She closed her eyes and swallowed a silent cry, trying to block out the sound of his voice, the insidious words worming past her defenses. She wanted to scream out that he was wrong, that she wasn’t dark, that she didn’t feel the evil inside her. But she couldn’t. Such a claim would be a lie. Deep, deep inside, in a place she had long ago refused to look—in a place so terrifying she’d never spoken of it to anyone, not even her father—something monstrous lived. An evil thing she’d always feared, a terror that dreamed of rending flesh with fangs and drinking blood rain from the sky.
It shifted inside her now, restless and hungry, its rage growing by the moment. Her skin felt stretched. Her hands clenched in fists. She mustn’t let that thing out. Not now. Not ever. The world would fall to darkness if she ever set it free.
“You think the Fey can protect you. But who will protect them from you? Shall I show you what you will do to them?”
Around her, the pure, blind blackness began to lighten. Shadow became gray fog, swirling in eddies. Smells rose up, thick and overpowering: smoke, scorched flesh, blood, death. Gradually the mists began to clear, enough to see the aftermath of a terrible battle stretched out before her.
She was standing in a field of corpses. Shattered swords lay useless in dead, decaying hands. Torn pennants of a once proud army fluttered on broken shafts. Blood soaked the ground and congealed in dark pools. The stench of death filled the air, so thick each breath made her gag.
Horror mounted as she realized all the bodies strewn around her were either Fey or Celierian. King Dorian, Queen Annoura, Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, Bel, Kieran, Kiel: faces she knew, and thousands more that she didn’t. Flies filled the air in swarms so thick they darkened the sky. Rats and crows flowed over the bodies like hideous rivers, feasting on the dead.
“Do you think it’s only the Fey who will suffer on your behalf?”
A loud caw drew her attention. Atop a piled mound of bodies, a pair of crows were fighting over something long and pink, tugging it between their beaks and flapping their wings angrily. Their clawed feet hopped back and forth over a tangle of bloodless limbs.
Ellysetta’s heart clenched with dread as she saw a child’s hand. The fingers were still plump with youth, the lifeless grip clutching a small Stone painted in a pattern she recognized. Oh, gods, please, please no. Her gaze climbed up, following the slender child’s arm to the tangle of mink-brown curls. Lillis lay dead upon the pile of bodies, Lorelle beside her. Mama and Papa lay close by, faces etched with expressions of horror, dead arms still reaching protectively towards their children.
Ellysetta wept with voiceless grief and denial. Although some part of her knew this was just another of the Shadow Man’s tricks to force her to reveal herself, the sight of her parents dead before her, of Lillis and Lorelle’s small bodies being ripped apart and fought over by carrion birds, was more than she could bear. She tried to close her eyes against the hideous vision, but even that escape was denied her. The scene played relentlessly against the backs of her eyelids, refusing to be shut out.
A shrouded figure stood on the hillside. Behind the figure, black-armored soldiers stretched out towards the horizon like a stain upon the earth. The Shadow Man’s army. The dark promise of what was yet to come.
“You’ll kill them, girl. You’ll kill them all. It’s what you were born for.”
Something brushed against her ankle. She looked down and found Rain lying on the ground at her feet, his throat and chest slashed open, his eyes milky and dead. A crow perched on his head. The dark wings flapped and covered his face like some hideous shroud, brushing against her ankle again as the bird bent to peck at one dead eye.
It was too much.
The scream ripped from her, the sound a shriek of anguish and despair.
“Get away from him! Don’t touch him!” She flung herself at Rain’s body, tearing in hysterical revulsion at the birds and vermin feasting on him. Fury gathered inside her and pulsed in a fierce, hot blast of rage. The rats and crows burst into flame. “Liar! Foul, evil liar! I’d die before hurting the people I love!”
A hand clamped hard around her throat. The Shadow Man who had been on the hillside just a moment ago now stood before her, shrouded in black, his face hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. Ice froze her blood in her veins.
“Bright Lord save me,” she whispered, more from instinct than hope, knowing it was already much too late. She’d given herself away, revealed herself to him.
