Who?
The Mharog’s face contorted and he gave a high-pitched shriek. Dark steel flashed as he yanked hismeichafrom its sheath and held it over Rain’s head like an executioner’s axe.
Before the blade could descend, a Fey warrior surrounded entirely by a glow of golden light reached Ellysetta’s side. He slashed at the Mage with blades that gleamed like sunlight. The Primage staggered back away from Ellysetta, a look of shock on his face, bloody stumps where his hands had been and a ribbon of red slashed across his throat. Demons howled out of the Well, surrounding the Mage in a cyclone of shrieking shadow.
Freed, Ellysetta lunged, Fey’cha drawn, towards the Mharog standing over Rain.
Nei… nei, shei’tani. Do not!Rain tried to shout the warning, but none of the muscles in his throat were working. He couldn’t speak.
Sensing Ellysetta’s presence, the Mharog turned, swift as a snake, but too late to save himself. Her blade plunged into the Mharog’s heart just as another blade, this one blazing like the sun, took off the creature’s head. The Mharog’s decapitated body remained standing for several, long moments, showering Ellysetta and Rain with a fountain of icy black blood. Then the legs collapsed, and the body toppled to the ground. Ellysetta crumpled, too.
She was screaming as if her body were burning from the inside out, as if her skin was being ripped from her bones.
The other two Mharog gave shocked grunts and crumpled to the ground. Someone knelt over Rain, bathing him in warm, golden light. A hand turned him on his side, reaching for the pouch at the back of his hip belt where he kept the cloth-wrapped Shadar horn gifted to him by Galad Hawks-heart.
“You must live, Feyreisen,” a voice commanded.
As Rain’s vision dimmed, and his breath strangled in his throat, he wanted to tell them not to bother. Ellysetta’s face was frozen in a rictus of pain, her eyes as dark as dead stars. The sight shattered his heart, leaving hope a dead thing in his breast.
Shei’tani… shei’tani… nei…
Death wasn’t peaceful.
It was full of shouts and clanging steel, the roars of tairen, and searing heat like the fire of the gods… images flashing for barest instants before his eyes, lights, shadows, familiar faces, a whirl of trees and stars overhead… smells, like the aroma of a campfire burning in a chilly winter night and the odor of something noxious that made him gag and retch.
Hands held him down. Pinned him as he fought and Raged against them. He shouted obscenities, epithets, cursed them and their offspring to eternity burning in the Seventh Hell.
Then silence fell over him like a heavy blanket, and death became a still, black sea into which he sank with an exhausted sigh.
Celieria City ~ The Royal Palace
As he had every night since receiving news of Prince Dorian’s demise, Kolis Manza slipped into the king’s bedchamber by way of the servant stairs that opened to the king’s dressing room.
Master Maur was growing impatient to have Celieria firmly under Mage control. He’d sent a special envoy with an offer to end all hostilities if Annoura agreed to terminate the Fey-Celierian alliance and send what was left of her armies against thedahl’reisen,who had been hiding in the Verlaine Forest and using it as a base to attack Eld and murder Celierians along the border who opposed them. Despite a firm push or two from Kolis, Annoura had as yet refused to agree, and it now fell to Kolis to ensure she woke in a more malleable frame of mind.
He stood in the darkened dressing chamber until he heard Annoura settle into bed, then waited for her breathing to assume the steady rhythm of sleep before he slipped into the room and padded silently across the floor to her side.
He blew a puff ofsomuluspowder in her face even though he doubted it was necessary. Annoura wanted to believe. She wanted to think Dorian had really returned to her, that it was truly he holding her in his arms each night, making love to her.
He began to spin the Spirit weave of Dorian, returning to his love, but as he reached for the tie of her nightgown and sent the first, faint pulse of masked Azrahn into her body, he froze. His nostrils flared, and in a sudden motion, he snatched the wavy-edgedsel’dordagger from the sheath at his waist and plunged it into Annoura’s chest.
The queen’s expression didn’t change, and her breathing continued uninterrupted. But the area of her chest around Kolis’s dagger spat small showers of lavender sparks.
“I told you a Spirit weave wouldn’t fool him for long.”
The voice came from an empty part of the room. Kolis leapt to his feet, Mage Fire blooming in his hands just as five-fold weaves and several red Fey’cha flew from the empty room around him. His Mage Fire dissolved, and he staggered as the blades sank into his chest.
Five Fey and a mortal materialized inside the room.
“You!” he exclaimed, staring in disbelief at the mortal’s face. “But you’re…” His words slurred as the tairen venom raced through his body. His eyes rolled back and his body collapsed.
Prince Dorian—the new King Dorian XI—eyed the twitching corpse coldly. “Dead?” he finished. “So they tell me.” He flicked a glance at the Fey. “Get this piece ofkrekkout of my palace.”
Leaving the Fey to dispose of the body, Dorian exited his father’s bedchamber and strode down the hallway to a warded room where Gaspare Fellows and thedahl’reisensent by Dorian’s father were watching over his unconscious mother, the queen.
Thedahl’reisenlooked up when he entered. The spiral of shadowy Azrahn in his palm winked out, and he nodded. “It worked, Your Majesty. The Marks are gone.”
Dorian closed his eyes and bowed his head in weary relief and murmured a brief prayer of thanks that at least he’d been able to save one person he loved. He sat on the edge of the bed beside his mother and took her hand as thedahl’reisenremoved the weave keeping her unconscious.
