Lord of the Fading Lands (The Tairen Soul Book 1)

The Great Sun had just risen when Sian vel Sendaris and Torel vel Carlian, the two Fey warriors dispatched by Belliard vel Jelani to seek information about the Feyreisa’s origins, arrived in the small northern city of Norban. They’d made good time, traveling light and moving fast, resting one bell for every three they ran and shaving seventy miles off the journey by running cross-country from Vrest to Hartslea before picking up the North Road for the remaining distance. They had actually arrived the night before and waited just outside the village, watching until the shadows of night retreated and the residents began to stir.

Sian and Torel entered by the main road, meeting scores of surprised and suspicious stares with stone-faced calm, and began to systematically work their way through the city. From home to home, shop to shop, they searched for answers to the mystery of the Feyreisa’s past. They did not ask about a red- haired infant abandoned in the forests two dozen years before. Instead, they inquired after Pars Grolin, a journeyman smith with bright red hair to whom the Fey owed a debt of gratitude. He might, Sian told the people he questioned, have been traveling with his small daughter.

It was the truth, though it had been stretched a bit. Fey honor prevented warriors from telling outright lies, but tairen craftiness allowed them to dance on the blade’s edge of truth when necessary. There really had been a red-haired journeyman smith named Pars Grolin, and he really had traveled through Norban. About seven hundred years earlier. Sian and Torel simply avoided mentioning specific time- frames. And—who knew?—maybe Pars really had brought his daughter with him on one of his travels.

Though it pained them to do so, Sian and Torel attempted to shake hands with each individual they met, using skin-to-skin contact to probe the minds of Norban’s citizens and follow any memories aroused by the mention of bright red hair and small girls. Many of the Celierians refused to touch the Fey, either from fear or distrust, and Sian and Torel resorted to probing the minds of those doubters with careful weaves of Spirit.

The warriors’ progress through the town was slow, and they did not go unnoticed.

Ellie spent a much quieter morning than the one she’d suffered through the previous thy. She woke to find the top of her nightstand draped with a diamond necklace fit for a queen, the stones large and of obvious quality, the chains so delicate she could break them without effort. The message of the gift, she surmised, ran something along the lines of ‘wear the trappings of a queen if you must, but know you can shed them any time you choose.”

To the consternation of Lauriana and all the tradesfolk, Rain arrived very early and made himself both visible and threatening as he stood at her side, arms crossed over his chest, fingers touching the scarlet hilt of his deadly Fey’cha. When any of the tradesfolk became the least bit pushy or rude, he would fix glowing eyes upon the offender and growl deep in his throat. Three seamstresses had to be carried out after they fainted in fright. And even though Ellysetta chided them for their wickedness, the Fey warriors laughed silently among themselves and cast bets on how long it would be before the next young lady keeled over and how many would swoon before lunchtime.

The morning passed quickly, and soon Lillis and Lorelle returned from their studies and clamored for their promised afternoon in the park. At least five dozen children were waiting when the four of them arrived. Ellie recognized barely half of the waiting youngsters; the rest were children she had never met, a mix ranging from the well-dressed offspring of merchants and simple-gentry to ragged street urchins and every social stratum in between. Each child clutched a Stones pouch and sported a wide-eyed, hopeful look as the Fey king entered the park.

Ellie bit her lip to stop from laughing. Word of the earlier Stones match with the Feyreisen had obviously spread through the West End and beyond. ‘I hope you’re feeling up to another match, Rain,’ she murmured. ‘Because I don’t think they’re here to play with me.”

Rain looked utterly taken aback. ‘Do you think they just decided to gather here on the off chance I would show up?”

‘Oh, no. I think they had forewarning.’ She tilted her head towards Lillis and Lorelle.

‘Ah.’ He seemed to gird himself. ‘Well, I suppose we shouldn’t disappoint them.’ Holding out his wrist for Ellie’s fingers, he escorted her to the Stones grid.

There were too many children to include all of them in a single round of Stones, so Rain divided them into groups by producing a handful of small coins that, once divided among the children, changed color to separate them into teams. Rain shed his weapons, and the games began—though only after Ellie made certain the rules prohibited all use of magic.

