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

Just after sunrise, the bell on the butcher shop door jingled. Den looked up from his place behind the service counter, and his scowl smoothed in surprise as he recognized the new customer. A faint chill rippled up the back of Den’s neck. With a quick glance at his father, Den wiped his hands on his white butcher’s apron and said, ‘Can I help you?”

Batay, the Sorrelian merchant ship captain, smiled. ‘I hope so, Goodman Brodson. If I may have a moment of your time?”

‘Papa, do you mind?’ The shop was filled with customers waiting for service. The Brodsons were getting out of the butcher business and had put the last of their stock on sale.

Gothar Brodson eyed the gold braid on the man’s coat and nodded. ‘Go on, then.’ As Den slipped his apron off, Gothar murmured, ‘Ask him about the merchant ship business. I’ve a fancy to buy a ship or two.’ He grinned and slapped his son on the back.

Den veiled the flash of anger in his eyes and stepped out from behind the counter. ‘We can talk outside,’ he told the Sorrelian.

Fifteen chimes later, Den returned to his place behind the butcher shop counter. Captain Batay’s request had been odd, but Den had managed to find what the man asked for. Upstairs in the Brodson home above the butcher shop, on the lint brush Den’s mother had used to tidy the blue suit he’d worn the night he had put his claiming mark on Ellysetta Baristani, Den had found three long, curling strands of flame-colored hair.

Why the Sorrelian needed Ellie’s hair, Den didn’t know. But the man had left with a smile on his face and a glass vial containing the three strands of hair in his pocket.

Outside, on the street corner, a ragged pamphleteer’s boy began his morning cry: ‘Tairen Soul steals local man’s bride! King and Queen cower in fear! Read the shocking truth they don’t want you to know! Only three coppers!’

Several ragged scraps of paper trembled in Queen Annoura’s hand. Before her, Lady Jiarine Montevero, a former Dazzle and current lady-in-waiting, stood waiting while Annoura read the pamphlets Jiarine had just delivered.

‘There are many of these, you say?’ Annoura asked.

Jiarine nodded. The long, dark curls draped over one shoulder bounced with the motion, and her sapphire-blue eyes shone with earnest concern. ‘Many times many, Majesty. The presses must have been running all night.”

Annoura resisted the urge to crumple the leaflets and instead set them aside on the pearl-inlaid surface of her desk. ‘Thank you, Lady Jiarine.”

Jiarine’s gaze followed the discarded pamphlets. Her brows drew together in confusion. ‘My Queen? You cannot mean to ignore this. The pamphleteers have always been a thorn in the palace’s heel, but this time … Majesty, those leaflets border on treason. They call your husband a puppet of the Fey, and you—”

‘I read what they said, Jiarine,’ Annoura said, her voice as flat and hard as a marble tile. ‘You need not repeat it to me.”

‘I’m sorry, Majesty.’ The lady bobbed a curtsey but continued earnestly, ‘It’s just that the people are already nervous because of the dahl’reisen murdering innocents in the north. And now the Tairen Soul has returned for the first time in a thousand years. Suspicions and fears are rising on many estates. The lords are worried. They can’t help wondering if the dahl’reisen attacks and the Tairen Soul’s arrival aren’t in some way connected.”

The thought had occurred to Annoura, as well. ‘I understand your concerns, Lady, but I assure you, the king and I are intimately familiar with the state of our kingdom.”

‘There’s even a growing number of historians who are beginning to question whether the Eld Mages were really behind the assassination that started the Mage Wars,’ Jiarine persisted. ‘I know we’ve all been raised to believe that was true … but what if it’s not?”

Annoura recalled her Steward of Affairs making some mention of the study in one of his reports a few months back, but at the time she’d dismissed it as nothing more than a handful of elderly men who’d addled their brains inhaling too much moldy parchment dust. She still didn’t put much stock in the idea. Give an obsessive scholar a single sentence, and he could extrapolate entire reams of hidden meaning from it—all of it overanalyzed nonsense.

Then again, obsessive scholars and their myopic passions could serve a useful purpose when it came to discrediting political rivals. Rain Tairen Soul had already proven himself willing to use threats and intimidation to force Dorian’s compliance. Annoura would not stand idly by while her husband’s immortal kinsmen ordered him about like a trained pet. She made a mental note to have her steward find out more about those scholars and their theories.

