As it always had—and as Rain knew it always would—his heart leapt at the sight of her. She was a vision in white and silver and stunning flame.

Her white silk gown—overlaid with Elvian lace and studded with tiny diamonds like morning dewdrops caught in a spider’s fine web—whispered across the marble terrace stones as she crossed to his side. Rajahl vel’En Daris’s crystal gleamed at her wrist, while Rain’s crystal hung from a platinum chain around her neck. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders and down to her waist like a cloud of tairen fire.

Her fingers slid across the back of Rain’s wrist, but he turned his hand to thread his fingers through hers and hold her hand the way Celierians—and now he, as well—preferred.

His thumb brushed across hers in a tiny caress, and he smiled into Ellysetta’s bright Fey eyes. “Beylah vo, shei’tani.”

She tilted her head to one side. “For what?”

“For… everything.” The Eye of Truth had sent him to Ellysetta to find the salvation of his peoples. But in her, he had also found the salvation of his own soul.

He had longed for death until she renewed his fierce desire for life. She had smashed countless Fey traditions and taboos, and forced him to rethink everything he believed of the world as she forged her own, unique path with quiet but relentless courage. He had thought all dahl’reisen were beyond redemption, yet she had restored Gaelen’s soul and won the bloodsworn loyalty of the Brotherhood of Shadows and brought the gift of their powerful magic and fertility back to the Fey. He had thought Azrahn was evil, yet even before the Mirror of Knowledge had revealed its secrets, she had proven the forbidden magic could be just as powerful a force for good.

She’d made the world beautiful and wondrous once more, as it hadn’t been for him since he was a boy. She made him believe the Fey would again become the great, shining Light they had once been to this world. A beacon of hope and freedom and strength that would forever stand fast against the Dark.

She smiled at his thoughts and shook her head. “You give me too much credit. Most of that is not my doing.”

“And there you are wrong. Without you, shei’tani, none of this would have been possible.” He waved his hand to indicate the rebuilt beauty of Dharsa with its fully restored Hall of Scrolls and the crowds gathering at the foot of Dharsa’s central mount. Fey, Elves, Celierian friends and dignitaries, all standing side by side in the heart of the city, garbed in splendorous raiment as they attended Rain and Ellysetta’s truemating celebration and the coronation of the Fading Lands’ new queen.

“He is right,” Marissya said, as she and Dax joined them on the terrace. Like dozens of other mates of the Fey, the pair were garbed in the verdant green-and-white hues they would both wear until the birth of their child. The heady scent of Amarynth perfumed the air around them, blooming in abundance from every bower and garden in Dharsa. “You have changed our world.”

“I never meant to.”

Marissya smiled. “The gods weave as the gods will, Feyreisa.”

The breeze blew a wayward curl against Ellysetta’s cheek. Rain reached out to brush it back out of her face. “Where are your parents?”

“With Tajik and Papa, keeping Lillis and Lorelle out of trouble until the ceremonies begin. Papa has been regaling them with stories of my childhood.” She laughed, but a sheen of tears glimmered in her eyes. Despite her overwhelming joy at freeing her Fey parents, he knew she still sorely missed her adoptive mother. Today’s bonding ceremony would be the second time Ellysetta and Rain had celebrated the joining of their lives. Mama’s absence, and the absence of other dear friends lost to the evil of the Eld, was a somber Harmony to the now-joyous verse of her Song.

Happiness was hers, but as with all great gifts of the Fey, that happiness had come at a steep price.

“I think Lauriana would have liked Shan and Elfeya,” Rain said.

Ellysetta nodded, as she thumbed away her tears. “Aiyah. I know she would. And I know they would have liked her, too.”

“How could we not?” A warm, vibrant voice replied. “She is the woman who kept our daughter safe and guided and loved her in our stead.”

Rain and Ellysetta both turned to the open archway leading from the ballroom as Shan, Elfeya, Sol Baristani, and the twins stepped outside to join them.

Smiling, Elfeya v’En Celay approached to embrace her daughter and her daughter’s mate. Ellysetta’s birth mother looked every inch the powerful shei’dalin she was, in a gown of stunning scarlet and gold with her truemate’s sorreisu’kiyr set in a golden torque at her throat. Her Light was nearly as bright as Ellysetta’s, setting her skin aglow so that she shone like a star. She resembled her daughter in so many ways—the fiery hair, the gentleness, the steely will that lay beneath her vast compassion and empathic gifts. It was that steel that had enabled her to survive her thousand years of torment. That steel that had made her the indomitable truemate of the legendary warrior standing at her side.

Rain held out his hand to clasp the forearm of Shannisorran v’En Celay, the warrior once known as Lord Death. He flinched slightly at the acid burn of the sel’dor bands lining the thick golden cuffs at Shan’s wrists. Shan might be free from the High Mage, but he was not free of the man’s dread gifts. The tairen’s soul Vadim Maur had tied to Shan’s was with him still—and just as wild and savage as it had been during his captivity in Boura Fell.