Lord Hewen, the royal physician, had been in to see the queen. Vale’s informants told him she was sleeping fitfully. There were no obvious signs of distress with the child, though Lord Hewen had not performed more than a cursory visual examination for fear of waking the queen. The ministers wouldn’t even allow a single servant in to tidy the mess Annoura had made of her apartments for the same reason.
Vale was perhaps the only person in the court for whom the news of the king’s death was neither surprising nor unwelcome. He expected similar news to arrive any day from Great Bay, and once it did, Vale’s star in the Celierian court would go sharply on the rise.
It was time to tie up loose ends.
Celieria ~ Kreppes
5th day of Seledos
“I’m worried, Rain.”
Ellysetta paced the floor of her room in Kreppes Castle. Ever since she’d stood on the Fired battlefield outside Kreppes and realized that one of her dreams had come true, fear had been a constant companion, eating away at her peace of mind, tormenting her as fiercely as any nightmare ever had.
She’d kept the fear to herself these last days. Rain had been so busy. He and Lord Barrial had spent most of their time scouting Great Lord Sebourne’s lands in search of Mages, and at Gaelen’s suggestion, Cann had summoned hisdahl’reisenfriends and asked them to check all the remaining Sebourne inhabitants for Mage Marks. In the meantime, armies from the surrounding border estates were sending troops to secure the lands until the new King Dorian could decide what to do with them.
But Moreland was secure now, and Rain was back. Ellysetta couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“I’m worried that if that dream came true, some of my others might, too.” Like the dream she’d had last month about Rain dying by Ellysetta’s hand while Mage-claimed Lillis and Lorelle danced in a shower of his blood. “I’m worried about all those people I killed and how I felt when I killed them.”
Ellysetta dragged her palms over her face and eyes, as if that simple gesture could shut out the world. But shutting out the world—pretending it wasn’t there—never solved anything. If she’d learned nothing else, she’d learned that. Hiding from the monsters only made them stronger.
“Hawksheart said I was the double-edged sword. He warned you that I have just as much capacity for evil as I do for good. I believe him, Rain. And I’m so afraid—so terribly frightened—that the evil is winning.”
“Shei’tani…”
“Nei,Rain. Listen to me. There’s something dark inside me—and it isn’t all the tairen, and it isn’t all the High Mage either. You want to pretend it’s not there, but it is. Some horrible, vicious part of me was glad to kill those people… I thrived on murdering them. Worse, I didn’t just want to kill them. I wanted to make them suffer. I wanted to hear them scream and beg for mercy. I wanted to see the terror in their eyes and know I put it there!”
“Ellysetta, they’d just killed Rowan and turned our own people against each other. They made friends slaughter friends. Your Rage was understandable. Do you think I felt any different? What do you think Steli would have done if the Eld had turned tairen against tairen?”
Ellysetta bit her lip. She knew what Steli would do. The fierce white tairen would shred, scorch, and maim every living creature on the battlefield. “I’m not Steli, Rain.”
“Neither was I when Sariel died. Yet you’ve told me so many times that what I did didn’t make me evil. Was that all a lie?”
Her gaze shot to his.“Nei,of course not!” “Then how am I to be forgiven for what I did in war, yet you are not?”
She hated when he turned her own arguments against her this way. “You weren’t Mage Marked, Rain. You weren’t told you’d been born either to save the world or destroy it.”
“True. I wasn’t born to save the world. I was merely born to slaughter millions.”
“You were born to end the Mage Wars,” she corrected sharply, “and in doing so to save all those people the Eld would have enslaved if you hadn’t done what you did.”
His hands cupped her face, and his eyes brimmed with sorrow and love and such understanding she nearly wept.“Aiyah, shei’tani.That I was. And though I will never forgive myself for what I did, every day when the doubts creep in, I remind myself that the gods made me for their own purpose. That no matter how seemingly dark and terrible that purpose was, they trusted me to fulfill it. And I remind myself every day, that somehow, I must have proven myself worthy in their eyes because they sent me you, my soul’s mate and the beacon that drew me back from Shadow.” His thumbs brushed lightly across her lower lip in a tender caress. “Perhaps,shei’tani,it’s time you began to believe the same about yourself.”
Her lashes fell to cover her eyes. Almost since the first moment she’d met Rain, she’d been telling him to forgive himself, to see the Light in his soul that even the Scorching of the World had not been able to dim. Now their roles were reversed, and she was bewailing her own sad plight as if no one in the world had ever walked so Dark a path.
And yet, the doubts were there. She could not deny or ignore them. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I’m not good enough? What if Tenn and the Massan were right, and I’ve already done all I was meant to do, and the only way to save the world is for someone to kill me before I fall to Darkness?”
His thumb brushed against her lower lip, and though sorrow shaded his eyes, there was a steady calmness, an acceptance about him, that she’d never seen so strongly before.
“Then we will die together, Ellysetta.” The corner of his beautiful mouth tilted slightly upwards in a mournful ghost of a smile. “Whatever your fate, I will share it. Wherever your Path leads, there, too, walk I.Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, not so much embracing him as trying to merge her body into his until there was no part of them that stood apart. She kissed him with desperate passion, as if his lips could wipe out the pervasive sense of doom that sapped her courage and filled her with fear.
“Kiss me, Rain. Love me.”
“I will. I do.” He touched his mouth to hers in a kiss of gentle devotion, but she would have none of it. Her lips parted, and she took his mouth with urgent need at the same time her body surged against him. Earth weaves spun from her hands, and his armor dropped from him like leaves from an autumn tree.
He pulled back, frowning. “Ellysetta?”