For now, however, there was the matter of these pamphlets to deal with. Dorian was no puppet, and she—Annoura glanced back down at the illustrated pamphlet and her teeth snapped together—she was no little mouse queen squeaking in fear and fleeing the tairen’s paw.

‘Thank you, Lady Montevero,’ she said. ‘That will be all.’ When Jiarine opened her mouth as if to protest, Annoura cut her off ‘You are excused, Jiarine.”

The lady’s mouth closed and her expression faded to controlled blankness. She sank into a formal curtsey. ‘Your Majesty,’ she said, then took her leave.

When she was gone, Annoura snatched up the pamphlets, stalked out through a different door, and headed down a series of corridors to Dorian’s private office. He was seated at his desk, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose as he pored over a stack of documents. She tossed the pamphlets on top of the papers he was reading. ‘Have you seen these?”

Dorian’s lips thinned as he glanced at the ragged leaflets. ‘Corrias showed them to me this morning.”

Her arms folded across her chest. And he’d said nothing to me? ‘What are you doing about this, Dorian?”

‘What can I do, Annoura?’ He leaned back in his chair, removed his spectacles, and regarded her with weary exasperation. ‘You know as well as I do that for every pamphleteer I stop, a dozen more spring up. Short of putting the city under martial law, I can’t control what they do. I can only go on as I have been—doing my best to keep Celieria safe and strong.”

‘You cannot be seen as a puppet of the Fey. If the lords lose faith in you, you lose your ability to rule. You know that. The nobles are unsettled enough as it is. First the dahl’reisen begin slaughtering peasants; then he comes—Rainier v’el En Daris—for the first time in a thousand years, carrying unfounded tales of Mage power growing in Eld. The timing is suspicious. Can’t you see that?”

Dorian rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘So I should alienate the Fey—and terminate more than a thousand years of alliance just because Rain Tairen Soul has come back into the world? What if he’s right? What if the Mages really have regained power?”

‘There’s not a shred of proof to support that.”

‘Which is why I refused to invoke primus when he asked me to. I’m letting the lords decide whom they trust most, just as you advised.’ He pushed his chair back from the desk and walked over to one of the shuttered windows to look out at the manicured gardens below His spine was straight, arms folded across his chest, feet slightly apart as if bracing to survive a blow.

Annoura knew that stance. Intractability wasn’t far behind. And Dorian, when he dug in his heels, was impossible to budge. Time for a change of tactics.

She crossed the room to his side and laid a hand on his arm, tugged gently but insistently until he turned to face her. His expression was closed, hazel eyes distant. She framed his face in both hands and gazed up with a look of compassion and sympathy, stroking the hair at his temples with gentle fingers.

‘Dorian,’ she said softly, ‘beloved, heart of my heart, I know this is difficult for you. I know how much you love them—Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, even the warriors who accompany them each year.’ He’d told her so many times, and she’d seen the reverence in his eyes whenever he spoke of the shei’dalin. In the first years of their marriage, before she felt secure in her husband’s affections, Annoura had actually been jealous of the effect Marissya had on him. Her hands grew tense for a moment before she forced them to continue their gentle stroking. ‘But the Tairen Soul is a stranger to us, a dangerous one at that. Celieria is entrusted to your keeping, my love. You must do what’s right for us, regardless of what the Fey want.”

‘That is what I’m doing, Annoura.”

‘I know,’ she soothed. ‘I know. But the people—and the Lords of the Council—must be made to see it also. And up until now, all they’ve seen is you giving in to the Tairen Soul’s demands. You broke a lawful betrothal on his behalf. You’ve allowed him to install a common peasant as his queen and ordered our court to dance attendance on her.”

Dorian’s expression, which had begun to soften, went suddenly cold and distant. He pulled her hands away from his face and stepped back several paces to fix her with a hard look. ‘You’ve just overplayed your hand, my dear. This isn’t about me and my perceived strength or weakness. This is about you. He’s wounded your pride, and you can’t stand it.”

‘Dorian!’ Annoura gasped in unfeigned shock. He’d never spoken to her in such a manner. ‘You know me better than that!”

‘I do know you, my love. You are the reason my heart beats in my chest, but I am just as acquainted with your weaknesses as I am your strengths.”

His jaw had tightened. His lips had thinned to an implacable line. Annoura could have screamed in frustration. The familiar expression was the one she’d been trying to avoid: intractability. This was Dorian the King, an immovable rock of authority and command.