On their third game, Ellie and a boy she didn’t know—a street child, by the unkempt look of him—raced to claim a contested square. Laughing, she reached the square first. A split second later, he plowed into her at full speed, knocking them both off their feet.

‘Ow!’ She landed hard. Her elbows cracked on the unforgiving surface of the Stones grid. The boy’s knee caught her in the belly and drove the air from her lungs. As she lay there, gasping for breath, she caught a brief glimpse of the boy’s eyes beneath his grimy mop of hair.

For one strange, surreal moment, she could have sworn the child’s eyes were black, glowing with tiny red sparks.

She blinked, and the image was gone. The boy’s eyes were brown and filled with fear. He didn’t even bother to look over his shoulder at Rain, who was bearing down on him. He just scrambled to his feet and ran as if pursued by the Hounds of the Seventh Hell.

‘Shei’tani?’ Rain dropped to one knee and reached to help her up. ‘Are you hurt?”

‘Just winded,’ she wheezed. She held out her hands and stared in shock. Red blood—quite a bit of it—covered one hand. She looked down at her waist, and light-headedness assailed her. Her side had been laid open by the slash of a knife, the wound deep enough that her skirts were already dark with blood.

The boy had stabbed her.

Rain swept her into his arm and barked out a rapid spate of orders. ‘Fey! Ti’Feyreisa! Bel! Kaiven chakor! Catch that boy. Quickly, before he gets away. The rest of you, to me!”

Ellie’s quintet raced after the street boy. Moving in a blur of speed, another dozen Fey snatched up Lillis and Lorelle and carried them off to safety. The rest formed a tight protective ring around Rain and Ellysetta.

Ellie stared up at Rain’s pale, drawn face and blinked as his image wavered. Had the boy poisoned as well as stabbed her?

‘I’ve got to stop the bleeding before I take you to Marissya,’ Rain told her. He clasped a hand over her wounded side, and a bright glow of green Earth flowed from his fingertips. Her skin tingled, then began to sting. She hissed as the sting became sharp needles of pain lancing through her side. It felt as if he were tugging the torn edges of her flesh together.

Rain swore with quiet bitterness when she flinched. ‘Forgive me, Ellysetta. I was not thinking to stop the pain, only the blood.’ Cool lavender Spirit joined Earth, overriding her protesting nerves with an illusion of normalcy. Then it was only the tumult of his emotions that beat at her. With inexplicable surety, she not only sensed each emotion distinctly, she knew exactly what motivated each of them: fury over her wounding, shame that he’d let it happen and that he’d caused her further pain.

Fear that the wound might be worse than mere rent flesh. Ellysetta cupped a hand to his face. ‘I’m all right,’ she assured him.

He grasped her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. ‘Of course you are,’ he agreed. Against her palm, she felt his lips tremble, and in her mind she heard his quiet, shocked thought: so dear, in so short a time. The thought wasn’t sent on a thread of Spirit, it was simply there, in her mind. He kissed her again on the lips, quick and fierce, then clutched her close to his chest and stood. ‘Fey!’ he cried. ‘Bote lute’cha!”

The remaining Fey circled tight around Rain, red Fey’cha gripped menacingly in their hands. Moving as one unit, they raced towards Celieria’s palace and Marissya’s healing hands.

The boy ran like a rabbit.

Bel swore as he skidded around a corner and smashed into a fruit seller’s cart. Fruit went everywhere, apples and oranges rolling across the narrow cobbled lane. Bel stumbled on a raft of apples and went sprawling. He tucked in his head and shoulder and turned the sprawl into a diving roll, coming up on one knee in time to see the boy duck down a small alleyway.

The rest of the quintet vaulted past Bel and cleared the river of rolling fruit in great, air-powered leaps. «Down the alley on the right!» he commanded. What advantage the Fey had in speed, the boy negated with his intimate knowledge of the city’s many side streets and alleyways and what appeared to be an innate ability to avoid capture—learned, no doubt, from years of evading the authorities after picking pockets and thieving. The boy led them on a wild chase, twisting through a labyrinth of uneven roads and narrow alleys, ducking through shops and darting through merchant stalls, always managing to spin away just before the Fey’s weaves could reach him. Rowan and Adrial took to the rooftops to try to cut the boy off while Bel and the others remained in pursuit on the ground.

