Her anger flared higher. "There is no new me. I am the same me that I have always been. I will be the same me tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.”

"My lady, please, stand still just a few chimes more," the seamstress pleaded.

Ellie scowled down at her. "I am standing still!”

«Ellysetta, you will speak to me. »He wanted her to speak? «GET OUT OF MY MIND!» She felt his jagged burst of pain as her angry response blasted between them, and the ache between her eyes became sharp, gouging daggers thrusting into her brain. Dizziness assailed her, but she fought it back.

"I apologize if my choice of words has offended you, Mistress Baristani," the cobbler said. "I merely meant that in your new position, you will require a different form of attire.”

"I am very aware of what you meant, ser. But I am now and always will be a woodcarver's daughter. No amount of fancy new clothes—or elegant footwear—will ever change that." Ellie raised a hand to her head and began to rub her temple.

"Please, Lady Ellysetta, put your arm back down and hold still," the seamstress begged.

Irritation shrieked through Ellie, but she lowered her arm.

"Ah, Duanniza Baristani," Duan Parlo Vincenze, the elegant Capellan chef who catered to the cream of Celierian society, gestured extravagantly with a lace-festooned handkerchief. "I have sketched the perfect bridal cake for you. Tall. Elegant. Simple but boi mezzo, very pretty." He held up the sketch of a towering wedding cake. "You like, eh?”

Ellie stared at the sketch in horror. Layer after angular layer of plain square cakes perched on tall, gawky columns. The cake was stark in its plainness, except for gargantuan bunches of dramatically sketched flowers that dripped down the columns. She supposed the chef meant the flowers to complement the minimalist appearance of the cake, but to her they looked like monstrous weedy growths run amok. Ill-fitting, ridiculous attempts to make something pitifully plain look attractive and feminine.

"No. I don't like." Her chest felt tight. The room was too small, too crowded. Her mind whirled. The pain in her head was staggering. The anger seemed to be consuming her, stealing the very breath from her lungs.

With a gasp of offended pride, the chef whipped his lacy handkerchief through the air like a sword. "But, Duanniza, it is perfect for you.”

"You must at least select a pair of slippers for the ball. Lady Marissya insisted”

"My lady, please stand still. Pella needs to repin the waist of this gown.”

"The cake is hideous! I don't care about the flaming slippers! And for the last time, I am standing still!" Gods, she needed air. She was going mad. She couldn't breathe. Her vision began to blur.

"Ellysetta." Rain stood in the doorway, and there was no mistaking the whip of command in his voice.

"WHAT?" Anger roared to blazing life. This was all his fault! She whirled to face him. Pain stabbed into her waist as she impaled herself on the long, wickedly sharp tailor's pin held in the seamstress Pella's hand.

Ellie screamed.

Every window in the Baristani house exploded in a cloud of shattered fragments.

Rain leapt forward, power bursting around him, his teeth bared in savage fury.

"Get back!" he roared. Most of the people in the room were too stunned to move, but a punishing thrust of Air flung their bodies out of his path. Rain destroyed Bel's opaque weave of Spirit with a single thought. Seamstresses shrieked and fled like mice as the Tairen Soul reached for his mate.

Across the street, as the screams of the milling crowd still echoed in the aftermath of the exploding windows, Kolis Manza cursed and turned away. So close. He'd been so close.

Magic had definitely been released. Elemental Air magic and a masterful burst of it. But just before the burst of Air, the Tairen Soul had arrived, power radiating from him in a huge, shining, barely controlled aura that had distorted Kolis's view. And when the Tairen Soul had released blasting weaves of his own, he'd wiped away all hope of tracing the first weave to its source.

The magic had been hers. Kolis knew it had been hers.

But because he hadn't witnessed the source of the magic with his own senses, he couldn't be sure. He had to be sure. The High Mage wasn't forgiving of mistakes.

Kolis crushed the now-drained Feraz talis in his hand and threw it down a sewer grate. The small piece of beeswax, wrapped tight with a single flame-colored strand of hair, made a tiny, distant splash as it hit the water below and was carried away.

"I'm sorry I acted so badly," Ellie whispered for the thousandth time. "I don't know what came over me. I'm not like that. I don't get angry. I don't treat people rudely.”

"Shh," Rain soothed. "Las, shei'tani." He stroked her hair and held her close as they sat together on the narrow bed in her room.

After catching Ellie in his arms, Rain had carried her upstairs to her bedroom and then refused to leave her. Lauriana had strenuously objected to his presence on her daughter's bed, but a hot, dangerous look and a snarling command to hold her tongue or risk having it silenced shut her up. Not the most diplomatic of solutions. She'd turned right around and would have marched out of the house to fetch her husband had not Bel hurried after her to soothe the worst of her maternal outrage. They were still downstairs, Lauriana subjecting Bel to a furious tirade recounting every indignity and offense the Fey had visited upon her family and their good name, but at least she'd left Rain in peace to tend his truemate.