Worse, she’d revealed her magic.
The Shadow Man laughed, the sound triumphant. “The Bright Lord doesn’t live here, girl. And he wouldn’t save you even if he did.” Her tormentor threw back his hood, and Ellysetta cried out in denial. Instead of the monstrous visage she’d always expected, her own face stared back at her, pale and ravaged, with twin black pits—bottomless and flickering with red lights—where her eyes should have been.
“I see you…Ellysetta.” The voice came out of her own mouth, but the sound was a familiar, malevolent hiss. “You can’t hide from me any longer.” The cloaked Ellysetta lifted a wavy black blade and sent it plunging towards her heart.
“No!” She shrieked and threw her hands up. The savage thing inside her howled with wrath. Fire boiled from her hands in voracious incendiary clouds. The cloaked Ellysetta shrieked in agony as the flames enveloped her.
Hot wind blew across Rain’s face. He stared with dazed incomprehension at the flames leaping all around him as pella trees crackled and burned. The sand at his feet smoked and shattered as a wave tumbled over molten glass. Some small part of his mind registered the memory of furious heat rolling through him, but all that remained now was fear.
“Ellysetta.” Oh, gods. «Ellysetta!»
No answer.
«Ravel! Fey! Ti’Feyreisa! Ti’Feyreisa!» Rain sprang into the sky, shooting high over the trees in a stream of sparkling gray mist that solidified instantly in tairen form. Air-powered wind filled his wings. He wheeled west towards the glow of Celieria City in the distance. A command barked on a dagger of Spirit sent the Fey rushing to reinforce the protective weaves around Ellysetta’s home, and check on his truemate. Something had attacked her, but none of them had sensed it.
«She is here. She is unharmed,» Ravel called back, «but hurry.»
Rain streaked across the sky, covering the miles in a handful of chimes. He reached the Baristani house and arrowed out of the sky, Changing as he descended. The Fey hurried to pull down their weaves to grant him access, but those threads they didn’t have time to unmake shredded before him, curling back from the buffeting force of his power as he streamed through Ellysetta’s bedroom window and reclaimed Fey form at her side.
She sat huddled on her bed, pressed into the corner, eyes squeezed shut, her body racked with violent shudders. Her fists were clenched, her arms crossed protectively over her head and chest as if to ward off an attack. Ravel and her parents stood beside her, distraught and helpless. Her room was a shambles, her mirror shattered and smoking, the walls shredded as if great razor-sharp claws had sliced through the wood and plaster in a rage and scorched as if by sudden searing flame.
“She was like this when I came in,” Ravel said. “She won’t let any of us near her.”
“What have you done to her?” Lauriana burst out. “What have you done that sleep would bring such torments?”
“Laurie, shh.” Sol tried to calm his wife, but she batted him away.
“No, Sol! I won’t hush. I’ve held my silence too long already! I told you this was a mistake. We were meant to protect her from magic, and instead we’ve flung her back into its teeth! Her nightmares have returned, Sol. Because of them.” She jabbed an accusing finger in Rain and Ravel’s direction. “You can’t deny it any longer! And you know where it’s going to lead!”
Ignoring her, Rain knelt on the floor beside Ellysetta and laid his hand on her shoulder. She cried out and tried to fling herself away, but he caught her and held tight as she struggled against him. Her ski
n was cold as ice. “Shei’tani. Ellysetta. Las, las, kem’san. Ke sha taris. Ke sha avel vo. I am here. I am with you.” He held her close, rocking her, whispering a soothing litany of words into her ears while in silence his heart swore bitter vengeance against the monster who had visited this torment upon her.
The convulsive shudders racking her slender form gradually diminished. “Rain?” Her eyes opened, then flooded with tears when she saw him. She flung her arms round his body to clutch him tight and buried her face against the bare skin of his throat. “Oh, Rain. You’re alive. Oh, thank the gods.” Wrenching sobs shook her.
Though her grief tore at his heart, his eyes closed with relief. She was safe and unharmed. She was whole and in his arms, where she belonged. “I’m here, shei ’tani.”