The child burst out of the alley, darted under the wheels of a moving wagon, and hotfooted it down yet another narrow side street. He skidded to a halt when the cobbles in front of him bulged upward and a wall of Earth erupted out of the ground to barricade the road. Rowan and Adrial leapt down from a rooftop, breaking their descent with a cushion of Air. Bel and the others blocked the other end of the street.

The boy feinted right towards the back door of a baker’s shop, then dodged to the left, pelting down a dank, narrow alley—little more than a moss-and-slime-covered footpath— between buildings. Bel charged after him, closing the distance between them. The boy was tiring, but the Fey were scarcely winded. The end of this chase would not be long in coming.

The boy knew it, too. He cast a wild-eyed glance over his shoulder and put on a burst of desperate speed, heading down yet another side street. He spun around a lamppost and launched himself down a short, narrow alley.

‘Got you, boy!’ Bel growled. The youth had made a mistake. This alley offered no outlet. Three solid brick walls hemmed the boy in, and Kieran wove Earth to weld shut the back doors that opened to the alley. There would be no more dodging through back rooms and kitchens, and no more escaping Fey weaves. ‘Now throw down that blade of yours and come with us. The Feyreisen has some questions for you.’ Bel moved in, arms spread wide, his palms open. He didn’t want to kill the boy, only catch him and bring him in for questioning. After that, the King’s justice could decide what to do with him. If the child decided to get difficult, Bel would simply weave the Air out of his lungs to render him unconscious.

The child spat out a filthy oath. Suddenly his thin body went poker stiff. He clutched at his throat and chest and gave a gurgling cry.

‘Boy?’ Bel abandoned caution and ran towards him. Only then did he sense the weave. Air and Earth, and something else Bel couldn’t quite make out, something masked by the other weaves, but it set his teeth on edge.

Blood vessels burst in the boy’s wild eyes, turning them into pools of scarlet framing terrified brown irises. His lips went purplish blue. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the damp filth of the alley ground.

Bel didn’t need to check the boy’s pulse to know he was dead.

His eyes scanned the alleyway, seeking the path of the weave that had killed the boy. The murderer had already erased his tracks, leaving nothing, no fragment of a weave to trace back to its source.

‘The knife, Bel,’ Kiel reminded him. ‘Rain will want the blade that cut his mate.”

Bel knelt to rifle the urchin’s ragged clothes. He found a sheathed blade tucked in the boy’s waistband. ‘Spit and scorch me,’ he whispered as he recognized the distinctive, black-silk-wrapped hilt of a Fey’cha. What was a street urchin who’d attacked the Feyreisa doing with a Fey’cha? The name-mark etched into the blade’s pommel chilled Bel’s blood.

Without warning, the knife grew hot to the touch. Swearing, Bel released the weapon and leapt back just as it burst into intense, blue-white flame. The boy’s body began to burn, too. ‘Murder!’ The scream came from the mouth of the alley where a crowd of Celierians had gathered. A woman pointed at Bel and cried again, ‘Murder!’

Kolis Manza turned away from the crowd across the street, a satisfied smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. That should keep the Fey busy for a while. Let them deal with the accusations of murder now, on top of all the suspicions of dahl’reisen raids and the new, dark distrust quietly spreading among the lower classes and the religious zealots.

He walked three blocks down to the Inn of the Blue Pony and entered unobtrusively by way of the back door and servants’ stair. Young Birk, friend of the dead urchin, was waiting obediently for him. Wordlessly, the boy handed him the long, wavy-edged dagger the now-dead Beran has tossed to him before leading the Fey on that wild chase through the city streets. The black metal blade was dry, but the dark jewel in the hilt throbbed a rich, satisfied red, testifying to its recent taste of Ellysetta Baristani’s blood.

