Ellie bit her lip to stop from laughing. Word of the earlier Stones match with the Feyreisen had obviously spread through the West End and beyond. "I hope you're feeling up to another match, Rain," she murmured. "Because I don't think they're here to play with me.”

Rain looked utterly taken aback. "Do you think they just decided to gather here on the off chance I would show up?”

"Oh, no. I think they had forewarning." She tilted her head towards Lillis and Lorelle.

"Ah." He seemed to gird himself. "Well, I suppose we shouldn't disappoint them." Holding out his wrist for Ellie's fingers, he escorted her to the Stones grid.

There were too many children to include all of them in a single round of Stones, so Rain divided them into groups by producing a handful of small coins that, once divided among the children, changed color to separate them into teams. Rain shed his weapons, and the games began—though only after Ellie made certain the rules prohibited all use of magic.

On their third game, Ellie and a boy she didn't know—a street child, by the unkempt look of him—raced to claim a contested square. Laughing, she reached the square first. A split second later, he plowed into her at full speed, knocking them both off their feet.

"Ow!" She landed hard. Her elbows cracked on the unforgiving surface of the Stones grid. The boy's knee caught her in the belly and drove the air from her lungs. As she lay there, gasping for breath, she caught a brief glimpse of the boy's eyes beneath his grimy mop of hair.

For one strange, surreal moment, she could have sworn the child's eyes were black, glowing with tiny red sparks.

She blinked, and the image was gone. The boy's eyes were brown and filled with fear. He didn't even bother to look over his shoulder at Rain, who was bearing down on him. He just scrambled to his feet and ran as if pursued by the Hounds of the Seventh Hell.

"Shei'tani?" Rain dropped to one knee and reached to help her up. "Are you hurt?”

"Just winded," she wheezed. She held out her hands and stared in shock. Red blood—quite a bit of it—covered one hand. She looked down at her waist, and light-headedness assailed her. Her side had been laid open by the slash of a knife, the wound deep enough that her skirts were already dark with blood.

The boy had stabbed her.

Rain swept her into his arm and barked out a rapid spate of orders. "Fey! Ti'Feyreisa! Bel! Kaiven chakor! Catch that boy. Quickly, before he gets away. The rest of you, to me!”

Ellie's quintet raced after the street boy. Moving in a blur of speed, another dozen Fey snatched up Lillis and Lorelle and carried them off to safety. The rest formed a tight protective ring around Rain and Ellysetta.

Ellie stared up at Rain's pale, drawn face and blinked as his image wavered. Had the boy poisoned as well as stabbed her?

"I've got to stop the bleeding before I take you to Marissya," Rain told her. He clasped a hand over her wounded side, and a bright glow of green Earth flowed from his fingertips. Her skin tingled, then began to sting. She hissed as the sting became sharp needles of pain lancing through her side. It felt as if he were tugging the torn edges of her flesh together.

Rain swore with quiet bitterness when she flinched. "Forgive me, Ellysetta. I was not thinking to stop the pain, only the blood." Cool lavender Spirit joined Earth, overriding her protesting nerves with an illusion of normalcy. Then it was only the tumult of his emotions that beat at her. With inexplicable surety, she not only sensed each emotion distinctly, she knew exactly what motivated each of them: fury over her wounding, shame that he'd let it happen and that he'd caused her further pain.

Fear that the wound might be worse than mere rent flesh. Ellysetta cupped a hand to his face. "I'm all right," she assured him.

He grasped her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. "Of course you are," he agreed. Against her palm, she felt his lips tremble, and in her mind she heard his quiet, shocked thought: so dear, in so short a time. The thought wasn't sent on a thread of Spirit, it was simply there, in her mind. He kissed her again on the lips, quick and fierce, then clutched her close to his chest and stood. "Fey!" he cried. "Bote lute'cha!”

The remaining Fey circled tight around Rain, red Fey'cha gripped menacingly in their hands. Moving as one unit, they raced towards Celieria's palace and Marissya's healing hands.

The boy ran like a rabbit.

Bel swore as he skidded around a corner and smashed into a fruit seller's cart. Fruit went everywhere, apples and oranges rolling across the narrow cobbled lane. Bel stumbled on a raft of apples and went sprawling. He tucked in his head and shoulder and turned the sprawl into a diving roll, coming up on one knee in time to see the boy duck down a small alleyway.

The rest of the quintet vaulted past Bel and cleared the river of rolling fruit in great, air-powered leaps. «Down the alley on the right!» he commanded. What advantage the Fey had in speed, the boy negated with his intimate knowledge of the city's many side streets and alleyways and what appeared to be an innate ability to avoid capture—learned, no doubt, from years of evading the authorities after picking pockets and thieving. The boy led them on a wild chase, twisting through a labyrinth of uneven roads and narrow alleys, ducking through shops and darting through merchant stalls, always managing to spin away just before the Fey's weaves could reach him. Rowan and Adrial took to the rooftops to try to cut the boy off while Bel and the others remained in pursuit on the ground.