“Agreed,” Rain accepted. He signaled to Ellysetta’s quintet. Rijonn wove a second table, complete with metal restraining straps. When he was done, Rain got on, lay down, and let Bel and the others strap him in. “Beylah vo,” he said as Jisera and the shei’dalins gathered around him.

“Don’t thank me unless this works.” Her eyes turned amber and began to glow.

Ellysetta lay trapped in a sea of black ice. She couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t speak, and yet every part of her being was writhing in agony, burning from a fire she could not quench, screaming until her throat was raw and her ears were ringing.

Rain was dead. She’d seen the red Fey’cha pierce his throat. She’d plunged her own blade into the rotting heart of the Mharog in wild fury. Only she hadn’t died as she’d expected. Instead, the undiluted evil of the Mharog had seized her and pumped its foul corruption into her soul. The howling torment of every life destroyed by the Mharog bombarded her senses, as did the Mharog’s fiendish pleasure each time he’d drained a soul of its Light.

Hatred, malevolence, the unquenchable lust for pain and destruction: the Dark emotions feasted on her Light. They ate away at her shei’dalin mercy, her compassion and gentleness, her hope, dissolving layer after layer of civility and restraint until they reached the dangerous, equally Dark monster that lived at the core of Ellysetta’s soul.

And when the foul malignancy of the Mharog touched that, the beast roared to life. A vast, Raging Darkness that dwarfed the Mharog’s by magnitudes. Her Darkness. Every bit as powerful and potently evil as her Light was good.

In terror, she’d done the only thing she could. She raised barriers around her mind and fortified them with a containing weave that mimicked the binding spell Galad Hawks-heart had once used on her. The weave used the beast’s magic against it, so that the more it Raged, the stronger its bonds became.

And there Ellysetta lay in torment, locked inside her mind with the horror that lived in her soul.

Ellysetta. A voice called her name—Rain’s voice, infused with the vibrant notes of tairen song. The sound sliced through the deafening roars of the beast and her own endless screams.

In the icy darkness of her self-imposed prison, the notes of his song didn’t just glimmer—they blazed bright as the Great Sun.

Come back to me, shei’tani.

Shei’tani. Her battered mind latched onto the word like a talisman. Rain? Is that you? Hesitant, afraid this might be some trick of the Mharog, she reached for his Light… then wept as it enveloped her in fierce, familiar flows of heat and strength.

Ke sha taris, kem’reisa. Ke sha eva vo.

His Light burned through the layers of dark ice and fanned the dim, nearly extinguished flickers of her own Light back to fiery brightness. With a roar of cold rage, the beast retreated into his lair, and the powerful weaves of her self-imposed prison faded.

Ellysetta’s eyes opened, and Rain was there, his face pale, his expression taut with worry, but whole and unharmed. Alive. Before she could even open her mouth to speak, he dragged her into his arms, kissed her soundly, then clutched her so tightly to his chest she could hardly move.

“Beylah sallan,” he whispered against her skin. “I thought I’d lost you when you stabbed that Mharog, shei’tani. Don’t ever scare me like that again.” Fine tremors shivered through his entire body and the hands stroking her hair were trembling.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she told him in a broken voice. “You nearly did.”

“I don’t understand.” She squirmed in his arms, needing to see his face, touch him to ensure he was real. “You died. I saw that Mharog kill you. He drove his red Fey’cha into your throat.” For a moment she wondered if she’d dreamed that, but when she reached up to touch the spot where the Mharog blade had pierced his throat, she discovered that Rain’s previously unblemished Fey skin now bore a faint, vertical scar, proof of his near-death encounter with the Mharog. “How is this possible?”

“Aiyah, well…” Rain grimaced. “Much as I hate to admit it, I’m in Hawksheart’s debt. That Shadar horn he gave me saved my life—and yours.”

Ellysetta pressed her lips against the faint scar and whispered a prayer of thanks. “Bright Lord bless him.”

Someone cleared a throat. Ellysetta glanced around and blushed to discover she and Rain were not alone. They were lying on a raised table in the center of a tent. Her quintet and six veiled shei’dalins were gathered around them. “My friends… thank you. Gaelen…” She reached for his hands. «You and your dahl’reisen friends saved our lives, kem’maresk. There aren’t words enough to thank you.»

Another throat cleared—well, rumbled impatiently was more like it—and Ellysetta’s attention shifted to the side of the tent, where one entire fabric wall had been ripped free of its mooring stakes. The unmoored side of the tent lay draped like a rumpled scarf across a very large white tairen head.

“Steli!” Ellysetta swung her legs over the edge of the table, ignoring the protesting voices that told her she was too weak and needed to rest. She was weak. Her knees started to give way as soon as she stood. But Rain was there to catch her, and with his arm around her waist to hold her steady, she crossed the floor to Steli. She leaned against the strong, furred jaw, closing her eyes against a sudden swell of tears.

“I am so glad to see you, my pride-mother,” she whispered in a choked voice.