‘Excellent, boy,’ Kolis said. ‘You did well.’ Even Beran had served his purpose—though he’d nearly killed the girl rather than merely nicking her as he’d been ordered.

Kolis sheathed the dagger and tucked it inside his vest. Vadim Maur would be pleased.

‘So much for my second lesson with Master Fellows.’ Ellie forced a weak laugh. She lay on a chaise in Rain’s palace suite, her body tense despite the soothing warmth of Marissya’s expert healing weave and gentle touch. Even the shock of her stabbing had faded in the face of her fear of the shei’dalin.

She imagined herself surrounded by a solid, impenetrable wall of stone and steel, her thoughts and emotions safely barricaded within, but shivers still racked her body and her teeth chattered uncontrollably as the warmth of the shei’dalin’s magic penetrated her flesh. At last the glow surrounding Marissya’s hands dissipated and she stepped back.

‘Will I live?”

A tired smile curved the shei’dalin’s lips. ‘Aiyah, I am glad to report that you will.”

Ellysetta’s eyes narrowed as magic tingled across her skin and she saw a faintly unfocused look enter both Rain’s and Marissya’s eyes. ‘Speak so I can hear,’ she told them. ‘As I was the one stabbed, I have a right to hear what you are saying.”

‘Sieks’ta,’ Marissya murmured. ‘I was telling Rain the blade wasn’t poisoned but there were remnants of a pain suppressant in your blood. The blade was treated with a numbing agent, which explains why you didn’t feel anything even though the boy stabbed so deep he pierced a kidney.’ She glanced up at Rain. ‘It was good you stopped the bleeding as quickly as you did.”

‘That boy meant to kill me.’ Even though Rain had warned her of such a possibility, it hadn’t seemed real until now.

Rain’s lips thinned. ‘It appears so, shei’tani.”

A warrior approached. He gave a short, brisk bow and whispered something into Rain’s ears. Rain’s brows drew together in a sudden scowl. Whatever the news, it wasn’t good.

‘What is it?’ Ellie asked.

‘Something has happened, shei’tani, and I must go. Ravel and his cha’kor will see you safely home. Do not leave your home again today no matter what the reason.”

Irritation flashed. He was shunting her aside as if she were a child to be sent to her room while the grown-ups tended to important matters. ‘Tell me what’s going on, Rain.”

For a moment, she thought he might not answer. And when he did, she almost wished he hadn’t. ‘Bel has been taken into custody by the King’s men. The boy who attacked you is dead. A dozen witnesses claim to have seen Bel murder him.”

Ellysetta swung her legs over the edge of the chaise and stood. ‘I’m coming with you’

‘Nei, shei’tani. Your family is worried, and they need to see for themselves that you are unhurt. Ravel will take you to them while Marissya, Dax, and I deal with this.’ He raised her face to his and held her gaze steadily. ‘Go to your family, ajiana.”

‘But Bel—”

‘Trust me. I will not allow him to come to harm.’ Ellysetta searched his gaze and found resolve and reassurance. ‘I do trust you,’ she said.

His eyes glowed with sudden emotion. The hand beneath her chin slid round to cup her head and draw her closer. He bent his head and took her lips in a kiss that left her breathless.

‘Beylah vo, shei’tani. Your words bring joy to this Fey’s heart’ He straightened and met Ravel’s gaze, then the gaze of each member of her secondary quintet. ‘Guard her well, my brothers.”

‘With our lives, Rain,’ Ravel replied.

Rain tracked Dorian down to his council chamber, where he was meeting in private session with the twenty Great Lords who between them governed more than half of Celieria.

News of the would-be assassin’s death had traveled through the city faster than magic-fed flames, rousing an astonishing furor. Outside the palace, the Fey reported seeing flurries of inflammatory pamphlets and small mobs of citizens gathering to march on the palace and demand justice for the dead boy, and when one of Dorian’s advisors broke the privacy seal on the council chamber as he stepped briefly outside to request a book of legal precedents, Rain overheard at least half a dozen voices within calling for an inquiry and trial—of Bel.

‘My Lord Feyreisen!’ the council attendant yelped as Rain brushed past. ‘You cannot go in there! The Council is in session!”