‘Like it or not, my dear, the Fey are my kin. But even were that not the case, their centuries of service, friendship, and goodwill to Celieria would compel me to consider the concerns of their king with all due respect and grave attention.’ Each word was fired from his mouth like a bolt from a crossbow. Sharp, clipped, unyielding. ‘I will afford him the opportunity to make his case to the Council. I will make every effort to smooth his way and encourage the lords to give him a full and fair hearing. And as injurious to your pride as it may be, I will welcome the Tairen Soul’s mate as his queen, regardless of her humble birth—and so will you. For in the eyes of the Fey, a queen is exactly what Ellysetta Baristani is. She is a bright and shining light born to bring peace to their king’s heart. And I am Fey enough to understand that, even if you cannot.”

‘Dorian!’ Annoura wanted to wail and gnash her teeth.

‘Go tend to your business, Annoura. Leave me to tend mine.’ He stepped around her, avoiding her outstretched hands, and took his seat.

She stood there in impotent frustration as he reached for his spectacles, thrust them into place, and picked up the parchment he’d been reading before her arrival. The pamphlets she’d brought fluttered to the floor. The illustration of the puppet king and squeaking mouse queen stared up at her in silent mockery.

‘Close the door when you leave,’ Dorian instructed without looking up.

Her hands clenched in fists. She would not be made the fool. She would not be mocked and dismissed—not by the pamphleteers, not by the common rabble who gobbled up their insulting leaflets, not by Dorian, and especially not by the Fey or some woodcarver’s slut.

She was Annoura, Queen of Celieria.

If Dorian would not stand up to the Fey, she would do it herself. As long as she had breath in her body, the Fey would not usurp the power of Celieria’s throne or force their will upon Celieria’s people without a fight. And one way or another, she would put that upstart peasant Ellysetta Baristani in her place.

In Celieria City’s West End, having replaced the distinctive trappings of Captain Batay with the unremarkable garb of a simple merchant, Kolis Manza stood amidst the throngs of curiosity seekers gathered across the street from the Baristani family home. Test her magic, his master had said. Find a way.

Determined not to fail, Kolis had not taken his rest last night, but had instead spent several bells poring over book after book of spells and charms from the High Mage’s private library. While many spells could force a response from even latent magic, few could do so while penetrating Fey shields and remaining undetected by watchful Fey warriors. Luckily, the Master’s long association with the Feraz witchfolk had borne useful fruit, and in an old, handwritten text of Feraz witchspells tested on the High Mage’s pets over the years, Kolis had found what he was looking for.

He put his hand in his coat pocket and grasped the small wax talis he’d prepared last night in Eld. The spell was so simple, its uses had been long overlooked by serious scholars of magecraft: a simple pressure spell designed to gradually amplify emotion and elicit a magical response, targeted at Ellysetta Baristani by one of the strands of hair Den Brodson had so helpfully produced this morning.

With his eyes on the Baristani house, Kolis began to chant the witchwords under his breath.

If one more person made a sneering remark about the ‘humble coziness’ of her family’s home or the ‘new’ Ellysetta Baristani, Ellie wasn’t going to be responsible for what happened. Her brows drew together in a thunderous scowl. Despite vague memories of disturbing dreams, she’d woken in an exceptionally happy mood this morning, and Rain’s courtship gift of Stones had made her laugh with delight, as no doubt he’d meant her to. That lightheartedness was long gone. Now, it was all she could do to stop from screaming.

The Dark Lord take this whole exhausting, frustrating, sanity- scorching idea of a wedding! She cast a blistering glare at the frenzied mob of seamstresses, florists, caterers, printers, decorators, wine merchants, cobblers, and stuffy wedding advisors surrounding her. They had descended upon her parents’ house just after breakfast and turned Ellie’s peaceful morning into a war zone of raucous pre-wedding activity. Every half bell, a knock would sound on the door and a new throng of visitors would pour in. Couriers bearing packages, friends wanting to extend their congratulations, neighbors just being nosy, merchants, craftsmen.

The mad, unceasing rush of people and the constant barrage of questions—each merchant had at least a hundred questions, all needing a decision now!—had long since taken their toll on her sanity and had wiped every last vestige of good humor from her mood.

