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

It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t. Ellie wasn’t stupid enough to be jealous just because Rain Tairen Soul responded like all men did when the beautiful Kelissande Minset cast a lure their way.

Betrayal. That’s what it was. She felt betrayed. He had dazzled her with his masculine beauty, his power, his tairen- fierceness, until she’d actually begun to believe that her plain drabness didn’t matter to him, that he saw beauty in her.

‘Shei’tani.’ His hand, so strong, so warm, touched her shoulder.

She shuddered from the instant wave of helpless need that flooded her. Dear gods, when he touched her, all she wanted to do was fling herself into his arms. She wanted to forget about the tender way he’d cupped Kelissande’s perfect face, absolve him for the quiet words he’d murmured so close to Kelissande’s soft lips.

Ellie wrenched herself out of his grasp. Pride. It seemed she actually possessed some. And it would not let her accept a touch from the same hands that had just caressed Kelissande.

‘Go back to Kelissande,’ she snapped. ‘I’m sure there are many more sweet words you’d like to whisper in her ear. ‘His eyes opened wide in surprise, then narrowed. ‘I was not—”

‘Not that it matters to me,’ she interrupted. ‘I haven’t put any claims on you. And despite the claims you’ve made, you’re free to do as you like.”

His beautiful lips compressed into a thin line. ‘And this would not concern you?”

‘Of course not,’ she scoffed.

‘You lie.”

‘I don’t lie.’ But she was lying now. And wretched because of it.

«Shei’tani … Ellysetta … you don’t understand—”

‘Get out of my head!’ Angry, she wished she had the power to thrust him out of her thoughts, imagined the satisfaction of her anger taking the form of two giant hands that picked him up and flung him out of her mind. A split second later, she felt his surprise followed by a bruising jolt of pain. His pain.

The Tairen Soul staggered.

She couldn’t stop the rush of concern that sent her lurching towards him. ‘Rain?”

He put a hand to his head. ‘Flames, woman, you pack a punch.”

‘Are you all right?’ She bit her lip to stop its trembling, tried to harden her heart against him. She failed miserably.

‘Aiyah. Surprised mostly.’ He shook his head. ‘Your jealousy is flattering, shei’tani, but unnecessary, I assure you.”

‘Jealousy?’ Her spine became a steel poker, her jaw a hard, thrusting rock of feminine outrage. `Jealousy?’ She clenched her fists and wished she dared to hit him. Instead, she sniffed and turned away, forcing a tight smile to her face as she met the curious, interested gazes of a dozen or more children. ‘Come, children, let’s play Stones.”

As his young shei’tani presented Rain with her back, the sound of silent Fey laughter rang in his head. He gave Bel and the others a scorching look, but that only made them laugh all the more. Not that anyone but a Fey would know it. They would not dishonor their King by any outward display of amusement.

He glanced over his shoulder. The Kelissande creature had wisely retreated. She was now ringed by a bevy of panting Celierian fools, dull-witted mortals blind to all but her beautiful exterior. Rain dismissed them. As long as the woman kept clear of his shei’tani, he would not concern himself with her.

He turned back to his truemate. She was smiling at the children, laughing as she played their stone-tossing game, doing her best to ignore him.

How different she was from the dark-souled one. And how much more intriguing than he had first thought. She was one surprise after another. Fey-gentle. Tairen-proud. Woman- passionate. And jealous when she thought her mate’s attention had strayed. He savored that thought. A woman did not feel jealousy if her emotions were not engaged.

And a wise man did not let it fester.

With sudden purpose, Rain shed his Fey’cha belts and the harnesses holding his sheathed swords. Naked of steel, he stepped towards the ring of playing children.

‘It would please me to learn this game,’ he announced. That earned him all manner of surprised looks, from the children, the Fey, and his shei’tani.

‘It is a child’s game,’ Ellie told him warily. ‘Surely nothing that would interest a king.’ There was an emphasis on the last word, accompanied by a glance in Kelissande’s direction.

‘Ah, but I am tairen as well,’ he told her. ‘And tairen delight in games.’ It was true, though he had not indulged in tairen games since the Mage Wars. She was his truemate, and he was pledged to win her. If a child’s game could help him achieve his aim, then play it he would.

He sent a warm, moist weave of Air, Water, and Fire whispering up her throat and curling around her ear. She shivered and gave him a warning look. The fire in her eyes made the tairen in him growl with appreciation. Tairen females were not timid. They were, in fact, often more dangerous than their mates. ‘Come,’ he murmured, his voice low and seductive. ‘Teach me this game.’ Satisfaction rumbled in his throat when he saw her nostrils flare in awareness of his pursuit.