Rain didn’t spare the man a glance. He threw open the doors to the council chamber and swept inside. Dax and Marissya followed close behind him. The great round marble chamber, its raised tiers filled with enough velvet-upholstered chairs to seat the two hundred lords of Celieria’s noble houses, was mostly empty. Only the gold and silver thrones of the king and queen and the semicircle of twenty lesser thrones belonging to the heads of the Great Houses were currently occupied.

Dorian and his Great Lords regarded Rain with a mix of shock and affront as he strode towards them across the chamber’s gleaming marble floor. Annoura narrowed her eyes.

‘My Lord Feyreisen’—the king’s chief advisor jumped to his feet from his chair behind the king’s throne and rushed forward to block Rain’s advance—’this is highly irregular. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. This Council is in private session.”

Rain waved an arm, silencing the man and nudging him aside with a single, swift weave. ‘King Dorian, you are holding the chatokkai—the First General—of the Fading Lands. I have come to demand his release.”

‘How dare you burst into this chamber and issue demands!’ One of the lords in the blue-velvet-upholstered lesser thrones surged to his feet.

Rain did not recognize the man, but the coldness in his brown eyes and the arrogance etched into every line of his face were not strangers to him. The man’s heavy, well- defined musculature, emphasized rather than hidden by the tailored cut of his expensive garments, bespoke a long familiarity with the arts of mortal warfare.

«Lord Sebourne,» Dax informed Rain. «A lord of the northern march. His family took over Wellsley’s land three centuries ago after the Great Plague.»

‘You do not rule here, Tairen Soul!’ Lord Sebourne continued. ‘And this is not one of the remote villages in the northern provinces where Fey crimes go unwitnessed and unpunished!’ He jabbed a finger in Rain’s direction. ‘Your general murdered an unarmed Celierian citizen—a child, no less! He will be held accountable for his actions!”

Several of the Twenty nodded in agreement. ‘Fey crimes?’ Rain drew himself up to his full height. ‘My truemate—my queen—’ he emphasized, casting a hard glance Annoura’s way, ‘was stabbed by that Celierian citizen you call an `unarmed child.’ Be grateful I haven’t burned this city to ash around your ears!”

Annoura sat up straight in her throne. ‘Are you threatening us, Feyreisen?”

‘Annoura!’ Dorian snapped. His queen glared but fell silent, and he turned back to Rain and Sebourne to say in a more conciliatory tone, ‘Gentlemen, please, hot tempers and threats are no way to solve anything.’ He rose from his throne and gestured for the Fey to approach. ‘My Lord Feyreisen, Lord Dax, Lady Marissya, a private word please?”

Grudgingly, with a hard look for Sebourne and Celieria’s too-proud queen, Rain followed Dorian into a small adjoining antechamber.

‘There are witnesses,’ Dorian informed them as soon as the door closed; ‘dozens of them, all who claim the child was an innocent bystander.”

‘That boy was no innocent,’ Rain replied. ‘He joined Ellysetta and me in a game of Stones for the express purpose of stabbing her.”

‘He could have killed her, Dorian,’ Marissya added, ‘and would have if Rain had not been there to stop the blood loss.”

Dorian eyed both of them. ‘I have to ask … is there any possibility Ser vel Jelani made a mistake? Could he have slain the wrong child by accident?”

‘Nei,’ Rain said without hesitation. ‘Bel is the most experienced warrior in the Fading Lands. He would not have been so careless. But even so, he didn’t kill the boy. Kieran tells me someone else wove death on the child the moment he was trapped—to keep him from revealing who hired him, no doubt.”

The Celierian king rubbed a hand over his face and sighed wearily. ‘I have no wish to prosecute Ser vel Jelani, but Sebourne and several others who are already concerned about the recent dahl’reisen murders see this as yet more proof of Fey magic run amok. Sebourne is demanding a full-blown inquiry and trial, and he’s got four of the Twenty agreeing with him.”

Rain’s eyes narrowed. ‘If someone means harm to Ellysetta, stripping Bel from her cha’kor could be part of a plan to make her more vulnerable to attack. I cannot allow you to endanger her that way.”

