Lord of the Fading Lands (23 page)

Opening his senses to her, aware of every nuance of her emotions, of every beat of her heart, every shivered breath, Rain drank in her sweet response. Hesitant at first, she grew bolder as he greeted each tentative stroke of her tongue with a hungry stroke of his own, building her self-confidence, assuring her that she held the same sensual power over him that he held over her. He took her breath into his lungs and gave her back his own. She shuddered and twined her arms around him, clinging tight. His body grew hard as her feelings flowed to him, through him, saturating every cell of his being, just as his desire, his need, his passion flowed to her. Intensity doubled, quadrupled, as their emotions formed a harmonic frequency and amplified each other.

"Disgusting display," Kelissande's sneering voice declared. "I'd heard he'd all but mated her in public. I see now the stories were true.”

Ellysetta gasped and tore her lips from Rain's, a tide of red rushing into her pale face. The banker's daughter stood on the gravel path beside the river, surrounded by her admirers and sneering at Ellysetta and Rain. He felt Ellysetta's shame for having shared in their passion, and it infuriated him. Power sparked in his eyes. The Minset woman had been warned.

Before he could release his weave, Kelissande shrieked and toppled backwards into the Velpin. Thrashing and sputtering, she screamed for help, and four of her Celierian admirers promptly leapt in to rescue her.

Rain followed the nearly invisible trail of the Air weave back to Kieran. Beside Kieran, Lillis clapped her hands, squealed, and threw herself into the Fey's arms. The young warrior hugged her close and met his king's stern look with a broad grin and a careless shrug, showing not the faintest hint of remorse. Despite himself, Rain almost laughed. How could he upbraid the Fey for doing something he'd been about to do himself?

Unaware of the silent communication going on over her head, Ellie felt a spurt of wicked happiness as she watched Kelissande flounder her way out of the river. The glee was followed immediately by shame at her unkind feelings. She knew what it was to be publicly humiliated, and to take enjoyment in the humiliation of another made her little better than Kelissande. She tried to free herself from Rain's arms,. intending to go to Kelissande's aid, but his grip tightened.

He shook his head and cupped her face. "Do not waste your compassion on her,
shei'tani.
Her heart is hard”

Ellie blinked. She was aware of that, but Rain was the first man she'd ever known to see it. "Don't you find her beautiful?" she asked. Surely he did. After all, only a short while ago he'd been whispering sweet nothings into Kelissande's ear. Hadn't he?

"She is like a komarind fruit—beautiful on the outside, but bitter inside. Fey do not prize the komarind. We let it rot on the branches." He touched a finger to her lips. "The Fey find beauty in the soul. That is where true beauty always lies. And believe me, Ellysetta Baristani, your soul is beautiful indeed.”

She absorbed his words, scarcely daring to believe that this man could find her more appealing than Kelissande Minset. She glanced at the other Fey around her. None of them had lifted a finger to help Kelissande out of her predicament. To the contrary, several of them seemed to find the situation amusing. Rain, it seemed, wasn't the only one unaffected by Kelissande's perfect beauty. Somehow, that made the possibility that Rain actually preferred Ellie more believable.

As the dripping, disheveled young woman was delivered from the watery clutches of the Velpin, she shot Ellie a look of such virulent hatred that Ellysetta actually flinched and stepped back. Immediately Rain and the Fey closed ranks around her. Faces hard, their eyes cold and lethal, they glared at the soaked girl. To Ellie's surprise, Kelissande turned pale and stumbled back into the arms of her rescuers. Fear contorted her face. Ellie followed the girl's terrified gaze to Rain, who was watching her coldly, his eyes glowing with faint lavender light.

"What are you doing to her?”

"I am making sure she understands what will happen if she persists in this foolish desire to hurt you.”

Ellie frowned. "Well, stop it. You're scaring her.”

