Lady of Light and Shadows

by C. L. Wilson

  A noisy thrum of whispering voices followed his pronouncement.

  Without the smallest change of expression, Rain bowed his head in the Celierian king’s direction. “Nor would the Fey presume to think otherwise, Your Majesty. We honor your marriage rites as we honor our own matebonding. Both are inviolable.”

  “Ve ta nei keppa!” Adrial cried out. You have no right!

  “Ni ve ta!” Rain snapped back. Nor do you. «You will be silent. We will speak, but not here for the entertainment of these mortals. You will leave your truemate in her father’s care, and you will come with me. Now.» He razored a hard look at Lord Barrial and for the first time sent a thought straight into the border lord’s mind. «Keep your daughter safe, even from her husband. If he harms her, there will be death, and I will not be able to stop it.»

  Shock, indignation, and concern battled for supremacy on Lord Barrial’s face, but Rain turned away. As long as the border lord guarded his daughter, this crisis might pass without bloodshed. Just to be safe, however, Rain issued a silent command, and five of the warriors in the room shimmered into invisibility. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Cannevar, but no Fey would ever leave a truemate’s safety entirely to the keeping of mortals.

  Rain gestured, and the remaining Fey silently departed—warriors, Dax, Marissya and her quintet. Adrial didn’t move. That was no surprise. But neither did the rest of Ellysetta’s quintet.

  Rain glanced down at his truemate, the faintest of frowns creasing his brow. Still enveloped in the protective shield, she stood behind him, motionless. Her gaze was fixed on Adrial and Talisa diSebourne, and tears spilled unchecked from her eyes.

  Ellysetta wasn’t aware of watching, nor of weeping. She wasn’t even consciously aware of her own flesh and bone. All she knew, all she could feel, was emotion. Soaring joy, shattering pain, a longing so fierce and so immense that it filled her entire being and made her tremble. And she could hear voices, their voices, somehow strangely a part of her.

  «I waited for you, but you never came.»

  «I am here now.»

  «It’s too late. I’ve already pledged my life to another.»

  «Leave him. Come with me. You are my shei’tani. Your place is with me.»

  «I am his wife. My place is with him.»

  «I have waited eleven centuries for you. Does that count for nothing?»

  Devastating sadness swamped Ellie’s senses. «I dreamed of you. With those others. With those women.»

  Oh, gods. An agony of self-recrimination, self-loathing, stole her breath. She was gasping. She was dying.

  “Ellysetta!” Firm hands grasped her shoulders and gave her a quick, hard shake.

  She came back to herself in a whooshing rush. Dazed, she stared up into Rain’s face. His eyes blazed with fear.

  “It’s all right.” She touched his hand and drew a deep breath, trying to still her racing heart. “I’m all right. But Adrial…”

  Adrial stood trembling, and his face had turned a worrisome shade of gray. With an oath, his brother Rowan stepped forward and slammed one rock-hard fist into Adrial’s jaw. The younger Fey crumpled, unconscious, into his brother’s arms.

  Talisa gave a small cry, but she choked it back quickly. With a presence of mind Ellysetta had yet to fully master, Talisa managed to collect herself and remain at her father’s side as Rowan carried Adrial from the room. She stood as proud and aloof as the haughtiest Celierian noblewoman, even though Ellie knew her heart was breaking. It was shattering, in fact, splintering into a thousand tiny shards that shredded what precious happiness she had found in her marriage and her life.

  Ellysetta shook her head, pulling back from the drowning lure of the young woman’s emotions. Why could she now feel someone else’s pain so clearly? First Adrial’s, now Talisa’s. She glanced up at Raina she led her from the room. What was happening to her?

  They gathered in Rain’s chambers. Marissya’s quintet wove the privacy wards around the room while Rowan laid his brother on one of the empty couches. Marissya sat beside Adrial and threw back her veils. Her face radiated concern as she laid her hands on him. Rain watched broodingly. After a moment, she stood.

  “Physically, he is well. I have done what I can to ease his emotions when he wakes. But you know he won’t leave Celieria now.” She looked at Rain. “No matter what you, Dorian, or even Talisa herself says, he won’t leave her.”

