Demonstrating a coordinated precision even Shan had to admire, the bloodsworn dahl’reisen and Fey warriors made quick work of dispatching the Elden guards and securing the level without raising an alarm. While the dahl’reisen and Shan worked to unravel the wards on this chamber—the only one that had been warded and under heavy guard—the other warriors checked the remaining rooms.

“Nothing,” Gaelen announced as they returned. “If they’re here, they’re definitely in this room.”

«Better hurry,» Kiel called from his lookout post near the stairs. «I hear shouting. I think our secret is out.»

Swift as a serpent, the High Mage struck. The cold corruption of his magic pierced Ellysetta’s soul, its claws sinking deep. His triumph lashed at her mind as his power flooded through her body. His penetrating evil began eating like acid at the truemate threads tying her soul to Rain’s.

Chained to the stone floor of Boura Fell, Ellysetta’s body thrashed. A howling roar—the cry of a dying tairen—ripped from her throat. Her back arched, and her body went stiff as the first bond thread connecting her to Rain sundered.

“Got it!” Farel crowed. The wards securing the door fell apart.

The chamber door shattered. An explosion of wood and metal shrapnel flew to the opposite side of the room as the Fey burst through. They took in the scene at a single glance: Rain, gutted, garroted, and hanging from the twin crescents like some macabre trophy, Ellysetta prone on the floor with the High Mage crouched over her, Lillis and Lorelle off to one side, and a stocky human standing by a table of bloody torture instruments.

Kieran went left after the human. Kiel went right to get the girls, using his body to shield Elfeya as she raced towards Rain. The rest of them dove for Vadim Maur.

Maur’s eyes were pits of darkness. A dark aura surrounded him and around the hand pressed over Ellysetta’s heart.

“Maur!” Shan cried. “Get away from my daughter!”

Magic and Fey’cha flew as Shan, Farel, and the quintet attacked. The Mage didn’t even have time to react before Shan’s red Fey’cha plowed hilt deep into his chest. Six more followed an instant later, and Shan’s meicha sliced Maur’s head from his body.

On the far end of the room, Kieran exclaimed “You!” in surprise as he recognized the blood-spattered human responsible for Rain’s torture.

Den Brodson grabbed a pair of bloody knives and raised them threateningly.

Kieran’s eyes narrowed. A cold, killing rage iced over his Fey heart, sealing his compassion behind a thick layer of frost.

“Little sausage, you’ve made your last mistake.” In the blink of an eye, four black Fey’cha flew through the air, sinking into Brodson’s body with enough force to send him careening back into the wall. A fifth buried hilt deep in his crotch. Kieran leapt across the distance and grabbed the screaming Celierian by the throat.

“That was for the Feyreisa. This is for Rain.” He drove another black Fey’cha into Brodson’s belly and ripped it upwards, gutting him like a slaughtered pig. “And this… this is for Lillis and Lorelle, you stinking pile of pig krekk.” His meicha swung, metal sparking as it scraped against stone, and Den Brodson’s head flew from his shoulders.

“Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but that felt scorching good!” Kieran turned to see how his blade brothers had fared, and his satisfaction over dispatching Brodson to the Seventh Hell turned to dust. “Krekk.”

Shannisorran v’En Celay held Ellysetta cradled against his chest, her body limp, her head draped over his arm. Her eyes were open but sightless. They had turned completely black, looking like pits of endless darkness in the stark whiteness of her face.

Gaelen knelt beside her. A spiral of Azrahn twirled in his palm, but no shadow darkened the flesh over Ellysetta’s heart.

“I don’t understand,” Gaelen said. “We killed the Mage. Her Marks are gone, just as the Elves said they would be. She should be free.”

“Mages incarnate their souls into other bodies.” Shan smoothed a hand over his daughter’s hair and looked up at the lu’tan ringed around him. “He must have transferred some part of his soul into hers before he died. That part of him is inside her now, fighting for dominance. Elfeya says her Light is failing.”

“What can we do?”

“Call to her. Help her hold to the Light. I’m going to give what strength I can to Rain. If anyone can help her, he can.”

* * *

Darkness surrounded Ellysetta like a suffocating blanket. The aching emptiness where Rain’s Light had lived inside her was now a drowning abyss.

She could hear voices calling her name in the distance, but the words did not penetrate the thick fog of despair. She’d failed. She’d failed Rain. She’d failed her sisters. Her parents. Steli. The pride. She’d failed the world.

“You thought we were so different, you and I, but you felt the Darkness awaken inside you. You tasted its power. You liked it.” Twined around her, like a serpent wrapped around its prey, the dark sentience of Vadim Maur taunted her.

She wanted to block his voice from her mind, but she could not. She wanted to deny his vile claims, but gods help her, she could not do that either. He was right. There was Darkness inside her. She’d been fighting to hide it, to deny its existence all her life, but it was there. Not just the power to enslave, to destroy, to dominate, but the desire to do so. Control—the godlike power to shape the world, and everyone in it, even against their will—that was the true, irresistible seduction of Azrahn.