She explained the rules with a quick breathlessness that pleased him. Stones was a game of aim, dexterity, and speed. The object was to make a path from one side of a grid to the other by landing your stones on connecting squares, while keeping your opponents from stopping you and simultaneously doing your best to stop them. If two stones landed on the same square in the grid, the two players had to race to it by stepping only on those squares occupied by their stones; whoever reached the disputed square and claimed the opponent’s stone first won control of the square, while the other player forfeited his stone. The first player to build an unbroken path across the grid won the game.

‘Are there any other rules?’ he asked, when she was finished explaining. She shook her head. ‘Good.’ Inside his mind, where Ellysetta could not see, Rain smiled. It was a tairen’s smile, full of teeth and cunning. ‘And will you grant me a boon if I win this game?”

‘A boon?”

‘Aiyah. Surely there must be some reward for winning.’

‘Such as what?”

He ran a finger over her lips. ‘A kiss, I think.”

She swallowed. ‘A kiss?”

‘I hunger for one.”

She blinked and visibly struggled to collect her thoughts. ‘And if you lose?”

‘Then I grant you a boon.”

‘Anything?”

‘Anything.’ What would she ask for? A shame he would not find out. He raised a brow. ‘Well? Do we have a wager?’ He enjoyed her wary frown. She knew there was some catch, but she had yet to figure it out.

‘Yes,’ she finally agreed. ‘It’s a wager. If you win, I’ll give you a kiss. If anyone else wins, you’ll grant me a wish— anything I want.’ And with that, the game began. On all levels.

Ellysetta loaned him a spare bag of stones. His were purple with a gold line painted across the diameter of each stone. The players took their spots along the borders of the grid, four on each side, with Rain standing beside Ellysetta. The game began with each player, in turn, dropping a stone on the grid square at his or her feet. It was simple enough, and if truth be told, rather boring, but within three or four plays, things began to get interesting as throwing distances grew greater, paths crossed, and the play converged on the center of the grid.

To his surprise, Rain truly enjoyed himself, and not just because he was looking forward to his reward once he won. In the Fading Lands, even before the Mage Wars, children had been rare and precious, adored and protected by even the most soul-shadowed warrior. Their youthful innocence and wide-eyed delight in the world appealed to the gentle heart that lay at the core of every Fey. The Celierian children, laughing as they leapt like little goats across the Stones grid, were no less appealing for all that they were not Fey.

Even the other warriors were not immune to the lure of childish joy. Fey laughter rang out across the common mental path, accompanied by the picking of favorites and good- natured teasing. No one placed bets. They all knew Rain Tairen Soul played this game to win.

At last, all the players but Ellysetta and Rain had lost their stones. Rain tossed his stone, deliberately landing it on Ellie’s square. Like two elf bolts fired from an Elvian fingerbow, the pair of them darted across the grid, leaping nimbly from square to square. She was laughing as she raced across the grid, still laughing as she plowed into his chest when she made the jump to the disputed square he had reached first.

He absorbed her weight easily, and when she raised her face and laughed up at him, he was stunned anew. She was a gift from the gods, this woman with her gold-sprinkled skin, eyes clear and green as lush spring glades, and her soul that shone bright as the Great Sun itself. Aching to kiss her, he instead stepped back and showed her the red-and-green-striped stone in his hand. ‘I believe your stone is forfeit, Ellysetta,’ he told her. He tucked her stone into the pocket on the inside of his tunic, close to his heart. ‘Do you forfeit the game as well?”

Her eyes had followed the path of his hands and were now fixed on the small vee of pale flesh revealed by the opening of his tunic. At his question, she blinked and dragged her gaze back to his face, the bright smile on her lips not quite masking the hunger in her eyes. ‘Me? Forfeit a game of Stones?’ She forced a laugh and danced away. ‘Never!’ She raced back to her home position on the grid. Pleased with the exchange, he followed at a more leisurely pace.

As he prepared to throw his stone to win the game, she inched closer to him. ‘Take care with your aim,’ she advised him, smiling. ‘If you miss, I have a chance to win.”

‘I will not miss.”

‘Care to wager on that?”

Interested, delighted by her daring, he raised a brow ‘What did you have in mind?”

‘If you don’t win on this play, I want to go flying.’ She paused. ‘On tairenback.”

‘And if I win?”

‘Your choice.”

‘Agreed.’ Rain lowered his lashes over eyes that suddenly glowed with heat and satisfaction. Taking wing with his shei’tani astride him would be no hardship.