  “I know.” No warrior would leave his truemate once he found her. “I’ve never known a married woman to recognize a shei’tanitsa bond.”

  “If this husband truly held any part of Talisa’s heart or soul, she would not have. Not that that will matter to the Celierians. Lord diSebourne will not stand by while a Fey takes his wife. And his father will support him. Lord Barrial may as well.”

  “I know that too.”

  “It could mean the end of the Fey-Celierian alliance.”

  “Shall I kill Adrial now, then, and save us the trouble?” Rain said. Ellysetta gasped, and Rain bit back his temper. “The alliance is already lost. There’s no way Dorian will declare primus now, and we don’t have enough votes to keep the Eld out of Celieria.”

  “Who cares about politics?” Dax interjected. “Doesn’t anyone besides me realize that for the first time in a thousand years we have not only one but two shei’tanitsa bonds recognized within ten days of each other? To Celierian women? Doesn’t that strike anyone else as odd?” He glanced around the room at the other Fey. “No warrior has ever found a truemate outside the women of the Fey, yet a week ago, Rain, you found Ellysetta, and now Adrial has found Talisa. It defies all logic.”

  “At least there is some manner of explanation for Talisa,” Rain said, remembering Cann’s sorreisu kiyr. “There’s Elvish blood in the Barrial line, and apparently Fey blood, too.” He looked at Marissya. “Lord Barrial wears your cousin Dural’s crystal.”

  She sank onto the couch where Adrial lay. “Dural?”

  “I discovered it the night of Teleos’s dinner. I wasn’t certain they shared kinship, but now it seems impossible that they do not.”

  “But Barrial wasn’t truemated to his wife,” Dax protested. “The bond was purely mortal—clearly mortal or he would have died when his wife expired in childbirth. And if Lord Barrial is Fey, as you say, how could he sire a daughter outside the bonds of shei’tanitsa?”

  Female Fey were only born to truemated couples, and even then such a blessing was so rare, a girl child’s birth was cause for great celebration.

  “I don’t understand it any more than you do, Dax.” Rain lifted his hands. “Talisa and Ellysetta are both from the north. Perhaps there is something there we have too long discounted. Perhaps something about the remnant magics from the Mage Wars, when combined with other magical blood, can make the impossible possible.”

  One thing seemed certain to Rain: Lord Barrial’s heritage and Talisa’s existence explained the twenty-five dahl’reisen camped on Barrial lands and the personal interest Gaelen had taken in Lord Barrial. There was vel Serranis blood in the Barrial line, and somehow, though he’d not been truemated to his wife, Lord Barrial had sired a daughter. A daughter who had never felt comfortable around dahl’reisen, as if she—like all Fey women—could feel the pain of their lost souls. The dahl’reisen had been protecting a potential truemate. And probably hoping that somehow the Barrial line might produce a truemate for one of them.

  “Does it really matter how Talisa came to be Adrial’s shei’tani?” Rowan interrupted. “She is, and he will not leave her. No matter what you say, Rain, no matter what the cost to our relationship with Celieria, he will try to win her bond. None of us has the right to deny him that. If any wish to try, they’ll have to take me first.” He glared his challenge at them all.

  Without warning, Adrial jolted back to consciousness. His body jackknifed into a sitting position, and his eyes scanned the room with fast, frantic sweeps. “Talisa—”

  Rowan was at his brother’s side in an instant. “She is sa
fe. She is with her father.”

  Adrial clasped Rowan’s arms, holding on tight, as if he needed his brother’s strength to anchor his own. “The Celierian…diSebourne?”

  “With his father.”

  “Gods, Rowan, it’s not supposed to be this way. How could I not know she was there? How could I not have found her before she wed that man?” Adrial covered his face with his hands. “That night, at the pleasure house, she was there in my mind.” His fingers raked through his hair in agitation. “I betrayed her even as I found her, and she was with me the whole time. She felt it all.” He gave a harsh, choked laugh. “I don’t even remember anything I did under that cursed Spirit weave, but she does. And she blames me for it.”

  Ellysetta gasped, and her hand flew to her throat as she finally understood the full extent of the sorrow that had been in Talisa’s mind. “Adrial…” She started to reach out to him, but he flinched away from her. “Adrial, I’m so sorry.”