Twenty gowns, Lady Marissya had decreed. Twenty! Plus an enormous monstrosity of a wedding gown that required an entire wagonload of fabric and had taken most of the morning to fit. The queen’s dressmaker, Maestra Binchi, who had been noticeably more respectful and accommodating this morning, had already departed with her half- dozen seamstresses to begin work on the wedding gown, but another three court modistes and their respective gaggles of assistants were still industriously dedicating themselves to turning Ellie into a human pincushion.

‘My lady, please stand still.’ Kneeling at Ellie’s feet, one of the seamstresses blew a strand of limp brown hair out of her eyes and attempted—but failed—to sound patiently polite. The seamstress’s lips were pulled taut in a grimace that Ellie concluded was supposed to be a deferential smile.

‘I am standing still,’ Ellie replied through clenched teeth. An awful, squeezing pressure had begun building in her head earlier, as if her skull were caught in a tightening vise. The voices around her formed a merciless, pounding drum, echoing inside her head, beating at the shreds of her control.

«Las, Ellysetta.» Bel’s cool voice sounded in her mind.

Peace? Peace, he said? Over the top of the opaque curtain of Spirit the Fey had woven to protect her modesty, Ellie sent Bel a glare so scorching, his leathers nearly caught on fire. The fierce warrior blinked in surprise and wisely retreated.

‘Ellie’ Oblivious to the brewing tempest, Lauriana approached with a selection of flowers in her hands. ‘For your bridal wreath, which roses do you prefer? Maiden’s Blush, Sweet Kaidra, or Gentle Dawn?’ She held up one of each velvety bloom, faint pink, creamy ivory, and pale yellow edged with the barest hint of orange.

‘I don’t care, Mama.’ Ellie tried desperately to hold on to her temper. ‘You choose.”

«Ellysetta.» Rain called to her in a voice of insufferable calm. But, of course, he would be calm. He’d been gone this whole wretched morning. She ignored him.

‘Hmm. I like Maiden’s Blush, but the pink might clash with your hair. Sweet Kaidra is lovely, of course, but it may be a little too bland. Gentle Dawn … well, there’s something about yellow roses that I’ve always liked and the orange is a shade that will suit you, I think. Come now, kit, give me your honest opinion.”

‘Whichever you choose will be fine, Mama.’ Ellie could feel her jaw muscles locking in place. Days from now, she was sure they would find her, dead from this wedding torture, her lips still frozen and her teeth bared in a grim parody of a polite smile.

‘All right, Ellie,’ Lauriana replied evenly. ‘I’ll make the decision, since you don’t care to. Gentle Dawn it is.’ Her skirts swished with violent little movements as she stalked away.

Ellie scowled, angry at her mother for getting upset, angry at herself for being the one to upset her. The anger was unsettling. Ellie wasn’t a volatile person. She worked hard at keeping her emotions in check. Bad things happened when she didn’t. Yet the anger was there. And growing. The pain in her head increased.

«Ellysetta.» Rain’s voice sounded again, a bit more insistent this time. She continued to ignore him. She’d wanted a simple wedding. Flowers, perhaps, and a priest. But, no. The mighty Rain Tairen Soul mandated a huge court affair. And then conveniently absented himself from the resulting madness. Ellysetta’s anger grew some more.

‘Mistress Baristani?’ A man’s nasal voice sounded to her left.

‘What?’ Ellie barked and turned towards the voice.

The cobbler held up several pairs of shoes. ‘You’ve selected your footwear for your wedding, but you still need to select slippers for your ball gowns and a pair of boots for your day dresses. Something—if I may be so bold—a bit more elegant than your current footwear?”

‘There is nothing wrong with my current footwear,’ she snapped. ‘It is the perfect footwear for a girl like me.”

‘Of course, Mistress Baristani.’ The cobbler gave a small, condescending smile and bowed. ‘But I’m referring to the new you.

Her anger flared higher. ‘There is no new me. I am the same me that I have always been. I will be the same me tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.”

‘My lady, please, stand still just a few chimes more,’ the seamstress pleaded.

Ellie scowled down at her. ‘I am standing still!”

«Ellysetta, you will speak to me. »He wanted her to speak? «GET OUT OF MY MIND!» She felt his jagged burst of pain as her angry response blasted between them, and the ache between her eyes became sharp, gouging daggers thrusting into her brain. Dizziness assailed her, but she fought it back.

