Lord Shan moved so fast his hand was a blur. One moment he was gasping for breath, the next, a red-handled dagger quivered in the torture master’s chest, one guard collapsed across Lord Shan’s body, his mouth working soundlessly as blood gushed from the gaping hole in his throat, and the pike he’d been pointing at Lord Shan was buried in the eyeball of the second guard. The third guard died on the point of a second red-handled dagger gripped in Melliandra’s fist.

The thud of falling bodies and the clatter of the pikes against the stone floor brought the guard outside the door running in to investigate. He died before he took his second step into the room, the dagger from the torture master’s chest buried hilt deep in the newcomer’s throat.

Melliandra leapt across the room to drag the fallen guard inside and close the door. “Well, I guess you really can gut a man with your little finger.”

He flashed her a look so flat and cold and full of death, she knew he’d earned every awed and terrified word ever spoken about him.

“That is the least of what I can do.”

“Lillis! Lorelle!” Ellysetta’s magic gathered, twisted into agony as it battered helplessly against sel’dor bonds. The scream ripped from her throat. “Noooo!”

The twins’ terror beat at her. “Ellie! Ellie, help us!”

“Stop it! Please, stop this!”

The High Mage stood unmoved by her tearful plea. “You know how to stop it. The choice is entirely yours.”

Her fingers clutched the railing, yanking at it with enough force to rattle the metal bars in their anchor holds. Another magic rose. Cold and sweet, untouched by the painful bane of sel’dor. She dared not grasp it, not even to save her sisters. To save them now, with that magic, was to doom them to a worse fate than death.

But as the sounds of the darrokken grew closer and the screams of her sisters more frantic, Ellysetta knew she could not just stand there and let them die either. She was not some helpless victim. She was a Tairen Soul, a champion of Light, a defender of the innocent. She was the daughter of Shannisorran v’En Celay, Lord Death, the greatest Fey warrior ever born. What would her father do? What would Rain do?

They would fight.

And if they couldn’t fight with magic, they would find some other way.

In a move so fast she shocked even herself, Ellysetta lunged backward and struck out with both hands, using her sel’dor manacles to deliver crushing blows to the windpipes of the guards holding her chains. They doubled over in pain, gasping for air, and dropped her chains. She caught the trailing ends with a quick flip of her arms and spun towards the High Mage.

His hands were raised. Something stung her on the chest and neck. She managed two more rushing steps in his direction before the world went black.

Using the keys to the table restraints Melliandra found on the body of the dead torture master, she freed Lord Shan from his bonds. Once she was done, he took his dark red crystal in one hand and clenched his jaw briefly as green magic glowed around his fist. When he opened his hand, his crystal was set in a silvery chain, which he fastened around his neck.

“My mate? Elfeya?”

“In the next room. To the right of this one. Here.” She tugged the tunic over her head to reveal the cache of gleaming Fey steel daggers set in their leather sheaths and harness straps slung across her chest. “You’ll want these.” Quickly, she pulled the belts free and handed them over.

He was off the table, reaching for the weapons. “My swords?”

“I had to leave them hidden. They were too bulky. But I brought you the sheaths. Wait!” She grabbed the blue robes she’d stolen from the Mage Halls, but he was already out the door, dagger belts slung crisscrossed over his naked chest, sword belts in hand.

She ran after him and nearly tripped over the body of a guard who must have come from the adjacent room to investigate. Melliandra muttered a curse, dragged the dead guard inside the torture chamber with the others, and thanked the Dark Lord that this part of Boura Fell wasn’t frequented as much as others. The idiot Fey was going to ruin everything if he left a trail of corpses in his wake. The alarm would sound, and he’d never get near the High Mage.

She ran into the other chamber, intending to upbraid him for his carelessness, only to stop in her tracks. Lord Death had slaughtered the remaining Eld with an impressively tidy finesse. Three bodies lay crumpled on the ground, a single, neat little wound in each guard’s chest or throat the only sign of violence. That wasn’t what robbed her limbs of the ability to move. It was the sight of Lord Death and his mate—or, rather, it was the look on Lord Death’s face as he helped his mate from the restraining table and ran shaking hands over her hair, and the radiant glow on her face as she gazed up at him… as if simply standing in each other’s presence had flung open the gates of some unimaginable paradise and enveloped them both in a world of warmth and joy. That look struck Melliandra like a hard blow, and her eyes began to burn like they had the time the flue in the umagi den got blocked and filled the room with smoke.

She averted her eyes and cleared her throat to ease its aching tightness.

“You promised you would kill the High Mage.” She interrupted in a raspy voice, as much to break them apart as to remind Lord Death of his vow. “You agreed that if I freed you, you would kill him.”

Lord Death lifted his mate’s hands to his mouth, but when he turned to Melliandra she was relieved to see that his expression was once more cold and dangerous. “So I did.”