“Nei!”Only to Rain had she ever confessed the terrible, frightening, dark thoughts that sometimes consumed her. And she would not—could not—fling open those black, violent places to theseshei’dalins. She was terrified of what they would find. Terrified of what might happen—to her, to them, to Rain—if they unleashed the wild, angry power that lived inside her.
“Surrender to us,” the woman insisted.
The pressure grew, multiplied, became unbearable. Within Ellie’s mind, the internal protective weaves Bel had helped her to rebuild—barriers to keep her thoughts private from even intentional Fey intrusion—stretched and grew thin. Behind them, the tairen shifted and hissed a warning.
“Surrender,” all theshei’dalinscommanded. “Submit and be judged.” There were dozens of them, too many, and their magic was braided in a multi-ply weave of staggering power.
The first thread in Ellie’s barriers snapped. The remainingthreads stretched and shrieked beneath the relentless push of theshei’dalins’insistent will.
“Stop! Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing! Rain!” She screamed his name in a desperate cry.
Her internal barriers shattered.
Mercilessshei’dalinminds poured in through the breach.
The howl of battle swept around Rain like a maelstrom, battering his senses. Screams and shrieks of the dead and dying, hot gouts of blood splashing over his face, fire, smoke, the burn ofsel’dorpeppering his flesh. His swords flashed—bright steel, stained with blood, spinning in lethal arcs. Eld, Merellians, Feraz: All fell beneath the merciless onslaught of his blades.
With sword, with fang, with claw and fiery tairen breath, he killed and killed, and with each death, a layer of heavy coldness fell upon him. Layer after layer until he was encased in ice. Still, his blades slashed and his fire burned. Still, he slaughtered.
Then it wasn’t only enemies falling beneath his rain of death, but allies as well. Celierians, Elves, Danae. His own brother Fey. He saw their faces, the shock and betrayal, the disbelief. The pleas for mercy that never came.
All around, amid the gore and violence, stood the pale gray shadows of the dead, watching him with unblinking black eyes. Their bloodless mouths were open and moving, lips forming sluggish words. Mottled arms lifted. Dead fingers pointed. At him.
And then he heard the whispers. A murmur of sound cutting across the howl of battle, a low hum vibrating across his senses, felt more than heard.
Murderer. Destroyer. Thief of life.
Bringer of destruction.
He howled a denial, and the fields of accusing dead winked out.
When he could see again, he was flying over a barren, scorched land. Below him, the city of Dharsa lay in ruins, its gleaming white towers and golden spires heaps of smoldering rubble. Hespun away, raced back across the sky, heading northeast to the great volcanic mountain of Fey’Bahren, home to the last living tairen pride. But when he reached it, he found fiery, glowing rivers of molten lava pouring down the mountain’s sides like great fountains of blood gushing from a mortal wound. The nesting lair—the networked maze of caverns and tunnels that had been his home for most of the last thousand years—was destroyed.
Desperate, disbelieving, he flew from one end of the Fading Lands to another. Nothing living remained. Not a single blade of grass, not the smallest twig, not even the tiniest insect had survived. The Fading Lands were dead, as were the tairen and the Fey who had called this once-beautiful part of the world home.
“It’s your fault, you know,” a soft voice accused.
His eyes closed. He recognized that voice. He turned slowly, knowing who stood behind him, fearing what image from her life or death the beings of the Mists might have chosen to torment him with.
Sariel stood before him, slender, luminous, clad in a translucent gown of delicate dusky blue. She was so beautiful. Even among the exquisite comeliness of other Fey women, she had always been a flower beyond compare. Ebony hair spilled over her shoulders like skeins of silk, and eyes of deep, drowning blue watched him with sorrow and regret.
The sight of her didn’t rip at his heart the way it always had before Ellysetta. Now, her image only filled him with sadness for the beautiful Fey maiden whose millennia of life had been cut so short. He had loved her with every fiber of his youthful being, but that love owned his heart no longer. Rain, the mate of Sariel, had died a thousand years ago on a bloody battlefield just north of Teleon. A different Rain had risen from the ashes, born the day Ellysetta Baristani’s soul had called out and his had answered. From that moment on, no other—not even the woman for whom he’d once scorched the world—could lay claim to any portion of Rain’s heart or soul.
“You brought evil into the Mists,” Sariel accused. “You damned us all.” Her voice was soft, and throbbing with shame and recrimination. Tears filled her eyes, spilled down luminous alabaster cheeks.
“I bring no evil. I bring our salvation,” he replied. “And if you meant to torment me, you chose the wrong form. Rain, the mate of Sariel, is no more. Now there is only Rainier-Eras, truemate of Ellysetta Feyreisa.”
The Mists must have realized their error. Sariel’s beautiful face wavered. Her body stretched and split, re-forming as a man and woman. A tall man, fierce-eyed, black-haired, unsmiling. A woman, slender and shining. Beautiful. Beloved. His parents: Rajahl vel’En Daris and hise’tani, Kiaria.
They were no more real than Sariel had been, but the sight of them was like a knife to his heart. The blade twisted painfully when the two of them spoke.
“You are a Tairen Soul of the Fey’Bahren pride,” his father said, “sworn to defend our lands against those who wish us harm, yet you have betrayed us all.” Rajahl wore an expression of stern disapproval and, worse, disappointment—a look Rajahl had directed at Rain only once or perhaps twice in his entire life, because that look cut Rain so deeply he’d done everything in his power to ensure that his father never regarded him that way again.
His mother wept. “Oh, my son, my son, better you had died than come to this.”
Even the illusion of their censure seared him. He wanted to cry out in protest, but he did not. He shoved his feelings aside. Illusion gained strength only when one believed it.
“Show your true face!” he challenged the pair standing before him. “I know my parents do not live in these Mists any more than Sariel did.”