‘I apologize if my choice of words has offended you, Mistress Baristani,’ the cobbler said. ‘I merely meant that in your new position, you will require a different form of attire.”

‘I am very aware of what you meant, ser. But I am now and always will be a woodcarver’s daughter. No amount of fancy new clothes—or elegant footwear—will ever change that.’ Ellie raised a hand to her head and began to rub her temple.

‘Please, Lady Ellysetta, put your arm back down and hold still,’ the seamstress begged.

Irritation shrieked through Ellie, but she lowered her arm.

‘Ah, Duanniza Baristani,’ Duan Parlo Vincenze, the elegant Capellan chef who catered to the cream of Celierian society, gestured extravagantly with a lace-festooned handkerchief. ‘I have sketched the perfect bridal cake for you. Tall. Elegant. Simple but boi mezzo, very pretty.’ He held up the sketch of a towering wedding cake. ‘You like, eh?”

Ellie stared at the sketch in horror. Layer after angular layer of plain square cakes perched on tall, gawky columns. The cake was stark in its plainness, except for gargantuan bunches of dramatically sketched flowers that dripped down the columns. She supposed the chef meant the flowers to complement the minimalist appearance of the cake, but to her they looked like monstrous weedy growths run amok. Ill-fitting, ridiculous attempts to make something pitifully plain look attractive and feminine.

‘No. I don’t like.’ Her chest felt tight. The room was too small, too crowded. Her mind whirled. The pain in her head was staggering. The anger seemed to be consuming her, stealing the very breath from her lungs.

With a gasp of offended pride, the chef whipped his lacy handkerchief through the air like a sword. ‘But, Duanniza, it is perfect for you.”

‘You must at least select a pair of slippers for the ball. Lady Marissya insisted”

‘My lady, please stand still. Pella needs to repin the waist of this gown.”

‘The cake is hideous! I don’t care about the flaming slippers! And for the last time, I am standing still!’ Gods, she needed air. She was going mad. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision began to blur.

‘Ellysetta.’ Rain stood in the doorway, and there was no mistaking the whip of command in his voice.

‘WHAT?’ Anger roared to blazing life. This was all his fault! She whirled to face him. Pain stabbed into her waist as she impaled herself on the long, wickedly sharp tailor’s pin held in the seamstress Pella’s hand.

Ellie screamed.

Every window in the Baristani house exploded in a cloud of shattered fragments.

Rain leapt forward, power bursting around him, his teeth bared in savage fury.

‘Get back!’ he roared. Most of the people in the room were too stunned to move, but a punishing thrust of Air flung their bodies out of his path. Rain destroyed Bel’s opaque weave of Spirit with a single thought. Seamstresses shrieked and fled like mice as the Tairen Soul reached for his mate.

Across the street, as the screams of the milling crowd still echoed in the aftermath of the exploding windows, Kolis Manza cursed and turned away. So close. He’d been so close.

Magic had definitely been released. Elemental Air magic and a masterful burst of it. But just before the burst of Air, the Tairen Soul had arrived, power radiating from him in a huge, shining, barely controlled aura that had distorted Kolis’s view. And when the Tairen Soul had released blasting weaves of his own, he’d wiped away all hope of tracing the first weave to its source.

The magic had been hers. Kolis knew it had been hers.

But because he hadn’t witnessed the source of the magic with his own senses, he couldn’t be sure. He had to be sure. The High Mage wasn’t forgiving of mistakes.

Kolis crushed the now-drained Feraz talis in his hand and threw it down a sewer grate. The small piece of beeswax, wrapped tight with a single flame-colored strand of hair, made a tiny, distant splash as it hit the water below and was carried away.

‘I’m sorry I acted so badly,’ Ellie whispered for the thousandth time. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m not like that. I don’t get angry. I don’t treat people rudely.”

‘Shh,’ Rain soothed. ‘Las, shei’tani.’ He stroked her hair and held her close as they sat together on the narrow bed in her room.

After catching Ellie in his arms, Rain had carried her upstairs to her bedroom and then refused to leave her. Lauriana had strenuously objected to his presence on her daughter’s bed, but a hot, dangerous look and a snarling command to hold her tongue or risk having it silenced shut her up. Not the most diplomatic of solutions. She’d turned right around and would have marched out of the house to fetch her husband had not Bel hurried after her to soothe the worst of her maternal outrage. They were still downstairs, Lauriana subjecting Bel to a furious tirade recounting every indignity and offense the Fey had visited upon her family and their good name, but at least she’d left Rain in peace to tend his truemate.

