“Teska, Rain! Please.” Already the pain was back, another brutal lash of it. Her body went rigid. Her jaw flexed, and her neck strained so hard each breath was a victory. This was going to be as bad as any seizure she’d ever had. And with Rain touching her skin to skin, he would feel her shattered emotions as if they were his own.
Rain’s jaw clenched like an iron vise, the tendons in his neckstanding out. “Tairen’s scorching fire!” The backlash of his pain redoubled her own, and she screamed.
Gaelen and Bel dove towards them in a desperate effort to pull them apart.
“Let go, Rain, scorch you!” Gaelen snarled as Rain fought him off. “You’re only making it worse—can’t you see that? She’s feeling your pain too. You’re building a harmonic. Marissya!”
His sister spun a compulsion weave and thrust it into Rain’s mind while Gaelen and Bel worked to pry Ellysetta free of Rain’s arms. The weave reached enough of him that his grip loosened for an instant. Bel yanked Ellysetta free, and Gaelen wrestled Rain to the ground, pinning him there until some measure of sanity returned to his wild eyes.
The moment it did, Rain shoved Gaelen away and scrambled to his knees, crawling to Ellysetta’s side. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her body shaking violently.
“Get... Papa.” Each word was a hard-won fight. “He knows... what... to... do...ahhh!” The last word died in a wail as fire ripped through her and the world dissolved once more into shrieking agony.
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Muscles bulged in the burly Eld guard’s back and thick arms as he swung the heavysel’dorwar hammer he called Boraz, the Bone Grinder. The hammer strike landed with a meaty thud and the loud crack of breaking bone.
Hanging from chains attached to the barbedsel’dorshackles clamped around his wrists, Shannisorran v’En Celay gave a guttural roar of pain as his right hip shattered. His body writhed, and the tremors sent arrows of fire shooting through him as splinters of bone tore through bruised muscle. The pain was devastating. Already it had gone far beyond his ability to contain. He’d felt great, searing arrows of it blast down the link the Mage’s evilmagic had unwittingly forged between Shan and Ellysetta Baristani, the daughter he’d not seen since her birth.
“How did you do it?” Across the room, High Mage Vadim Maur watched Shan’s torture with icy eyes. “How did you and our lovely Elfeya manage to hide your daughter’s magic from me?”
Shan sucked air into his lungs as he struggled to separate himself from the agony engulfing his body. He coughed and groaned as a fresh bout of pain racked him. His torture had begun with a simple but brutal pummeling before advancing to the hammer blows. Several of his ribs were broken, and with every breath, blood pooled in his mouth. He spat a mouthful of it on the ground.
“I know you engineered her escape, and I know you somehow bound her magic so I would not detect it.”
Shan tossed back the strands of matted black hair covering his eyes. The guard had shattered Shan’s ankles first, then his kneecaps, and now the first of his hips. He still had seven major joints to go, and he knew Maur wouldn’t leave one of them whole whether he answered or not. He lifted his chin in a gesture that Elfeya had always bemoaned as a sure sign of his intractability and fixed unblinking eyes—a predator’s stare—on the High Mage.
Maur’s teeth clenched for a moment. Then he gave a cold smile. “Lord Death.” He sneered the nickname Shan had earned many centuries ago, before finding his truemate, when he’d been the deadliest Fey warrior ever to walk the Fading Lands. “So arrogant, even now. I have not forgotten how the pair of you tried to help her escape my Mark in the Solarus. You failed, you know—I Marked her again—but you’ll still spend the next thousand years begging me for death as a reward for your efforts. You and Elfeya both.” He gave a short nod.
The guard swung his war hammer again.
The chains rattled as Shan’s body jerked and shuddered from the force of the blow. His scream echoed off the black stone walls.Pain is life, he reminded himself, silently reciting the litany hehad taught hischadinat the Academy in Tehlas.Fey eat pain for breakfast. We jaff it on a cold night just to keep warm.
“Strip the flesh from his back,” Maur ordered coldly. “Use the Fire whip. I don’t want him bleeding to death, just close enough to it to make his mate eager to please me.”
Shan’s vision blurred as the guard circled around him, the Mage’s favorite Fire-tipped whip clutched in his meaty hand.
The first blow seared him to his soul. He writhed as flesh ripped and scorched. He reeled as the shattered bones in his legs scraped and shredded his flesh from the inside out.Ah, gods have mercy. Maur just might break him this time.
«Shei’tan.»Elfeya’s voice, warm as a summer sun on the shores of Tairen’s Bay, washed over him.«I am here, beloved. I am with you. Together, we are strong.»
With an ease that would have driven Vadim Maur wild with rage had he known of it, Elfeya slipped into Shan’s mind, circumventing all the dark weaves andsel’dorand black witchery the High Mage had employed to keep them isolated. She was there, with Shan as she had been since the day of their bonding, an inextricable part of his soul. His strength, his blessing, his greatest weakness.«Leave me, Elfeya. Shield yourself. I cannot bear for you to suffer.»
«Nei, never. I will not let him break us. You are Shannisorran v’En Celay, the greatest champion the Fading Lands has ever known. You are a warrior of the Fey, and I am your truemate, a shei’dalin of great power. This Mage may hold our bodies, but he has no command over our souls.»
The second whipstroke shredded the flesh off his back. He flung his head back and screamed himself hoarse.
«Shan! Stay with me. Focus on the sound of my voice, beloved.»When he didn’t respond, her tone grew sharp as the Mage’s whip.«Speak to me, Fey!»she barked.«Who are you?»
She’d spent too many years of their life together eavesdropping in his mind as he drove hischadinsto the end of their strength,then commanded them to eke out more. She was such a fierce, brave blade in her own right, his equal in every way. And she was right: Fey did not surrender, not to fear, not to pain, not to despair. They fought until their hearts burst in their chests.«I am warrior,»he gasped.«I am Fey.»
«Kabei! And what is a warrior of the Fey? Tell me! Shout it out!»
The whip ripped a third stripe off his back, but this time his choked scream was not a mindless howl. This time it was a declaration of defiance ripped from his aching throat, each word a rasping challenge. “I am the steel no enemy can shatter.” He thrust his chin out, met Maur’s vile silver gaze, and snarled through gritted teeth, “I am the magic no dark power can defeat.”
The High Mage smiled.
As the fourth lash fell, pain blinded him. He focused his mind on Elfeya’s warmth and forced the cry from his burning lungs. “I am the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. I am Fey! Warrior of honor! Champion of Light!”