‘And I’ve just explained why I cannot simply pardon Ser vel Jelani out of hand.”

‘Then don’t.’ Rain swept an arm towards Marissya. ‘We have a Truthspeaker. Have Bel swear a Fey oath, under shei’dalin touch, that he did not kill this boy.’

‘You want us to trust her?’ Lord Sebourne cried when Dorian announced his intentions. ‘Your Majesty, this is an outrage. How could we possibly trust the Fey Truthspeaker to tell us the truth if the man is guilty? She’s one of them!”

Rain grabbed Dax before the man pulled steel in the council chamber to defend his truemate’s honor. What had the world come to that a Great Lord of Celieria would cast doubt on the integrity of Marissya v’En Solande?

‘Do not push us too far, mortal,’ Rain warned. ‘Were Queen Annoura attacked on foreign soil, this Council would howl for war. The Fey have not done so. But be warned, we will not meekly accept insult atop an already grievous injury.”

King Dorian cleared his throat, the sound drawing all eyes to him. ‘Lord Sebourne’s holdings have suffered considerable loss of life in the recent dahl’reisen raids. Those losses have obviously affected his normally sound judgment.”

‘Your Majesty!’ Sebourne protested.

Dorian didn’t spare a glance for the angry border lord but kept his gaze firmly fixed on Rain. ‘Of course, the Lady Marissya’s honesty stands above reproach. She has served with honor and integrity on every Supreme Council we have convened for the past thousand years. No clear-thinking lord of Celieria would cast her centuries of service in doubt.”

Now he did level a steady, steely-eyed look on Sebourne and held it until the nobleman subsided and sat down.

‘We are grateful for her gracious counsel and her service, and we hold her in the highest regard,’ Dorian continued, allowing his gaze to sweep the council chamber, making eye contact with each lord of the Twenty. ‘The witnesses are being brought to the palace. As soon as they arrive, we will hear their testimony and that of Ser vel Jelani, and we will accept the Lady Marissya’s Truthspeaking to determine Ser vel Jelani’s guilt or innocence.’

Ravel vel Arras, leader of Ellie’s secondary quintet, and the rest of her Fey guard hustled Ellie through the city streets towards her family home. More than once they encountered small mobs of people who watched them with accusatory glares. Ellie couldn’t understand it. She could practically feel the fear and loathing emanating from them in waves.

Scraps of paper littered the roads like fallen leaves, and on several street corners, shabby pamphleteers’ boys shouted, ‘Fey murders unarmed Celierian child!’ and handed out their leaflets as fast as their little fists could collect coin. Pamphleteers were always quick to print and disseminate their ‘news,’ but this was fast even for them. They must have run straight from the scene of Bel’s confrontation with her young attacker to their presses.

Ellie bent to pick up one of the abandoned sheets and gasped at the awful, hate-filled accusations printed in lurid detail and presented as fact. Innocent Child Burned Alive by Savage Fey, the headline screamed. The text below was worse. Reading the vile words actually made her stomach clench and her chest feel tight, as if a cold, heavy weight were pressing against her heart. The headache that had savaged her yesterday began to throb anew.

‘Ravel,’ she murmured in concern, handing him the sheet. He scanned the paper with grim eyes, then crumpled it and threw it in the gutter. ‘Do not worry, Feyreisa. These accusations are groundless. Rain will not let Bel come to harm.’

For a full bell, Rain sat grimly silent in Dorian’s council chamber as witness after witness testified they’d seen Bel burn a helpless, unarmed Celierian boy to death. Afterwards, only years of hard-won discipline kept Rain’s face expressionless as he listened to Lord Sebourne and several of his fellow pompous noble windbags howl about the Fey’s blatant disregard for Celierian lives. As if a single one of them would not have seen the boy hanged for pinching a dinner roll from their supper tables.

The Tairen Soul’s mate—his queen—had been stabbed, in public, on Celierian soil by a Celierian citizen, and these honorless rultsharts squealed as if they were the injured party.