“Hold me,” she whispered. “Hold me and don’t let me go. I’m cold, so cold.”
His arms tightened, pulling her closer, wrapping around her as if with his body alone he could shield her from whatever evil hunted her.
“Ellie!” Lauriana rushed forward, hands outstretched, but as she neared, Ellysetta flinched away, burrowing deeper into Rain’s arms. Desperation flooded his senses.
«Rain, tell her to go. Tell them all to go. I can’t bear for anyone to touch me right now. No one but you.»
“Leave us, all of you,” Rain barked. «Ravel, get everyone out.»
The Fey nodded and tried to usher the Baristanis out the bedroom door. Lauriana resisted the eviction. “Don’t you dare touch me! I’m not leaving my child here with you, not after this! I won’t do it anymore!”
Sol flung out an arm towards Rain and Ellysetta. “Can’t you see Ellie doesn’t want either of us here right now? He’s the only one who’s even been able to get near her. Clearly, he’s what she needs now, not us. For the gods’ sake, Laurie, if he can bring her peace, let him do it.”
“He can’t bring her peace, Sol. He’s only brought all her old torments back, worse than they ever were before. How can you not see that?”
“Mama.” Lauriana and Sol both turned. Ellysetta was still in Rain’s arms, but she had lifted her head. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes as bleak as Lauriana had ever seen them. “Please go. You can’t help me. I’m not sure anyone can help me anymore.”
“Ellie…” Lauriana started forward, arms outstretched, tears in her eyes. “Kitling.”
Ellysetta flinched away. “Don’t touch me. Just go. I need you to go.”
Weeping, broken by her daughter’s plea in a way no angry words could have done, Lauriana left. Sol and the Fey followed her out, closing the door behind them.
“What happened, Ellysetta?” Rain asked when they were finally alone.
“It was a dream,” she whispered. “A very, very bad dream.”
“Will you tell me?”
In a slow, halting voice, she did. She stumbled over the part where he’d tried to coax her into mating with him and the horrible way he’d laughed, and her voice cracked when she told him about the bodies shredded into bloody meat, rats and crows flowing like a river of disease all around her. She broke into helpless tears once more when she told him about finding him dead at her feet, carrion for the crows. “Oh, Rain, gods save me, I was the one who’d led the army to destroy you. I saw myself there, leading them. I looked into my own face—and knew what I had done. And my eyes—oh, gods, my eyes—it was like looking into the fire pits of the Seventh Hell. It was…pure evil.” A fresh bout of shuddering shook her. Nothing could block the memory of those dark, burning eyes.
“Is this what you saw?” He spun Spirit in the air between them, weaving an image of a pale face dominated by dead black wells where the eyes should have been.
She shrank back in sudden fear.
Rain’s mouth tightened. The nightmarish image dissolved. “Powerful magic always reveals itself. When someone weaves Azrahn, their eyes turn black and flicker with red lights, like the dying embers of a fire. Ellysetta, I doubt the dream was your own—or anything even remotely resembling truth. The purpose could be many things: an attempt to sow doubt between us where none can exist, an attempt to use my face to spring some sort of trap. Bel told me you’ve had other nightmares. Were they like this?”
She closed her eyes. The time for hiding the truth was past. “I’ve had nightmares all my life, some worse than others. Even when I was small, I saw horrible things no child should ever see. Wars, murder, people dying. I don’t know why I dream what I dream, but I’ve always known he was searching for me. And that if he found me, something terrible would happen.”
“He who?”
“The Shadow Man. He’s there in the darkness when I sleep. He was gone for years, but he came back again about a week before you arrived in Celieria. He’s been searching for me, calling to me in my sleep, urging me to show myself.” She wrapped her arms around herself, chafing her hands on her cold skin. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve always feared and denied my own magic, Rain. I was afraid if I used it, he would find me. And now, I think he has.” Her throat closed up. Tears welled in her eyes. “I tried to stay hidden, but he knew I was there. He wouldn’t stop tormenting me until I showed myself. Everyone was dead: Bel, Kieran, all the Fey, Mama, Papa, the twins. And you—at my feet and the crows were…were…oh, Rain, I couldn’t bear any more! I screamed at him to stop. I revealed myself to him, and now he knows how to find me. And I think he intends to use me to kill the people I love.”