  A hand closed over her shoulder, and fierce reassurance poured into her. “It is not your fault, Ellysetta.” Rain’s voice was firm. “It is no one’s fault. Even without the weave, Adrial’s shei’tani would still be wed to another.”

  Adrial stood abruptly. “Your pardon, Ellysetta. The Feyreisen is correct. I should not have implied that you were at fault in any way. I am…not myself.” He turned towards Rain. “I must forfeit the honor of holding Air in the Feyreisa’s quintet. I no longer have the right to guard her, nor can I return to the Fading Lands. My place is with my own shei’tani.” He squared his shoulders and raised his chin in a faintly defiant challenge. “I cannot ask that you provide a quintet to guard Talisa, only that you do not try to stop me from doing what I must.”

  “Five guard her already,” Rain answered evenly. “They are yours to command. No Fey will stop you from following your shei’tani. But, Adrial—do not shed Celierian blood. No matter the provocation.”

  “Not even to protect her?”

  “Only if her life is in immediate danger. For no other reason.”

  Adrial nodded stiffly. “Agreed.”

  “And stay out of her husband’s path. There will be trouble if he knows you’re there.”

  “I will try.”

  “Do more than that.”

  Their gazes met over Ellysetta’s head, and wills clashed for a brief, tense moment. Then Adrial bowed his head, and Ellysetta knew that for the moment, at least, duty to his people and his king would keep Adrial from provoking war.

  Adrial took a step backward and bowed. “Miora felah ti’Feyreisa,” he murmured as he rose from the bow. “May the gods grant you long life and fertility, Ellysetta Baristani, and may you find happiness in the Fading Lands.”

  Adrial met his brother’s gaze in a brief exchange, then pivoted on his heel and left.

  As the door closed, Rowan’s shoulders slumped. “This should have been a joyous time.”

  Ellie’s heart ached for Rowan almost as much as it ached for his brother and Talisa Barrial diSebourne.

  He drew himself up and turned to face Rain. “I must excuse myself from the honor of holding Fire in the Feyreisa’s quintet. I fight where I always have, at my brother’s side. Besides,” he added, “if Lord Barrial’s daughter does not accept Adrial’s bond and he is too far gone for sheisan’dahlein, then I must be the one to grant him peace.”

  “Nei, Rowan,” Marissya protested. “We cannot afford to lose you, too.”

  “He is my brother. It is my duty and my right.”

  Rain nodded and held out an arm. After a brief hesitation, Rowan clasped it. “The gods be with you, Rowan, and your brother. I wait with joy for the day you both return to the Fading Lands.”

  “May the gods be so kind,” Rowan murmured.

  Then Rowan, too, was gone.

  “Sheisan’dahlein is the Fey honor death, isn’t it?” Ellysetta murmured. “Why would Adrial kill himself now that he’s found his truemate, even if she doesn’t accept their bond? And what did Rowan mean by granting Adrial peace?” Ellysetta glanced around the room, but one after another, each Fey gaze slid away from hers. She turned to her own truemate. “Rain?”

  He was silent for so long that Ellie thought he might not answer her. Then, at last, he spoke, slowly, as if each word were dragged from him against his will. “When a Fey finds his shei’tani—as I found you, and as Adrial found Talisa—his soul is tied to hers. It cannot be undone, and he must win her bond in return or something we call the soul hunger will begin to drive him mad.”

  Ellysetta’s stomach clenched. The Fey were creatures of power, some more dangerous than others, but even the weakest among them could wreak havoc if their magic was loosed upon the world without caution.

  “As I told you earlier this week, all Fey have a bit of the tairen in them, a wildness that lives inside. It is very fierce, very powerful. When the soul hunger comes, that bit of tairen slips its leash. Even those who aren’t Tairen Souls become dangerous to themselves and all around them. You know what a Fey can do when madness takes him. It cannot be allowed.”

  “So if Talisa doesn’t—”

  “If Lord Barrial’s daughter does not accept the bond, Adrial must take his own life, or one of us must do it for him.”

  “And if I don’t accept our bond?” She stared up at Rain in dawning horror.

