading Lands.
“There now.” The hairdresser, a woman in her twenties, reverently nestled the crown of borrowedsorreisu kiyrinto Ellie’s hair and stepped back to admire her handiwork. “You are lovely, my lady.”
Ellysetta stared at the elegantly gowned and coiffed woman in the mirror. “Am I?” she murmured. Her dress was lavender silk, the color of Rain’s eyes, with a graceful billowing profusion of skirts and a flattering boat-shaped neckline that nearly bared her shoulders and dipped low enough to reveal the rounded tops of her breasts. Dajan’s crystal gleamed against her pale skin. The woman in the mirror didn’t look like a woodcarver’s daughter. She looked... regal.
“Yes, ma’am,” the hairdresser answered. “Lovelier than many of the court ladies, if you want the truth. You have fine bones and beautiful skin, and though your hair may be a bit difficult to tame, it’s stunning once it’s done right, even if I do say so myself. Like a crown of fire. I can’t tell you how many noble ladies have asked for a dye to turn their hair your color.”
Ellie laughed in disbelief. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the ladies at tonight’s ball have red hair.”
“Well, believe me, if that’s true, it’s because Rain Tairen Soul put a crown on my head and declared me Queen of the Fey, not because I’m beautiful.”
“Ellie, Mama says to tell you it’s time.” Lillis poked her head in the door. Her eyes widened. “Oh, Ellie, you look beautiful. Like a Fey-tale princess.”
The hairdresser raised her eyebrows meaningfully, and Ellysetta had to smile. “Thank you, Lillis.” She stood and brushed the wrinkles from her skirts. “I suppose I’m ready.”
She made her way downstairs and kissed her family good nightbefore following Rain outside to the waiting carriage. Sol and Lauriana stood on the front stoop to watch the carriage roll down the cobbled streets towards the palace, flanked by leather-and-steel-clad Fey.
As the conveyance disappeared around the corner, Sol put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “She’ll be all right, Laurie. The Fey will keep her safe.”
“And her soul, Sol?” Lauriana asked. “Who will keep that safe?”
Leaving Sol frowning after her, she ran up the stairs to their bedroom and closed the door behind her. For several long chimes, she stood there, her back against the door, breathing deep and struggling for some sense of calm. She reached up to her neck and lifted the gold-and-amber pendant Father Nivane had given her from its hiding place in her bodice. Curling her fingers tight around the sun-shaped disc, she knelt beside her bed and began to pray.
In the deepest levels of Boura Fell, Elfeya lay naked in the arms of her mate on the dirt floor of his cage. She had raised herself up on her elbows so she could look at his beloved face, searching the blessed lucidity of his green eyes. He was still there with her, completely rational and whole for the moment. Thank the gods.
«The Great Sun rises in your eyes, beloved.»His voice sounded in her mind, gentle, loving. The phrase was an old Feyan euphemism for “I love you,” her mate’s favorite because it played on the golden color of her eyes. Once, so many, many years ago, the woman would have smiled when hershei’tansaid those words. Now they made tears tremble on her lashes. She blinked, and the tears fell like raindrops on the pale flesh of his chest, tiny pools of salty wetness that mingled with the saltier wetness of perspiration.
These last bells the Evil One had granted them had not gone to waste. Even knowing that such beneficence was a prelude to horrors beyond imagining, once Elfeya had breached that first barrier of fear and given in to instinct and temptation, she and her mate had made no further attempt to deny themselves the slightest pleasure of their bond. Despite the leering eyes of their guards, watching as Elden guards had always watched across the centuries, she and her mate had shared each touch, each caress, without shame. There was little to live for but these brief flashes of pleasure in an eternity of darkness.
Perhaps that was why she wept.
Better to think it was that than memories of freedom and joyous love. Those memories only gave the Evil One a doorway to their souls.
She closed her eyes as hershei’tan’shand cupped her cheek. In a gesture Elfeya knew as well as she knew the beating of her own heart, he thumbed away her tears. She brought her hand up, her slender fingers caressing the greater masculine strength of his. Sensitive fingertips traced the slight roughness of his skin, the hard length of bone beneath the veil of flesh, the smoothness of nail beds with their ragged edges.
So strong, and yet so fragile. He was a creature of vast power, as was she, but they were both housed in delicate cages of living flesh and brittle bone that had been brought to the edge of death countless times over the last millennium. Even now, despite these few bells of sanity, she knew he danced the razor’s edge of madness. The vast power to which he’d been born had been made even vaster by the unholy experiments of the Evil One, but it had come at a terrible price. Gods save the world if ever thosesel’dormanacles came free.
Her fingers curved around his hand, fingertips roving lightly over his palm, over the rent flesh still bleeding from his attack on the barbedsel’dorbars of his cage. She turned her face to his palm and kissed the many small, deep wounds.
