Annoura hid a pleased smile as the woodcarver's girl downed her keflee in a few quick gulps. This should be interesting. Let Dorian just try to win favors for the Fey after this. She sat back in her chair and laughed at a comment murmured in her ear by Lord Nin, the Great Lord sitting to her left.

A few moments later, satisfaction turned to worry as a heightening tension spread through Annoura's body. Her skin grew warm. She reached for her fan, snapped it open, and began fanning her flushed face. What was happening? She'd avoided the keflee—and even if she hadn't, she'd watched her steward serve the girl a special cup, one already poured and ready for her. All the other guests had been served a normal blend poured from silver kefleepots.

She glanced over at Dorian and saw him running a finger under his collar. Ruddy color had darkened his cheeks. Her womb clenched. She wanted to touch him. Right now. She wanted to crawl into his lap, run her hands through his hair, and rub her body against his.

Dorian turned his head. His hazel eyes were dark and glowed faintly as they did sometimes when his Fey blood rose. Moisture drenched her silk undergarments. Good gods, she was ready to climax just from a single hot look. What was happening?

Rain was speaking with Lord Barrial. Sighing to herself, Ellysetta watched the masculine beauty of his mouth form each word, each syllable. Like a kiss, she thought. His lips framed each word like a kiss. The steward had brought her another cup of keflee. She sipped this one, savoring the potent flavors and imagining she was instead sipping heady kisses from Rain's lips.

Her gaze slid down his throat to the lean power of his dagger-bedecked chest, clothed in snug black leather. The leather, she knew, would be warm to the touch. And it would hold the aroma of magic and Rain. She remembered the feel of his leathers against her cheek, the hard press of his knives against her jaw and temple, the sound of his heartbeat in her ear, low and pounding, a thrumming, sensual beat that sang a magical weave of compelling desire. She watched in appreciative wonder as his spine stiffened and his chest expanded on a deep breath.

She stared hungrily at Rain's arms, remembered them closing about her, wrapping her in alternating layers of protection, unyielding strength, and hot, carnal need. Beneath her gaze, his biceps bunched tight, straining against the seams of his leather tunic. His hands clenched and shook. She stared at them, willing the fingers to unbend and reach out for her, but they did not. With vague regret and growing hunger, her gaze trailed back up his chest, caressing the heavy beating pulse in his throat, whispering invisible dreams of kisses against his squared jaw and sumptuous mouth. At last, her eyes met his, and she found herself staring into the blazing heat of the Great Sun.

Kolis kept Jiarine chanting the Feraz spell in a voice so quiet not even the lord sitting next to her could hear it over the buzz of conversation that filled the banquet hall. Across the room, the Baristani girl had taken on a glow. The hint of light was so faint it would be undetectable to any non-magic-wielders in the room, but Jiarine Montevero had been born in the north. In addition to her many other useful talents, she possessed a fair command of Spirit. Enough, in any case, to recognize the unmistakable signature of the faint lavender flows spinning out from Ellysetta Baristani. He felt Jiarine's body grow tense.

Spirit. The girl was weaving Spirit.

But what strength? The weaves seemed too fine and fragile. A minor command was not what the High Mage was looking for. Only a master's strength would do.

He made Jiarine focus more energy into the talis spell, pushing the girl harder to see how strong that faint weave would become. A few chimes later, the glow around her grew brighter, the threads of her weave intensified, light shot out across heretofore invisible streams that had already blanketed the room from one corner to another without anyone being the wiser.

Only then did Kolis realize the weaves were already working on Jiarine, had been for longer than he knew. The clenching tightness that he'd mistaken for tension was her female body growing hot and aching with need.

A hand squeezed Jiarine's thigh. Kolis looked down and followed the plump hand to the portly body of Lord Bevel. Perspiration gleamed on the man's bald pate, and his thick lips glistened with saliva. He was leaning forward, breathing heavy hot breaths against the bare, plump tops of Jiarine's br**sts.

Kolis's consciousness reeled back in disgust. Surely she wouldn't. Jiarine appreciated her own value too well to hump a foul rultshart like Bevel.

But the Baristani girl's weave was no slight suggestion, and Jiarine could not resist its dictates despite Kolis's attempts to stop her. When Bevel's fat tongue slid across her skin and dove down to curl around one diamond-hard nipple, she came in an ecstatic gush and reached hungrily for the thick bulge tenting the man's trousers.

Sickened, Kolis fled Jiarine's body and left her to her rutting. He had what he'd come for. Ellysetta Baristani was a master of Spirit, powerful enough to exceed even the High Mage's lofty standards.

Ellysetta couldn't look away from Rain's burning eyes. She was distantly aware of the shrieking madness of the tairen. She was even more distantly aware that the room had fallen silent, the quiet broken only by the shallow gasps of hundreds of lungs desperately seeking air. She wanted to speak, but her tongue felt too thick, her throat too dry. Her mind was a whirl of feelings and incoherent thoughts, simple sentences stripped to their barest essence.

I want. I need. I ache. I burn.

«Burn with me. ”

And then Rain's arms were around her, sweeping her out of her chair and against his chest, and air blew in a cooling rush against her hot skin as he sped up the stairs and out of the palace into the cool Celierian night. Her head fell back against his arm, her eyes drank in the star jeweled sky. The sky whooshed past in a dizzying rush. Rain was running, with her in his arms. Then they were home in the night- darkened front room of her house. She was reaching for Rain, trying to hold him, needing him, wanting … something. The ache was a terrible pain inside her. "Rain, please.”