After one last forceful look, Rain released Kelissande and turned to Ellie. "I am your mate. It is my duty and privilege to protect you, even from your own too-forgiving heart. She hurt you, wounded your feelings, made you doubt the bond between us, and now she thinks dark thoughts that give you fear. Such evil I will not allow. Those gentle words you thought I whispered to her were my first warning of what I would do should she persist in wounding you. Now I have shown her what sort of enemy she has made. Should she think to hurt you a third time, it will be the last." There was no compassion in his eyes, no hint of mercy, just cold, implacable promise. Ellie shivered, and his face immediately softened. "I make you fear me. This is not my intent." He raised a knuckle to her cheek. "Do not fear me, Ellysetta. Never will I harm you. I seek only to ensure your protection and your happiness.”

"I know," she whispered, surprised to find it true. Though the cold power and deadly promise in his eyes frightened her, she knew it was not directed at her, and her fear was more for others than for herself. She would not want to be witness to the unleashing of that power. She did not want to think of it being exercised on her behalf.

He held out his hand, palm down in the Fey fashion. She placed her fingers on his wrist the way he had taught her the day before. Now he did smile, the barest curve of his lips, but the warmth of his approval filled her with joy.

In a shadowed alleyway across from the park, two pairs of eyes had watched the passionate kiss, one gaze blazing with hatred, the other glowing black with hints of smug, satisfied red. "You see how wantonly she displays herself? Would the Ellysetta you know do this? He uses Spirit to force her mind to his will. She is his puppet. He has taken your bride and made her his whore.”

"Demon-souled sorcerer," Den hissed. "He's got her so besotted, she'll do anything he asks with her power.”

"Her power?" Captain Batay repeated with interest.

"She heals with a touch, finds things that are lost. And I've even seen her …" He broke off, flicked a quick glance at his companion, and remembered caution. "Never mind." He frowned and turned his head to study the man beside him. A moment ago, at Den's quick first glance, Batay's eyes had looked like dark pits filled with glowing red coals. It must have been a trick of the light. Now they were their usual blue-green.

White teeth flashed in the shadowy darkness. "Come, my young friend. There is much to be done.”

A dark-sleeved arm wrapped around Den's shoulders like a tentacle, making the butcher's son shiver with a premonition of dread. He shook off the feeling. To reclaim Ellysetta Baristani and all the riches that would come when he put her powers to lucrative use, Den would even deal with a Drogan Blood Lord. Compared to those vicious blood-drinking cannibals, what was there to fear from the captain of a Sorrelian merchant ship?

* * *

"What would you like to do now, Ellysetta?" Rain asked as they left the park.

She flashed him a surprised look. She had been expecting him to go off to do whatever it was kings did when visiting a foreign city. Surely King Dorian and Queen Annoura had entertainment planned for him. "Don't you have things to do?”

His eyebrows lifted. "You wish me to leave you?”

"Not at all. But I'm sure you came to Celieria for a purpose. Don't let me keep you from it." She bit her lip as his eyebrows rose higher. "That didn't come out right. I don't want you to leave, but I'll understand if you must.”

"You think there is business I must attend to, which I put off so I may court you?”

"Yes." She gave him an earnest look. "And you don't have to. I'll understand”

He was silent for a moment, staring so intently into her eyes that she forgot to breathe. His hand came up to cup her cheek, fingers sliding into her hair, the warmth of his palm cradling her jaw His thumb stroked the high ridge of her cheekbone. "You are the reason I came to Celieria," he told her. "My only purpose for being here”

"How can I be the reason you came?" she whispered. "You didn't even know I was alive until two days ago.”

"Three," he corrected. "You called to me three days ago. That was when I first knew of you." His thumb continued to brush across her cheek. "Do you remember what I said when we first spoke? I told you that I had seen the mist of your reflection in the Eye of Truth. It was the Eye that sent me here to find you, though I did not know it until you called me from the sky.”

"But why would this `Eye of Truth' send you to find me?”

He took his hand from her face. Her cheek felt cold and bereft at the sudden absence of his warmth. "You are my
shei'tani.
My truemate.”

"Is that what the Eye does? Sends Fey warriors to find their truemates?"

"Nei,
but you are no ordinary truemate, if there is such a thing.”

"What do you mean?”

"I am the Feyreisen, the Tairen Soul, and yet you are my truemate. No Tairen Soul before me has ever had a
shei'tani."