‘I have listened to the charges and accusations of your countrymen as you insisted,’ Rain interjected when the current speaker paused to take a breath. ‘I do not dispute that they believe what they saw, but that does not mean what they think they saw is what truly happened. Now bring Belliard forth. Ask him to swear an oath of honor that he did not murder this boy.”

Dorian nodded. Near the back of the room, a door swung inward and Bel entered, bound in chains and surrounded by the King’s Guards.

Marissya stifled a gasp, and Rain stiffened with outrage. Bel had been stripped of his blades, his tunic, and his boots, leaving him barefoot, bare-chested, and weaponless. Black metal manacles had been clamped around his wrists and ankles, and a matching black collar circled his neck. Short chains tied the bindings all together and restricted Bel’s walk to a shuffle. Though the warrior held himself proudly erect, his face was drawn and pale, and his hands trembled, a testament to the terrible pain he was suffering. ‘You dare bind a Queen’s Blade in sel’dor?’ Rain hissed in a low voice. A wave of heat swept over the council chamber, and the flames in the sconces flared.

Shocked silence was the only answer to his challenge until Annoura sat up in her throne. ‘The man stands accused of murder,’ she pointed out. ‘Should his guards have left his magic unrestrained? I, for one, will not condemn them for taking precautions.”

‘Precautions don’t include torturing him until he scarce can stand! Sel’dor burns like acid on Fey flesh.’ He shot a furious, commanding glare at Dorian. ‘Remove that vile Eld filth this instant, or by Adelis’s holy light, I swear I will visit Bel’s torment upon you all so you may know what harm you do him.’ His hands clenched in fists at his sides. Hatred of all things Eld swirled around him like a black cloud, and he struggled to keep his violent emotions in check. Tiny sparks of escaping power flashed around him. ‘Now!’ he barked.

‘Do it,’ Dorian commanded, and the guards surrounding Bel hurried to unlock and remove the restraints. ‘My Lord Feyreisen, I assure you I did not order this.”

When Bel was free of the cursed Eld metal, Rain spun a rapid weave of Earth to replace Bel’s boots and tunic and restore at least a modicum of his dignity. Marissya reached out to Bel with healing weaves to soothe the worst of his burns.

Rain waited for her to finish before turning back to Dorian. Fire still sparked in his eyes and anger clipped every word. ‘Question him and be done. I’ll not abandon this honored hero of the Fey to your country’s unkind custody a moment longer.”

Bel stood in the center of the council chamber and submitted willingly to Marissya’s touch as he swore a Fey oath that the dead boy was the same one who had stabbed Ellysetta, and that he had neither murdered the boy, nor ordered his murder, nor harmed him in any way.

‘Truth,’ she announced when he finished. ‘If you did not kill the boy, who did?’ Lord Sebourne demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ Bel said. ‘We saw no one.”

‘Truth,’ Marissya said.

‘So, you’re asking us to believe that a young Celierian boy—a boy you were pursuing for the attempted murder of the Tairen Soul’s mate just happened to spontaneously combust when you cornered him?”

‘I am not asking you to believe anything, my lord. I am merely telling you in all honesty that neither I nor my men killed that boy, and we did not see who did.”

‘Truth,’ Marissya confirmed.

‘But he died by magic, did he not?”

‘Someone spun the weave that slew him,’ Bel admitted. Lord Sebourne pounced. ‘Someone Fey?”

‘Fey are not the only race to weave magic, my lord. The Eld do as well. And others.”

‘Ah, yes, the Eld.’ Sebourne cast a speaking glance around the chamber. ‘That’s who you really want us to believe is to blame, do you not?”

Bel ignored the lure dangled before him. ‘My lord, as I told you, I did not see who spun the weave. I cannot tell you who wove it, but I can assure you who did not. If you are truly interested in finding the killer, I recommend you start by asking who would benefit most from making Celierians doubt the Fey. And while you’re at it, also consider this: I am a Master of Spirit. I weave illusion as easily as you draw breath. If I really had killed that boy, why in all the gods’ names would I have been stupid enough to let anyone see me do it? And why would I leave them with memories of the crime intact so they could accuse me?”

