“Secure your steel and gather your magic, my brothers,” Rain said. “We have three days to reach Kreppes before the battle Hawksheart predicted begins.” He Changed and took to the sky, while the warriors leapt off the cliffs and slid down great flowing currents of Air to the base of the mountain where Ellysetta’slu’tanwere already waiting. Together, with Rain and Ellysetta flying overhead, they raced north.
Celieria ~ Greatwood ~ Three days later
Pale morning sunlight pushed back the dark of night. Softly, the autumn hues of Celieria’s Greatwood Forest emerged from shadowed gloom. Talisa Barrial diSebourne stared up at the lightening sky, and her fingers clenched in tight fists.
She’d never hated dawn until this week, and never hated it more than now.
“Shei’tani. Teska.”The voice of the man she loved more than her own life pleaded softly in her ear. “Come away with me. We can go to the Fading Lands.”
Talisa closed her eyes as Adrial’s hands gripped her shoulders and his body pressed close. The strength of his presence overwhelmed her. Like a sorcerer’s spell, his voice sapped her resistance. Longing pressed against her will, thinning it to the point of surrender. She could. She could leave with him right now…run away…. She could just…not go back. Adrial would take her to the Fading Lands. They would live out the rest of their lives together in perfect love and happiness…
…while her family shouldered the burden of her shame, two of Celieria’s Great Houses became bitter enemies, and the Eld used their dissension to rip the country apart and conquer it piece by disharmonious piece.
Talisa bit her lip and forced herself to step back away from him when all she wanted to do was lean into his body and let his arms close tight around her. Adrial’s simplest touch roused in her more passion, more love, moreneed, than the deepest intimacies she’d shared with Colum, her husband.
Her hand clenched in a fist. “Please, Adrial. Don’t do this. You agreed we would part when the army reached Kreppes. We’ll be there tonight.” That was how she’d justified her adultery. She would love Adrial in secret with every ounce of passion in her soul until they reached Kreppes, and then they would part and she would return to live out her life with Colum.
She’d thought she could gorge herself on Adrial and live on the memories of their time together. But Adrial had showered her with such tenderness and glorious, dazzling ardor, that every touch, every kiss, every word and caress only bound her to him more securely than before. Gods help her, she didn’t even want to think of the night when the wife sleeping in Colum’s bed would be her instead of some Fey-spun illusion. How was she ever going to find the strength to let him touch her after Adrial?
“I know,” Adrial agreed raggedly. “I know I agreed we would part; it’s just—” His voice broke. “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”
She turned to him and her breath caught on a sob. So beautiful. Ah, gods, he was so beautiful. Skin as pale and luminous as crushed pearls, shining with the silvery glow of the Fey. Eyes brown as a fawn’s, golden near the edge of the irises, deepening to rich dark chocolate at the center. Those eyes had haunted her dreams as long as she could remember. The pain in them now struck her like a blow.
She laid one hand on his chest and the other on his smooth jaw. “It’s just one mortal lifetime,shei’tan. Barely more than a chime in a Fey’s life. Then I will come to you in the Fading Lands and we will be together forever after.”
When he’d finally accepted that she could not leave her husband and realized his continued presence would only cause her greater pain, he’d told her about the Feyreisa’s idea. About the sleeping weave that would suspend him in time until she came to awaken him. There was no certainty it would work, but she was desperate enough for even the smallest glimmer of hope that she’d latched onto the idea.
Thirty…perhaps fifty years in a loveless marriage. That was a small enough price to pay for a love that would last throughout eternity.
He bowed his head.“Doreh shabeila de, shei’tani.”So shall it be. He held out a small, capped scroll box. “This is for you,kem’san. My last courtship gift to you until we meet again and our souls can at last live as one.”
He’d given her many tiny treasures since their first night together. Little gifts that symbolized some aspect of his love for her, his hopes for them. But this…She uncapped the scroll box, then extracted and uncurled the small parchment stored inside—this brought tears to her eyes and made her throat clench tight with unshed tears.
“I made it last night while you slept,” he said. “The words are my own, written from my heart.”
“It’s beautiful.” He’d written her a poem and carefully executed each aching, mournful word in flowing, calligraphic script embellished with fanciful curls and richly illuminated with tiny images so perfectly drawn and painted they seemed to leap and move on the page. Flowers bloomed, tairen soared, and other magical creatures danced amongst the flowing lines of Adrial’s script. And everywhere, tiny sketches of her and him together, walking, embracing, adoring each other.
In the last stanza, separated by the swooping curls of the final words, a somber Adrial reached out for the departing figure of Talisa, who stood, looking back over her shoulder at him, both their faces filled with longing and sorrow.
I die a thousand deaths when you leave.
Her fingers trembled as she caressed the words and traced the painted lines of his face. He was right: Each parting was an inexpressible agony, as if her heart were being ripped from her chest time and time again.
Her fingertips brushed across the final image on the page, Adrial’s hope for them: a shining city of white and gold rising from forested hills, and two tiny figures embracing before they entered the verdant paradise.
“Oh, Adrial.” She flung herself into his arms and fused her lips to his, pouring every desperate ounce of the love and longing she felt into her kiss. How was she ever going to live a single day—let alone a whole lifetime—without the taste of him on her lips, the feel of his arms holding her close, the rush of emotion that shot through her when his skin pressed against hers?
“I love you,” she sobbed against his lips, pulling back to feather desperate kisses across his face, the hard curve of his jaw, his cheek, his ear. “Dear gods, I love you so much.”
His arms wrapped tight around her, and for one last chime, they shared a final, passionate embrace that would have to last a lifetime. When at last she pulled away, she cast a tearful glance at the silent, stone-faced shadow of Adrial’s brother, Rowan. “Take care of him for me,” she begged. “Keep him safe.” And to Adrial, “I will come for you, beloved. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many years I must wait to be free, I will come to you. I swear it.”
Unable to bear the agony of their parting a moment longer, she spun away. Her quintet wove invisibility to hide their presence, and they hurried out of the forest towards the shadowy outline of tents that dotted the farmlands just beyond the northern border of Greatwood.
The Great Sun was breaking over the horizon, and soldiers were just beginning to stir as Talisa ducked into the still-dark interior of the tent she shared with Colum.
A cool breeze wafted over her, making her skin prickle. The sound of a match being struck broke the silence, and a dim light flared as the match burst into flame.
Colum was sitting in the corner of the tent, his gray eyes pinned on her, his expression colder than she’d ever seen as he calmly lit the small candle lamp on the camp table beside him.