"What about Lady Sariel?”

He shook his head. "We loved as children. She knew I would never have a
shei'tani
and loved me enough to join her life with mine, giving up her desire for a
shei'tan
of her own.”

"I don't understand.”

"She was
e'tani,
the mate of my heart. We chose the bond. You are
shei'tani,
the mate of my soul, my truemate. A Fey doesn't choose the truemate bond. It chooses the Fey. For me there will never be another, whether you accept the bond or not.”

"And for me?”

His eyes held an odd combination of remorse and satisfaction.
"Nei.
You would not be my truemate were I not also yours. If you do not accept our bond, perhaps one day there might be a man with whom you could find some measure of happiness, but there will be no other mate who can reach your soul.”

Why didn't the prospect of never loving any man but him fill her with dread? It should have frightened her, or at the very least made her cry out against the unfairness of it all. And yet she could not help feeling an answering surge of satisfaction as her soul rose up to recognize and thrill in the bond between them.

She knew the instant her feelings reached him. His eyes flared. Magic wrapped around her with sudden electric warmth. But the warmth changed in an instant as a powerful primitive force invaded her mind, calling to her, roaring with triumph and searing hunger, battering at the privacy of her soul. She felt something inside her start to give way, and fear rose hard and fast. With a cry, she flung herself out of Rain's arms. Rain groaned aloud, a raw hoarse sound. His hands fisted and he closed his eyes. Sparks flashed around him like fireflies.

"Sieks'ta,"
he apologized tightly. "Do not be frightened. It is the tairen in me that frightens you, but I can control it. I will control it,
shei'tani.
I promise you. Please, do not shrink from me." Even as he spoke, the sparks began to fade.

"The tairen?" Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

"The tairen lives in all Fey warriors," he replied, opening his eyes. Relief flooded her as she saw that his control was back. His magic no longer sparkled around him, the glow in his eyes was dimming. "In most it is dormant, but when a Fey is born with full strength in all the Fey magics, the tairen awakens. These Fey become Tairen Souls. The tairen is conscious within them, leashed by their will, but always driving the Fey with the same instincts of a true tairen.”

"It-it attacked me.”

"Nei.
It did not attack, it tried to claim." His hand reached out, but stopped shy of touching her face. He pulled his hand back, thrust his fingers through his hair, and sighed. "Mating and the claiming of a mate is the fiercest of any tairen instinct. I have recognized you as my
shei'tani.
A moment ago your soul reached out, willingly, to mine. I felt it. The tairen in me responded as any tairen would to its mate. I should have been prepared. I was not." His eyelids lowered. "For this, I apologize. I have dishonored myself.”

Even though she was still frightened, her heart could not bear to see him humbled. He was the Tairen Soul, the hero of her life's dreams. And for some strange reason, some joke of the gods she could not hope to fathom, he had claimed her as his mate. She bit her lip in indecision, then dragged a deep breath into her lungs and stepped forward to clasp his hands.

At her touch, his eyes flew open and fixed on hers.
"Shei'tani?”

"I'm the one who should be sorry," she told him. "You asked me not to fear you, to understand that you would never hurt me, but at the first test, I let myself be terrified. I'm afraid I'm not going to be a very good truemate for a Tairen Soul. I'm a coward at heart.”

"You are all that a truemate should be," he told her firmly. "Never think otherwise." The harsh line of his mouth softened. "Come," he said. "The afternoon is ours to enjoy. What would you like to do?”

She bit her lip. "Actually, I have another appointment with the queen's dressmaker to review fabric samples for my wedding dress.”

"This does not appear to please you.”

"No," she admitted. She wasn't looking forward to yet another half day of sneering dislike from the cold, haughty tradesmen recommended by Queen Annoura. She'd particularly hated standing in the presence of Maestra Binchi, the queen's dressmaker, this morning, being measured—both physically and figuratively—by a woman who obviously found Ellie lacking. "But she's making a special effort to fit me into her schedule. Besides, I have an appointment at the palace with the queen's Master of Graces after that.”