Sebourne’s mouth opened, then closed again without saying a word. Nonplussed, he glanced round the council chamber and saw similar confusion on the faces of his supporters.

‘Enough of this farce.’ On the opposite side of the chamber, a lord who had thus far remained silent now stood up. He had pale, faintly luminous skin, long black hair, and catlike eyes that proved more than a hint of Fey blood ran through his veins.

«Who?» Rain asked Dax.

«You don’t recognize him? You once called his ancestor friend, and I’ve always thought the family resemblance striking.» When Rain didn’t answer, Dax surrendered the name. «Teleos. Devron Teleos. He guards the Veil now, as well as the Garreval.»

Rain eyed the young border lord with greater interest. Teleos was indeed a name familiar to him, and neither the Veil nor the Garreval were insignificant stretches of land.

‘Ser vel Jelani has sworn a Fey oath, under shei’dalin touch, that he did not kill the boy,’ Lord Teleos continued. ‘That proves his innocence. And frankly, even if he had slain the little rultshart, you lords should applaud rather than condemn him. Which man among you would have let the boy live had he attempted to kill your queen?”

‘Well said, Teleos.’ A second, previously silent lord stood up, this one as dark and bronzed as Teleos was pale. There was a no-nonsense sturdiness to him that Rain liked instantly.

«Cannevar Barrial,» Dax supplied. «Another lord of the northern march. His daughter recently wed Sebourne’s heir.”

‘Sebourne, you’re being an ass.’ Lord Barrial made the accusation with casual familiarity rather than ire. ‘The Fey obviously didn’t kill the boy, no matter what the other witnesses think they saw, and the young would-be assassin has paid for his crime with his life. Justice has been done. My lords, let us bring this unfortunate incident to a close and move on to the other very serious matters awaiting the review of this Council.’ Several lords murmured their agreement.

‘Agreed,’ King Dorian said, cutting off Lord Sebourne as he opened his mouth to protest and silencing the grumbling of several of Sebourne’s supporters. ‘My Lord Feyreisen, accept our apologies for the injury done your lady, and for the accusations made against Ser vel Jelani. I promise you Celieria will make every effort to find the culprit responsible for this unforgivable attack.’ He turned to address Bel directly. ‘Belliard vel Jelani, you are free to go. Please accept my personal apologies for the manner in which you’ve been treated.”

Bel bowed to the king and rejoined his countrymen. All the Fey bowed again and filed from the room. They didn’t speak until they reached Rain’s suite and the privacy wards were once more in place around the room.

‘There is more,’ Bel said as soon as the privacy weaves were complete. ‘The knife that set off the Fire weave was a Fey’cha, and I recognized the name-mark on it.’ He cast a brief, unspoken apology Marissya’s way. ‘It was the mark of Gaelen vel Serranis.”

‘Impossible,’ she exclaimed. ‘He is dahl’reisen. I would have sensed him.”

‘There was some other magic hidden in the weave that killed the boy,’ Bel said. ‘I don’t know what it was. Perhaps your brother has found a way to mask his presence from you the same way he masked his magic from me.”

Was it possible? Rain wondered. Fey used red to fight their enemies and those unworthy of the honor of a duel with clean blades. They used black against each other—always. The numbed black blade used to stab Ellysetta could have been a taunt, an insult to Rain’s ability to protect her, and arranging for the injury to be dealt by a child could have been just a way to further underscore that contempt. Was vel Serranis calling him out?

Worse, if Gaelen was responsible, the possibility that he was also behind the murders in the north—possibly even in league with the Eld—suddenly became much more likely. Rain prayed it was not so. Sending warriors to kill the dahl’reisen would take a terrible toll on the rapidly dwindling strength of the Fading Lands and push the Fey even closer towards extinction.

Marissya didn’t want to believe Gaelen had engineered the attack, but Rain could take no chances. He spent the rest of the afternoon with Bel, retracing the boy’s wild chase and visiting the site of his death. Nothing remained but a scorch mark on the cobbles. There was no remnant thread of magic, no sign of any other’s presence, and no hint of dahl’reisen. Whoever had engineered the attack had covered his tracks well.