‘I didn’t mean to yell at you,’ Ellie said again. ‘I don’t understand why I let them upset me so badly. It was as if there was some terrible, angry force inside me, and it kept growing stronger and stronger, and I kept getting madder and madder.’

‘It’s all right, Ellysetta. Those people are gone.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘They won’t be back, except by appointment, and I will be with you when they come.”

Despite the worry and fear coloring her emotions, she smiled against his hand. ‘So you can explode all the windows again if they bother me? Maybe we’d better not have them come to the house. Mama might get tired of cleaning up the glass.”

Rain stilled.

Ellysetta scooted back so she could look at him. ‘What?’ He met her gaze. ‘It was not I who destroyed the windows, Ellysetta.”

She blinked. ‘It wasn’t? Then Bel did it?’ She gave a small laugh and shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the type for such a display.”

‘Nei. It was not Bel, nor any other of the Fey.”

Ellysetta’s smooth forehead wrinkled in a confused frown. ‘Then … who?”

Rain gazed at her steadily, saying nothing.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t me.”

‘You used Air. An incredibly fine yet powerful weave that struck only the windows. Every window.’ He saw her glance at the perfectly intact bedroom window. ‘The warriors repaired them while you were unconscious. But they were all destroyed. Reduced to dust”

‘It wasn’t me,’ she insisted. ‘You must be mistaken.”

‘I am not mistaken. There is power in you, Ellysetta. Great power.”

‘No.’ She dragged her fingers through her hair, tangling the wild curls.

‘Why do you fear what is inside you?”

‘Why do you keep insisting that I’m magic?”

‘Because you are. I’ve seen evidence of it several times now. On the day you called me out of the sky, you used Earth. Not much. It was only a small healing weave, but both Marissya and I sensed it. The night of our betrothal, you wove Spirit on your mother with so much power packed in so fine a weave that even most Fey would not have known they were being influenced, or been able to resist. Today, you used Air in a very concentrated and powerful weave. All the Fey sensed it this time.”

‘Maybe it was someone else who destroyed the windows,’ she suggested. ‘You think there are Elden Mages in Celieria. Maybe it was one of them.”

His shei’tani was grasping at straws, so eager to deny her power. He still did not understand why she would fear it so. Lauriana’s explanation of all Celierians’ fear of magic- blighted forests didn’t ring true. Ellysetta wasn’t afraid of all magic like her mother; only her own magic truly frightened her. And Rain could not imagine why that would be so.

‘This was no Mage, Ellysetta. I saw the weaves with my own Fey eyes, and they came from you.”

‘Must we talk about this now?”

Rain sighed. ‘Of course not.’ He rose, held out a hand, and helped her to her feet. She looked so … lost, so worried. He brushed thick spirals of hair away from her face. ‘It will be all right, Ellysetta.’ And then, because he couldn’t bear not to, he kissed her.

His mouth slanted over hers softly at first. A kiss of reassurance and the gentler side of shei’tanitsa. But as her warm breath mingled with his, and the honeyed sweetness of her mouth opened to his, tenderness blossomed into desire. He groaned deep in his throat, a rumbling sound of restraint and longing, and his kiss grew firmer.

Rain’s fingers delved into the bright silk of her hair, curving around to the back of her head and holding her fast. All softness fled his body, only a remnant of it remaining in his kiss, but that too burned away the instant Ellysetta’s arms wrapped around him and her hands pulled him closer with surprising strength.

The tairen stirred, and Ellie flinched. Rain clamped a ruthless hold on the beast within him. Not this time. The tairen would not rob him of this wonderful moment.

His hands pulled free of her hair, and he trailed them down her back, fretting at the layers of cloth that separated her skin from his. With just a small weave of Earth, he could banish those annoying layers. Rain summoned power to his fingertips. «Rain.» Bel’s warning sounded.

Someone cleared a throat loudly from the doorway.

Rain released his power and tore his lips from Ellysetta’s. A blistering torrent of curses battled on the tip of his tongue, held back only with great effort.

He dragged in a breath and turned to face Lauriana Baristani.

Color stained the woman’s cheeks, but her accompanying narrow-eyed look made it clear the flush did not come from embarrassment at having interrupted an intimate embrace.

