Time, however, was a luxury she didn’t have. The other whispers in the Mage Halls were too rampant to be disbelieved. Among Vadim Maur’s new guests were the Tairen Soul and his mate. If Vadim Maur managed to claim a Tairen Soul’s power, nothing and no one would ever be able to defeat him again.

That meant she needed to free Lord Shan without delay. No matter how high the risk.

As the Mage led Ellysetta down the corridor, they passed a large, dark mirror hanging on one wall. The sight of her reflection made Ellysetta stumble. Everything about the reflection shining in the mirror’s dark surface came straight from one of her nightmares: herself, garbed in a boat-necked green gown, hair unbound and spilling about her shoulders, sel’dor bands clamped around throat, wrists, and ankles, walking in the company of a purple-robed Mage.

Fresh dread curled in her belly. She remembered the dream. Remembered what had happened in it.

Lillis and Lorelle.

She almost tried to reach for them, but the shredding agony of the sel’dor bonds reacting to her magic was too fresh in her mind.

The corridor wound around, and they reached a set of carved stone steps that curled downward into the bowels of the earth. The guards pushed her after the High Mage, and together, the four of them descended several flights, passing two sconce-lit landings that led off to other levels of the subterranean fortress.

They exited the stairs on the third level and walked down another series of corridors to an observation room. She could see different cells through the windows on either side of the room. Through the murky glass on the right, she saw a dark-haired Fey warrior being strapped down to a table. For an instant, she feared the warrior might be Rain, but when the Fey was pushed down onto his back for the final bindings, she saw his face.

Not Rain’s face, but not unfamiliar either. A face from her dreams. Her hands splayed instinctively against the glass in a gesture of horror and concern.

“I see you recognize my longtime guest.” The Mage took pleasure in her torment.

She wanted to say she’d never seen him before, but the lie stuck in her throat. She clamped her lips together and glared.

“The great Shannisorran v’En Celay, Lord Death. A legendary warrior of the Fey. Your father.”

Despite her effort to show no emotion, her chin trembled.

“And here.” The Mage walked to the opposite wall, where another viewing window looked into a different cell. A red-haired woman, her body covered in cuts and bruises and healing burns, was bound to a table just like the one in the other room. “Your mother, the beauteous Elfeya, though as you can see, she recently displeased me and was punished for it.”

Ellysetta clenched her jaw and closed her fingers into tight fists to hide the trembling of her hands. She knew what was coming. Her stomach churned with nausea at the prospect.

She turned away from the Fey parents she’d never known. They were, in most respects, utter strangers to her, but they’d suffered unspeakable torments to keep her from sharing their fate.

And she, in her desperation and misguided belief that she could outwit a master manipulator, had walked straight into Vadim Maur’s trap.

“A thousand years you’ve held them,” she told him bitterly. “A thousand years, you’ve tortured them without mercy. But they never gave in. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know they’d rather die than see me surrender my soul to save them?”

“Die?” Vadim Maur exclaimed. “Oh, they won’t die. Not yet, at least. Not for a very, very long time.” Several large, burly men entered the rooms where Shan and Elfeya lay waiting. “As I’ve learned over these last thousand years, Lord Death and his mate are quite strong. What I haven’t yet learned is how strong you are.” He leaned forward and spoke into a pipe that fed into both rooms. “You may begin.”

Moments later, the screams began.

Melliandra hauled her black canvas bag out of its hiding spot, using the rope that held it suspended along the interior wall of the refuse pit. The days in the pit had not been kind, and the canvas had absorbed a rank collection of smells and stains. She tossed the bag into her cart and, at the first empty chamber she found, she snatched the bag and ducked inside. Quickly, she emptied Lord Shan’s belongings from the black bag. The two long straps of daggers, she strung across her shoulders, and she tied the empty sword sheaths to her chest. The swords themselves, she transferred to a clean, canvas laundry sack and tucked behind a crate in the corner of the room. Using sheaths she’d stolen from the Mage Halls, she strapped the two daggers she’d stolen for herself to her legs—one on her right calf, the other on the opposite thigh—and strapped two sheathed red Fey’cha to her forearms, with their hilts just reaching her wrists. The oversized sleeves of the tunic she’d filched from the laundry specifically for this purpose draped down over her hands and hid the Fey’cha and Lord Shan’s weapons nicely.

Done, she tossed the empty black bag back in the refuse cart. After finishing emptying all the remaining refuse bins on the level, she emptied the cart and returned it to its closet, then stepped into the pulley-driven kitchen lift.

She rode the lift down to the kitchens. No one noticed her in the flurry of activity.

“I’m impressed by your ability to remain such an uninvolved observer in the face of such agony.” Genuine appreciation colored the Mage’s voice. “No other shei’dalin has ever witnessed such torment without begging for it to stop.”