The words to the Bright Lord’s devotion tumbled from the mortal healer’s lips.
Ellysetta flicked a glance at the tall, grim Fey warrior standing near the corner of her healing table.
Without a word, Gaelen vel Serranis stepped forward to lay a hand upon her shoulder. Crackling energy flooded her veins as the most infamous of the five bloodsworn warriors of her quintet surrendered his immense power for her use. The sort of healing she was about to do would take more than her own vast stores of power, and though usually ashei’dalinwould rely on her truemate to supplement her strength, Rain was on the battlefield, where the king of the Fey belonged, rather than at her side.
Ellysetta closed her eyes, shut out the world, and gathered her magic. Power came to her call, a dazzling golden-white brightness the Fey calledshei’dalin’s love, a healing gift Ellysetta Baristani wielded with a strength the world had not seen since the dawn of the First Age.
Against her closed lids, the pulsating vibrancy of Fey vision replaced physical sight, darkness teeming with the glowing threads of energy that made up all life and substance. Her consciousness traveled down the blinding-bright conduits of her arms, into Aartys’s dying body, then sank deeper. Moving with swift purpose, she followed the threads of her healing weave and descended into the Well of Souls, the blackness that lay beyond and beneath the physical world, the home of demons and the unborn and the dead waiting for passage into their next life.
There, she could see the fading light of Aartys’s soul as he sank into the long, silent dark of the Well. When his light disappeared, he would be lost. Determined not to let that happen, she plunged after him, her presence a dazzling incandescence that lit the shadowy world of the Well like a golden-white sun.
«Aartys.» She wove Spirit, the mystic magic of thought and illusion, hoping to make him feel his mother’s grief and fill him with an urgent need to return to her. «Fight, Aartys. Fight to live.» Death, ultimately, was like drowning. Once the initial terror passed, the dying embraced the numbness and simply let themselves fall, like wrecked ships sinking to the bottom of the sea. «Do not surrender. Reach for my Light. Let me bring you back to your mother. She needs you. She will be lost without you.»
Her weave was strong, her command of Spirit as exceptional as her command of the potent healing magic of the Fey. Yet still he fell.
So tired, his fading spirit whispered.Tell Mam I…His voice trailed off and the pale light of his soul began to sputter.
«Aartys!» Ellysetta dove after him. The threads of her weave stretched to the breaking point as she followed him deep into the Well, deeper than any other healer dared to go, deeper than she should have gone without Rain to anchor her.
«Take my magic, kem’falla,» Gaelen said. «Use what you need, and quickly. You have been gone from yourself too long.»
«Aiyah.» She seized the magic Gaelen had offered for her use—the dark black threads of magic that throbbed with red sparks. Azrahn, the forbidden soul magic.
Ellysetta worked quickly, reluctant to put Gaelen at risk by making him hold his weave for more than a chime or two. Though Gaelen considered the chance to save Fey lives well worth the risk of wielding Azrahn, they both knew how dangerous the magic was. She plaited the cool, dark threads of his Azrahn into her flows ofshei’dalin’s love, weaving the strands of icy shadow and warm, healing light together.
The new weave—amplified by her powers as well as Gaelen’s own—let her descend much farther into the Well. But as deep as she went, Aartys remained out of reach.
«Enough, kem’falla,» Gaelen said. «We’re out of time.»
«Just a little farther.»
«Nei.You’ve been gone from yourself too long. If you cannot save the boy now, you must let him go. Your life is too important to risk so needlessly.»
Anger bubbled up inside her. «Needlessly?»
«You know what I mean.»
«Every life is precious, Gaelen.» She’d held too many dying men in her arms, comforted too many stricken loved ones, seen her own mother beheaded by the Eld. She could not bear the thought of one more lost, wasted life—especially not this beautiful boy, whose bright eyes and sunny smile reminded her of her own young sisters.
Nei, she could not—would not—lose another soul today. Not to magic, not to war, and not to the thrice-flamed Well of Souls!
Cold whispered through her veins. Azrahn surged up from the great, deep source inside her, summoned by her anger. An almost sentient eagerness pressed against her will, as if the Azrahn inside herwantedher to weave it,wantedher to embrace its dark, forbidden power.
For her, giving in to that temptation would come with a terrible price. She bore four Mage Marks, placed upon her by the High Mage of Eld, and each time she spun Azrahn, she risked receiving another one. Two more and her soul, her consciousness, her entire being, would be his to command.
Still, the lure was tremendous. Gaelen’s threads didn’t contain a fraction of the power her own did. She could weave just a little…just enough to save the boy. Perhaps she could even spin it quickly enough that the High Mage wouldn’t have time to sense it and Mark her again.
Yes…yes, just a little, and quickly. Such a small thing. Surely he would miss it.
The siren’s call whispered in her ear. Dimly, she heard someone say her name, as if calling from far away, but the voice was soon silenced. Forbidden power throbbed in her veins, and all around her, the darkness of the Well of Souls pulsed to the same beat. Her ears filled with muted susurrations, a rhythmic ebbing and flowing, as if she were a child in the womb, listening to the blood rushing through her mother’s veins. The sound was hypnotic…entrancing….
She reached for her Azrahn, let its cold sweetness fill her.
«Ellysetta!» A furious and all-too-familiar voice roared her name. Power rushed into her body, and deep within the Well, her Light flared like an exploding sun.
The jolt sent her weave spearing wildly into the Well, so deep it passed the fading light that was Aartys’s soul. Stunned, she had just enough time and presence of mind to close her weave around Aartys and cling tight before her soul was yanked from the Well and slammed back into her own body.
The shining brilliance of Fey vision faded to darkness. The tranquillity of the Well gave way to a murmur of voices, muted screams of men in pain, the smells of blood and sweat and suffering. Her eyes fluttered as her senses gradually returned to her body.