‘I came to check on Ellysetta,’ Lauriana said. ‘As she is most definitely awake, there’s no need for either of you to remain in her bedchamber.”

Ellysetta blushed. ‘Yes, Mama.”

Lauriana gestured for Rain and Ellie to precede her downstairs—so he couldn’t steal another kiss, Rain surmised, cursing Celierians and their restrictive customs. As he entered the small home’s main room, Rain met Bel’s gaze and wasn’t pleased to see amusement lurking in his friend’s eyes beside the apologetic sympathy.

«I’m sorry, Rain.» «So I see.»

«Nei, truly.» But Bel’s laughter broke free across their link. Rain scowled and turned his attention back to his shei’tani, who was staring at a wall heaped with packages.

‘More gifts?’ Ellysetta asked her mother. ‘Who are these from?”

‘The gods only know. Simple-gentry trying to ingratiate themselves with the Feyreisen. Wealthy merchants attempting the same. Friends. Neighbors. Complete strangers.’ Lauriana shrugged. ‘I gave up inspecting whom they’re from and just starting stacking them. The parlor is already full.”

Ellysetta shook her head. ‘Amazing.’ Then the expression on her face grew somber and she put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry for upsetting you earlier, Mama. I know everything’s in turmoil, and it’s my fault. There’s so much to do in so little time, and—”

‘Shh.’ Lauriana put a finger on her daughter’s lips. ‘I know, kit. And I’m sorry, too, for snapping at you. It was a madhouse here this morning. There was too much going on all at once. I must admit I’m grateful your betrothed sent them all packing, though I don’t much approve of his methods.’ Lauriana cast a dark look Rain’s way. ‘Exploding windows and flying bodies only added to the madness.”

Rain bowed low. ‘I shall endeavor to show restraint in future.’ Ellysetta gave him a startled glance. «Say nothing, shei’tani. It is best that all believe I am responsible for the windows.» After a moment, she nodded.

‘I have several errands to run,’ Lauriana said. ‘Why don’t the two of you open the wedding gifts in the parlor, so we can clear some space.”

What? Rain opened his mouth to object, but before he could say a word, he heard his shei’tani doom them both. ‘Yes, Mama.”

Rain closed his mouth and carefully blanked his face.

‘There’s a book in the secretary. Be sure you write down who gave you what, so I have some hope of sending appropriate gratitudes.”

‘Yes, Mama.”

‘Well, then, I’d best be going. I’ve got a hundred things to do. Don’t forget that Master Fellows, the queen’s Master of Graces, is coming here at fourteen bells to begin your instruction in the noble graces. Be sure to tidy up before he arrives—both the house and your own appearance. You don’t want to make a bad first impression.”

‘Yes, Mama.’ As Lauriana bustled off, Ellysetta glanced at Rain uncertainly. ‘Do you mind about opening the gifts?”

He did, of course. Opening gifts from Celierians he neither knew nor cared about was not how he would choose to spend his courtship bells. He answered diplomatically. ‘My time is yours, Ellysetta. If this is how you choose to spend it, then so it shall be spent.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s just that Mama’s already done so much, and I’ve done so little. And it’s my wedding. Our wedding.”

‘I understand, shei’tani”

‘Do kings even open their own gifts?’ she asked as they walked down the short hallway to the parlor.

‘Apparently this one does.’ The grumble in his voice made her smile, as he’d hoped it would. But when they reached the parlor and Rain saw the gifts, crammed into every inch of space and stacked to the ceiling, he called for reinforcements. Ellysetta’s quintet came running in response to their king’s summons, though when they heard what he wanted of them, their faces went predictably blank.

‘It won’t be that bad,’ Ellysetta promised, ‘especially with all of you helping.”

‘They live to serve you, shei’tani,’ Rain assured her. After serving as a source of amusement to these Fey over the last few days, it gave Rain great pleasure to turn the tables.

Rain watched as his five best warriors squeezed into the tiny parlor, picked their way through the jungle of wedding gifts as if tiptoeing through a nest of Drogan sand vipers, and settled down with stone-faced stoicism to proceed with the humiliatingly un-warrior-like task of opening presents.

«You bring pride to this Fey,» Rain sent on their common path, and his tone rang with amusement.

Five lethal glances speared him. For the first time in a thousand years, Rain Tairen Soul threw back his head and laughed.