"You think the Fey can protect you. But who will protect them from you? Shall I show you what you will do to them?”

Around her, the pure, blind blackness began to lighten. Shadow became gray fog, swirling in eddies. Smells rose up, thick and overpowering: smoke, scorched flesh, blood, death. Gradually the mists began to clear, enough to see the aftermath of a terrible battle stretched out before her.

She was standing in a field of corpses. Shattered swords lay useless in dead, decaying hands. Torn pennants of a once proud army fluttered on broken shafts. Blood soaked the ground and congealed in dark pools. The stench of death filled the air, so thick each breath made her gag.

Horror mounted as she realized all the bodies strewn around her were either Fey or Celierian. King Dorian, Queen Annoura, Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, Bel, Kieran, Kiel: faces she knew, and thousands more that she didn't. Flies filled the air in swarms so thick they darkened the sky. Rats and crows flowed over the bodies like hideous rivers, feasting on the dead.

"Do you think it's only the Fey who will suffer on your behalf?”

A loud caw drew her attention. Atop a piled mound of bodies, a pair of crows were fighting over something long and pink, tugging it between their beaks and flapping their wings angrily. Their clawed feet hopped back and forth over a tangle of bloodless limbs.

Ellysetta's heart clenched with dread as she saw a child's hand. The fingers were still plump with youth, the lifeless grip clutching a small Stone painted in a pattern she recognized. Oh, gods, please, please no. Her gaze climbed up, following the slender child's arm to the tangle of mink-brown curls. Lillis lay dead upon the pile of bodies, Lorelle beside her. Mama and Papa lay close by, faces etched with expressions of horror, dead arms still reaching protectively towards their children.

Ellysetta wept with voiceless grief and denial. Although some part of her knew this was just another of the Shadow Man's tricks to force her to reveal herself, the sight of her parents dead before her, of Lillis and Lorelle's small bodies being ripped apart and fought over by carrion birds, was more than she could bear. She tried to close her eyes against the hideous vision, but even that escape was denied her. The scene played relentlessly against the backs of her eyelids, refusing to be shut out.

A shrouded figure stood on the hillside. Behind the figure, black- armored soldiers stretched out towards the horizon like a stain upon the earth. The Shadow Man's army. The dark promise of what was yet to come.

"You'll kill them, girl. You'll kill them all. It's what you were born for.”

Something brushed against her ankle. She looked down and found Rain lying on the ground at her feet, his throat and chest slashed open, his eyes milky and dead. A crow perched on his head. The dark wings flapped and covered his face like some hideous shroud, brushing against her ankle again as the bird bent to peck at one dead eye.

It was too much.

The scream ripped from her, the sound a shriek of anguish and despair.

"Get away from him! Don't touch him!" She flung herself at Rain's body, tearing in hysterical revulsion at the birds and vermin feasting on him. Fury gathered inside her and pulsed in a. fierce, hot blast of rage. The rats and crows burst into flame. "Liar! Foul, evil liar! I'd die before hurting the people I love!”

A hand clamped hard around her throat. The Shadow Man who had been on the hillside just a moment ago now stood before her, shrouded in black, his face hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. Ice froze her blood in her veins.

"Bright Lord save me," she whispered, more from instinct than hope, knowing it was already much too late. She'd given herself away, revealed herself to him.

Worse, she'd revealed her magic.

The Shadow Man laughed, the sound triumphant. "The Bright Lord doesn't live here, girl. And he wouldn't save you even if he did." Her tormentor threw back his hood, and Ellysetta cried out in denial. Instead of the monstrous visage she'd always expected, her own face stared back at her, pale and ravaged, with twin black pits— bottomless and flickering with red lights—where her eyes should have been.

"I see you ... Ellysetta." The voice came out of her own mouth, but the sound was a familiar, malevolent hiss. "You can't hide from me any longer" The cloaked Ellysetta lifted a wavy black blade and sent it plunging towards her heart.

"No!" She shrieked and threw her hands up. The savage thing inside her howled with wrath. Fire boiled from her hands in voracious incendiary clouds. The cloaked Ellysetta shrieked in agony as the flames enveloped her.

Hot wind blew across Rain's face. He stared with dazed incomprehension at the flames leaping all around him as pella trees crackled and burned. The sand at his feet smoked and shattered as a wave tumbled over molten glass. Some small part of his mind registered the memory of furious heat rolling through him, but all that remained now was fear.

"Ellysetta" Oh, gods. «Ellysetta!»

No answer.

«Ravel! Fey! Ti'Feyreisa! Ti'Feyreisa!» Rain sprang into the sky, shooting high over the trees in a stream of sparkling gray mist that solidified instantly in tairen form. Air- powered wind filled his wings. He wheeled west towards the glow of Celieria City in the distance. A command barked on a dagger of Spirit sent the Fey rushing to reinforce the protective weaves around Ellysetta's home, and check on his truemate. Something had attacked her, but none of them had sensed it.

«She is here. She is unharmed,» Ravel called back, «but hurry.”