From the front, another brutal, twelve-fold hammer cracked the forward shields. An intense Spirit and Azrahn weave shot through the breech, plowing into two Mages, who suddenly turned and began to throw Mage Fire at their own brothers—incinerating half a dozen Mages and enough of Azurel’s shields to crisp his hair and singe the side of his face before his own red Fey’cha dispatched them.

Azurel touched his scorched flesh. His eyes narrowed.

“Time for you Mages to earn your jewels, Dur,” Azurel snarled to the Mage. “Take out the Spirit masters before all your soldiers slaughter themselves and your weak-minded Mages kill the rest of us. And send something with a kick, not your easily diverted little fireballs. The ones spinning Spirit are directing most of their energy into the illusion weaves, but the others are shielding them. The Mharog will take care of the blades in front.”

Dur nodded grimly. “Mages!” Blue-white Mage Fire gathered in Mage hands, a glowing ball that grew larger and brighter, illuminating the concentration and strain on the Mage’s face as he fed power into it. The massive fireballs shot out of the Mages’ hands straight at the Spirit master. The Mharog spun a four-fold weave to box in the Spirit master so he couldn’t leap clear of the Mage Fire’s path.

Trapped, the dahl’reisen dropped his invisibility weave. He faced, unflinching, the approaching fire and screamed defiance into its consuming maw, “Miora felah ti’Feyreisa! “

The Mage Fire plowed into him and flared with a thunderous boom. When it dissipated, the dahl’reisen Spirit master was gone. Without his energy to sustain it, his weave dissolved, and the Eld soldiers under its control came to their senses, shaking themselves and looking about in shock.

Dur took out the other Spirit masters in the same manner, and after that the air filled with flying Fey’cha, Mage Fire, arrows, and magic. The remaining dahl’reisen fell after a brief but intense battle.

The last to die was a lavender-eyed dahl’reisen. He lay mortally wounded, the lower half of his body in ruins. As Azurel approached, the fallen man gave a bloody, triumphant smile and plunged a red Fey’cha into his own chest.

“Miora felah ti’Feyreisa,” he whispered as his body spasmed. A moment later, his eyes went blank, and his head lolled to one side. The smile remained on his face even in death.

Azurel knelt beside the corpse. Azrahn came to his call, whirling in his palm as he tried to summon the dead man’s soul.

But for the first time in his five hundred years of being Mharog, something blocked him.

Frowning, he fed more energy into his Azrahn weave, trying to force the dahl’reisen’s soul to answer his call.

Still, it did not come.

Instead, a great blinding light rushed up at him. Furious, defiant love, so hot it made the ice of his soul crack and shudder. In sudden, breathless terror, he ripped apart his Azrahn weave and threw himself back away from the dahl’reisen‘s corpse.

“What’s the matter?” Dur asked.

Azurel bit back a sharp curse and rose to his feet. “His soul is bound. It cannot be summoned.”

“What do you mean ‘bound’? Bound to what?”

“To her, you idiot. His soul is bound to her. Bloodsworn.”

Azurel stalked to the next closest dahl’reisen corpse. Steeling himself to confront the white light, he tried to summon the second dahl’reisen’s soul. It, too, defied his call. As did the next, and the next, and the next. “They’re all bloodsworn. Every scorching one of them. That’s why you could not Mark them when they wove Azrahn.” Azurel’s fists clenched, and his teeth ground together. “Never would I have believed Rainier vel’En Daris would allow dahl’reisen to bloodswear themselves to his truemate.”

Dur eyed him skeptically. “The Mages bind the souls of all their followers, but those souls can still be summoned after death.”

“Bloodswearing is different. It is more like shei’tanitsa than your soul-binding. They have willingly tied their souls to hers, dedicated themselves to serve only her in life and in death. It is a compact that cannot be broken or perverted.” Through a combination of Magecraft, Feraz black magic, and Merellian demon sorcery, the High Mage had managed to tie a tairen’s soul to Shannisorran v’En Celay’s but never had he succeeded in calling v’En Celay’s soul to his service. Nor had he ever have been able to claim a bloodsworn soul. “Step aside and let me try.”

Azurel’s eyes narrowed, but he stepped back and allowed the prideful Primage to approach the dahl’reisen’s corpse. He watched as Dur summoned Azrahn and called to the dead man’s soul, watched him feed more power into his summons, and almost smiled as the Mage swore and threw himself away from the body.

“What was that?” Dur gasped.

“That was Rain Tairen Soul’s mate—or rather, the power of her bloodsworn bond. It defends the souls in her keeping.” “It felt like… love.”

Azurel’s lips curled. “Of course. Love is the greatest power of a shei’dalin. With it, she could break you completely. Every evil you have ever worked, she could force you to relive through the eyes of those who loved your victims. You would shred your own flesh from your bones in self-loathing.”

“I never believed the stories were true.”

“Now you know differently.” Few of the Mages who’d earned their blue robes after the Wars had ever seen a shei’dalin at work. Most had only ever known those broken creatures captured by the Mages, bound with sel’dor, and tortured to insanity. And so they thought shei’dalins were weak and insignificant. They forgot that the truemate bond did not form between uneven halves. The truemate of a powerful Fey Lord would have her own power, vastly different but nonetheless equal in strength to her mate’s.