  “Then I must die, Ellysetta. By my own hand or that of another.” He wasn’t wearing his usual expressionless mask, but she could neither see nor sense anything but acceptance in him. The day he had come out of the sky to claim her, he had embraced her as his fate, not knowing whether she would bring him joy or death.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before now? Why did you keep it a secret?” Since the beginning, she realized, they’d considered the possibility. They’d even built conditions to account for it into her marriage contract.

  “It is what it is,” Rain said. “We can’t change it. Telling you would serve no purpose.”

  “No purpose?” She gaped at him. “I’m supposed to be your truemate. Don’t you think I deserve to know that something I do or don’t do can kill you? Don’t you think I would want to know?” She crossed her arms over her chest. It hurt to realize he’d deliberately kept this from her. “What happened to all that trust you keep talking about? Or is it just me who’s supposed to trust you, while you can keep hiding things from me forever?”

  Spots of color flashed on his cheeks. “I had hoped there would be no reason to tell you. You seemed…willing to entertain the idea of loving me. I thought the rest would come in time.”

  “Who has sworn to kill you?” But she already knew. She turned to Bel.

  “Rain and I are brothers in all but blood,” he said.

  “Could you really kill him? Would you?”

  “If I must.”

  “How could you ever bring yourself to do it? You love him, almost as much as I do.”

  “It is not something we do lightly,” Marissya said. “A Fey cannot take the life of another Fey without losing his own soul and becoming dahl’reisen.”

  Vadim Maur descended the final flight of stone steps to the bottommost level of his subterranean palace. Ten rings of power glinted at his fingers, and selkahr glittered darkly at his wrists. The voluminous deep purple folds of his robes dragged behind him. His sash had long ago become so heavy with the jewels of his achievements that he had ceased to wear it for all but the most ceremonial of occasions, and this was business, not ceremony.

  He turned to the left of the stairs and walked down the long, shadowed hallway, past several dozen empty cells. Once, they had all been filled, as some of the cells in the right corridor still were, but over the centuries, all but a precious few of his Fey pets had died, and lately even dahl’reisen were hard to come by.

  The guards outside the last cell at the farthest end of the long corridor opened the heavy sel’dor-banded-and-bolted door as Vadim approached. He stepped into the room and summoned light in the sconces high on the walls, illuminating the cage
and the matepair within. Even before he’d entered, they had backed into a corner of their cage, and once again—predictable as time—the man had pushed his mate behind him. As if that puny gesture could protect her.

  Vadim smiled without a trace of humor. “Shannisorran v’En Celay…my beautiful Elfeya…I am not happy that you’ve both been keeping secrets from your master.”

  The man tossed his head, throwing the long strands of hair out of his face so he could see his enemy more clearly. His broad, naked shoulders squared and his eyes issued an open, almost sneering challenge. “What secrets would those be, Vadim?” Lord v’En Celay’s voice was rusty with disuse, but the deep, rumbling tones of it were as proud as they had ever been.

  Vadim knew the legends of Shannisorran v’En Celay. He’d been raised on them, as all Elden children were raised on stories of their enemies. He knew that the great v’En Celay, Lord Death, had been the most feared Fey warrior of his time, commanding thousands of his brethren in battle, leading them to victory in some of the world’s most savage and bloody battles. The Mages had feared him as much as they feared the Tairen Souls. Lord Death was invincible, ruthless, impervious to pain, privation, and even defeat.

  Until he had met and claimed his truemate.

  In that one irreversible instant, Lord Death had become forever vulnerable. But until Vadim, no Mage had ever dared turn that vulnerability to its best advantage.

  It was Vadim who had conceived the plan of capturing a matepair, for study, experimentation, and breeding. The other Mages had called him a fool, but he had persevered and plotted, winning several of the younger, less hidebound Mages like himself to his side. He had planned the capture of Elfeya, laid the trap, buried himself and five other Mages beneath the stink of rotting corpses while his fellow conspirators had driven the v’En Celay matepair into ambush during the height of the Mage Wars. It was Vadim who sprang the trap, Vadim who captured Lord Death and catapulted himself into the upper political ranks of the Mage Council. He had been the obvious choice to replace the High Mage Demyan Raz after that man’s idiotic decision to murder Rain Tairen Soul’s mate resulted in the decimation of the Eld race.