Her last sight was of Kieran, screaming defiance as the avalanche enveloped him.
CHAPTERONE
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Fey warrior, champion of Light.
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Leading a never-ending Fight.
Tairen Soul: Singing, soaring high.
Tairen Soul: Thundering, roaring cry.
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Fey warrior, fiercest of Fey.
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Alone, leading the way.
Fiercest of Fey, by Corvan Lief, Celierian Poet
Celieria ~ Orest
Two weeks later
Ellysetta Baristani plunged her hands into the gaping cavity of the dying boy’s chest. Her fingers closed around his heart, pumping the still chambers with desperate force as a blaze of powerful, golden-white magic poured from her soul into his.
The fading brightness of his life force tasted warm and tart on her tongue, like a sun-ripened peach plucked too soon from the tree. So young. So innocent. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Too young for this. Too young for war. Too young to die.
Just like her sisters, Lillis and Lorelle, who’d been lost in the Faering Mists during the battle of Teleon.
“Please, my lady. Save him. Please, save my Aartys. He’s all I’ve got left.” The mother of the dying child stood sobbing beside the table, her eyes swollen and red rimmed, chapped hands twisting the hem of the blood-soaked apron tied around her waist. Her desperation and grief-induced terror pounded at Ellysetta’s empathic senses like hammer blows.
Not that a few more hammer blows made much difference in the emotional din swirling around the scarlet healing tents that had been erected on the mist-and rainbow-filled plazas of Upper Orest. As always when a battle raged nearby, the sheer numbers of wounded and dying warriors made it impossible for the dozen scarlet-veiledshei’dalinhealers to weave peace upon them all. Not even the roar of the great Kiyera’s Veil waterfalls could drown out the screams of pain and pleas for mercy.
“I’ll do my best, Jonna,” Ellysetta vowed. She wanted to promise to save Aartys, but the last weeks here on Celieria’s war-torn northern border had taught her too well. Death, once a stranger, had become an all-too-familiar acquaintance.
Ellysetta looked up and met Jonna’s eyes over the boy’s limp body. The weeping mortal woman was one of the hearth witches who tended the wounded and dying. She knew death as intimately as Ellysetta now did, but that didn’t stop her from fighting against it with every ounce of strength she possessed—or from begging for a salvation she knew was beyond the capabilities of all mortal healers…and all but one of the Feyshei’dalins.
Ellysetta bit her lip. Aartys shouldn’t be here on her table—and she couldn’t help feeling partly to blame. After all, if not for her, the Fey might never have engaged their ancient enemy in this new Mage War. If not for Ellysetta, her truemate, Rainier vel’En Daris, would never have blown his golden horn this morning to call his Fey warriors and the mortal men of Orest to battle. And if he’d never blown that blast, the sound would never have spurred Jonna’s young son to snatch up his dead father’s sword and rush to fight alongside the men of Orest and his heroes, the immortal Shining Folk of the Fading Lands.
Yet those thingshadhappened. And now, here they were, a child maimed and dying, his mother weeping and pleading for his life, both utterly dependent on Ellysetta and her magic to snatch his life from the jaws of death.
“Hold his hand, Jonna,” Ellysetta commanded. “Feed him your strength. Call to him. Don’t stop until I tell you.” And then, though she shouldn’t have vowed it, she did: “If there’s any way to save Aartys, I will.”
“Oh, my lady.” Jonna’s lips trembled and tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, thank you, my lady.Thank you.”
She started to come around the table, but Ellysetta stopped her. “Hold his hand, Jonna.” The command came out more curtly than usual. She didn’t want this woman kneeling at her feet, kissing her hem as other Celierians had done when pleading for her to save a loved one. She wasn’t a goddess to be worshiped.
“Teska,Jonna. Please,” she urged more gently. “Hold your son’s hand. There isn’t much time.” And because there truly wasn’t, she infused the words with a spider-silk-thin filament of compulsion, woven from shining lavender Spirit magic.
Jonna instantly snatched up her son’s hand.
“And pray, my friend,” Ellysetta said, adding silently,For all our sakes.
