In the cell, the boy put his hands to his head. Shrieking unintelligible gibberish, he pulled great tufts of hair out by the roots and spun around the room, slamming his body against the wall and ripping at his own flesh.
Vadim’s fingers curled in a fist. “Restrain him before he damages himself more. Continue to breed him as long as you can.” Too many centuries had gone into the crossbreeding of magical bloodlines to throw the boy away without squeezing as much benefit from his existence as possible. “If he endangers the females, send him to Fezai Madia.” The leader of the Feraz witches had been complaining lately over the quality of the slaves he’d been sending for her sacrifices to the demon-god Gamorraz. Insane this boy might be, but there was no denying the strong magic in his blood.
Leaving the observation room, he passed through the nursery and paused to glance into the two cradles resting against the wall. Two infants with bright, shining eyes stared up at him. Both boys, both already showing promise of mastering all Fey magics. Each had the soul of an unborn tairen grafted to his own. Would they go mad, too? Or had Vadim finally discovered the secret to successfully breeding Tairen Souls of his own?
Only time would tell. For now, they represented another generation of possibility, another opportunity to succeed in case Ellysetta Baristani continued to elude him…
…or in case she fell prey to the same lethal insanity as her predecessors.
Celieria ~ Orest
“Where are we going?” Ellysetta asked as Rain dragged her away from the healing tents. Her quintet had started to follow, but one hot look from Rain had stopped them in their tracks.
“Someplace I can keep you out of trouble.”
There was still a snap in his voice, so she offered a small peace offering. “You were good with Aartys.”
He gave her a withering look, and her olive branch went quietly up in flames. “Do not attempt to soothe this tairen,shei’tani. You nearly died—or worse—and I will not overlook that.”
She bit her lip. He was right. She’d gone too far into the Well, andsomethinghad been quite successfully pushing her to use her most dangerous magic. Still…this double standard her truemate imposed on her had gone on long enough.
“Why do you get to be angry, and I do not?”
He glared. “What doyouhave to be angry about?”
She stopped stock-still and yanked her hand from his grip. “Are you serious? I’m yourshei’tani—your truemate—and you can actually ask me that?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “How many times have you barely made it back to Orest alive? How many times have you crashed into Veil Lake, bloody and half-dead, limbs broken, flesh shredded, enoughsel’dorarrows in you to supply an entire company of archers? Yet you expect me to patch you up and send you back to battle time and time again. You and every other warrior who ends up on my table.”
“You are ashei’dalin. That is whatshei’dalinsdo.”
“Precisely! You fight out there.” She jabbed a finger towards the scorched and still-smoking southwest corner of Eld. “Well,thatis my battlefield.” She turned and jabbed her finger back at the healing tents. “And I’m every bit as determined to win my war as you. If that means I occasionally have to take risks—just like you do—then, by the gods, that’s exactly what I’ll do!”
“Over. My. Rotting. Corpse.” His teeth snapped together with an audible click. He grabbed her wrist again and put on a burst of speed that forced her to jog to keep up with him.
The collection of bloodsworn black Fey’cha daggers strapped across her chest and around her hips slapped against her steel-embroidered scarlet robes as she ran, and the feeling of being a chastised child dragged along behind an irate parent only chafed her more.
“You’re being unfair!” she exclaimed. “I may not have my wings yet, but I’m a Tairen Soul, too, Rain. I feel the same need to defend our people as you do. Just because the only enemy I can defend them against at the moment is death, that doesn’t mean my efforts are any less vital than yours!”
His eyes glowed so bright they nearly shot purple sparks. “Have I ever suggested they were? Have I not let Gaelen weave the forbidden magic for your use so you could save lives that would otherwise be lost? I do not object to your saving lives. But I will not allow you to risk your own in the process!”
“But—”
“Enough!” he thundered. “You don’t have to like it, Ellysetta, but I am the Feyreisen—both your truemate and your king—and on this matter, I will be obeyed!”
Ahead lay the open plaza near Veil Lake that Rain and the tairen used for launching and landing. Four majestic winged cats, each the size of a house, crouched on the manicured grass at the lakeshore. Their heads were extended as they lapped at the cold waters fed from Kiyera’s Veil, the gauntlet of three-hundred-foot waterfalls that tumbled down from opposing mountainsides at the lake’s western shore.
When they reached the plaza, Rain slowed his pace. Ellysetta yanked her wrist from his grip a second time, marched to the mossy edge of the bricked space, and presented him her back. She pressed her lips in a thin line, angry at his high-handedness. For a woman who’d spent the first twenty-four years of her life as the shy, obedient daughter of a poor woodcarver and his wife, Ellysetta had become mulishly resistant to Voices of Authority. Even when those voices belonged to kings, wedded husbands, and beloved truemates. If Mama were still alive, she would shake her head in despair of her adopted daughter’s willful ways.
By the lakeshore, the largest of the tairen, a great white beauty with eyes like glowing blue jewels, lifted her snowy, feline head and turned to pad towards them. Her long tail slapped against several tree trunks as she walked, bringing a shower of leaves raining down in her wake. When she reached the plaza, she spread her wide, clawed wings and reared up on her hind legs to shake the debris from her fur. A deep, throaty purr rumbled in her chest, and she tilted her head down to pin Ellysetta with a whirling, pupil-less blue gaze.
«You worried your mate, kitling,» admonished Steli,chakaiof the Fey’Bahren pride. The musical tones of the tairen’s speech danced in the air like flashes of silver and gold and carried with them feelings of panicked fear and images of Rain whirling in the sky and rocketing towards Upper Orest. «You should not alarm him so. Tairen frightened for their mates are dangerous—especially to beings as breakable as mortals.»
“Not you, too, Steli!” Ellysetta crossed her arms, feeling immensely put out. “You think I’m not afraid when he’s out there getting maimed by arrows and bowcannon?”
Steli’s ears flicked and her tail lashed the earth. «Ellysetta-kitling would not scorch the world. Rainier-Eras already has. Without you to anchor him, he would again.»
That simple, inescapable truth deflated Ellysetta’s temper as nothing else could. A thousand years ago, after the death of his first mate, Sariel, Rain Tairen Soul had scorched the world in the blaze of tairen flame, killing thousands in mere instants, millions in a handful of days. He’d paid for that act of Rage with seven hundred years of madness and another three centuries spent battling his way back from the abyss.
«Rainier-Eras is proud,» Steli continued, «and he does not wish to frighten his mate. He does not tell Ellysetta-kitling that each day becomes harder. That each battle weakens what took him so long to rebuild.»