His arms tightened around her. One hand cupped her chin and urged her to look up at him. “I will permit no one to harm you or the people you love, Ellysetta. And if this Shadow Man thinks to try, I promise you he will regret it.” The look in his eyes was lethal. This was the man who’d once scorched the world, and for the first time she realized he was fully capable of scorching it again on her behalf. Would scorch it again, if the evil that stalked her laid claim to her soul. “I make you fear me,” he said. The fire faded from his eyes. He pulled her tight against his chest and held her close. “Do not fear me.”
“It’s not you I’m afraid of, Rain.” She had to tell him about the exorcism, about the demons the priests said haunted her soul. Now that the Shadow Man had found her, she couldn’t afford secrets. Whatever evil lived inside her, he might find a way to use it against Rain and the Fey. “It’s not even the Shadow Man. Not really.” She blurted out the truth before fear could silence her. “It’s me.”
He drew back and stared into her face. “What do you mean?”
She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Would he revile her? She pulled herself out of his arms and huddled closer to the wall, needing to put some distance between them.
“Ellysetta…”
“No. Listen to me. I’ve been afraid to tell you, but you need to know.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. She could do this. She could. She must. “He told me I was evil. He said he knew I felt darkness calling me. And he was right.” The admission came hard, each word forced out of her through sheer will, but once the first secret found freedom, the rest followed in a rush. “From the time I was very small, I’ve had…seizures. There’s nothing particular that makes them happen. They just do. An unbearable pain engulfs me, and all I can do is fall to the floor, screaming. Sometimes it can go on for days.”
Memories, long buried, swirled in her mind, as vivid and terrifying as they had been the day she lived them. The echoes of her own wild screams rang in her ears. Her vision turned red as if veiled in blood. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes and whimpered.
Rain’s hand covered hers, offering strength and comfort. She clutched it tight and held on until the worst of the memories faded and she could speak again.
“When I was little, the seizures came every few months, sometimes more often. They frightened Mama and Papa. They didn’t know what to do. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it. They said it was demon possession, something wrong in my soul. Mama brought in the exorcists from the Church of Light. I was very young…but I remember…” She
bent her head, and her hair fell forward to veil her face. She remembered the candles and the chanting and the fierce eyes of the exorcists as she screamed and her small body convulsed.
“At first they just prayed and rubbed me with sago flowers. But the seizures began to grow worse, and they decided they must do something more…aggressive…to draw the demons out. They had a little box filled with needles…” Long, shining needles lying on a bed of red satin. Needles to pierce her so the demon could escape her body, each topped with a tiny, dark crystal bead the exorcists claimed would draw the demon out.
“They thought that if they drove those needles into me, they could trap the demon.” Ellie rubbed her arms as the memories washed over her. She was screaming…screaming as the needle sank into her flesh.
“Ellysetta…” Rain pulled her closer, his body so warm against her chilled skin.
“They put one needle through my shoulder and another through my leg before Papa made them stop.”
Papa, so fierce, snatching her up and shouting, “Are you mad? You torture her more? She’s only a child! Get out of my house!” How she’d loved him in that moment. He’d pulled the needles out of her body and flung them away as if they were polluted things. He’d held her close, rocking her and weeping. “Papa’s sorry, precious kitling. They’ll never come back, sweetheart. Papa won’t ever let them hurt you again.”
Never again did he allow them to enter his house, never again did he allow Mama to speak of the exorcists, not even when seizures flung Ellysetta howling to the floor. Thereafter only Papa could get near her when the seizures came, and he would hold her and rock her as every muscle in her body clenched in agonizing pain. He would sing to her, softly, his tears spilling on her skin, his love wrapping around her. And she would cling to him, finding refuge in his unwavering love, anchoring herself to him until the torturous seizures passed.