Still, no Fey ever lost a challenge on purpose, and he would not be the first, especially not with so many warriors looking on. Taking aim, he drew back his hand and loosed his last stone. At that precise moment, his shei’tani stood on her toes and blew directly into his ear.

His entire body clenched. His throw went wild. Rather than landing with Fey precision on the winning square, his stone hurtled through the air over the heads of squealing, ducking children, skipped three times across the surface of the river, and sank like … well … a stone. Ellysetta was bent double, laughing. ‘I win,’ she gasped between laughs.

‘Aiyah,’ he grumbled, eyeing her with new appreciation. That little move was sneaky enough for a tairen. ‘This wager. But I will win the game.”

She regained her composure and tossed her next stone towards an unoccupied square that would bring her one toss away from winning the game. Her aim was true, the arc of her throw perfect. The stone descended … then hit an invisible wall of Air and bounced back to land on a disqualified player’s square. ‘What!’ Ellysetta exclaimed. ‘Oh, foul!’ She turned to him, laughing all the while she attempted to pretend outrage. ‘I cry foul!”

‘Ha. As if you could.’ Rain tossed his last stone with negligent ease, this time using Air to direct it to its proper destination. It landed in the farthest row of the grid, completing his line. ‘I win.”

‘You cheated,’ she accused. ‘More than I did,’ she added when he raised a brow.

‘Nei, I did not.”

‘You used your magic to win.”

‘You never said I couldn’t.’ His voice simmered with masculine satisfaction. ‘When you wager with tairen, take care with your words.”

Leaving the children to their game, he led her towards a copse of trees beside the river and pulled her close. Shei’tanitsa need, never far from him, rose up in swift, insistent waves. ‘I would collect my prize.”

‘Now?’ she asked nervously. ‘Here?”

‘Now,’ he confirmed. ‘Here.”

Ellysetta’s lips were soft and warm, her eyes solemn, nervous, and wide open. He smiled against her mouth, gently licked at her lips with flickering, teasing touches of his tongue followed by tiny nibbling bites. «You taste of honeyed cream, shei’tani. Open your mouth to me.» His hands splayed against her back, clutching her slender body closer as she hesitantly complied with his command. Triumph, pleasure, desire, and protectiveness swirled through him as he laid claim to the secrets of her mouth. Timid at first, she accepted but did not respond to his kiss.

«Do not fear this, » he urged. «Do not fear me. Feel what you do to me, feel how I need you.» Deliberately he lowered the protective barriers that were as much a part of him as his leathers and steel.

Need and desire poured over her like warm honey, and she gasped against his mouth, closing her eyes against the almost painful pleasure that claimed her senses. He did desire her. Though it made no sense to her, she couldn’t deny it. Kelissande, for all her beauty, couldn’t make him feel what she, plain Ellysetta Baristani, did. The knowledge was heady, intoxicating. There was such longing in him, such loneliness. It as like a void crying to be filled, and she could feel herself being drawn to it, needing to bring him peace.

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.”

Rain glanced at Bel for a moment and his face grew still. A hint of anger entered his eyes, and Ellie realized Belliard had just related the morning’s events. Rain’s next words confirmed her suspicions. ‘Bel has told me of this dressmaker. You are the Feyreisa. She will attend your pleasure, not the other way around. As will the queen’s Master of Graces.”

Ellie blinked at the implacable finality of his statement. ‘Oh, but—”

‘Ellysetta.’ He gave her a look that made her close her mouth and swallow her objection. ‘I despise Celieria. I remain here only to fulfill my oath to your father and to give you a little time at least to grow accustomed to me before I take you from all that is familiar to you. I will not cut short my time with you merely to indulge the self-importance of a foolish woman who insults the Tairen Soul’s truemate—and I am speaking of both the queen and her servants. The dressmaker will attend you tomorrow morning. Early, before I come to you. The Master of Graces will tutor you after that, while I am there to observe him. And, Ellysetta …’ He lifted her chin with a gentleness that somehow made the fierce look in his eyes even more terrifying. ‘If anyone insults you again, you—not Bel—shall tell me of it.”

Ellie gulped and nodded. She would promise almost anything to stop him looking at her with those eyes that leapt with flickering lights of cold fire.

‘Beylah vo. Thank you.’ The hard lines of Rain’s expression softened and his eyes calmed. ‘Now, what would you like to do?”

‘I—’ She wet her lips and tried to still her rapidly beating heart. ‘I don’t know’ She’d never been courted before, didn’t have the first idea of where to go or what to do. Inspiration struck. ‘You could take me flying. After all, I did win that wager.”

‘You did, indeed. Very well, then. Flying it is”