"They arrived unexpectedly this morning," Jiarine said. "I'm sure the king would not otherwise have stayed away."

"Oh, of course he wouldn't."

If Jiarine heard the heavy irony in Annoura's voice, she gave no sign of it. "Your Majesty, I've sent for the physician, but he left the palace a bell ago to attend Lady Verakis. I don't know how long it will take him to arrive." Skirts rustled as Jiarine moved closer to the bed. "Lord Bolor is outside, Your Majesty. He's no physician, but he has a tonic that worked wonders tor me earlier this morning."

Annoura grimaced. "No."

"But, Your Majesty-"

She lifted one corner of the compress long enough to fix Jiarine with a withering look. "Have your ears failed you? I said no." Then, because Jiarine had been such a boon companion to her these last weeks, Annoura sighed "Jiarine, I know you’ve taken to him. He's handsome enough, I'll grant you, and he has a sharp wit." Too sharp at times. "But there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. I don't trust him."

Not that she truly trusted anyone except Dorian—and even that was questionable these days—but with most courtiers, Annoura knew what they were thinking even before they did. She could read them. She had a very good idea of how they would react in most important situations, and she knew how to keep one step ahead of them and manipulate them to achieve her own aims.

But this Bolor fellow... Annoura didn't know what he was thinking or how to control him. And that bothered her beyond measure. No matter how much Jiarine seemed to like him, Annoura had no intention of granting Bolor entrée to her inner circle.

And she certainly wasn't going to quaff down some potion the man had brewed up just because Jiarine—-clearly addled by the man's virile good looks—vouched for it.

"Your Majesty—"

"The answer is no. And if he's waiting outside my door, you can just send him away. Except for the king or the physician, no one sets foot in this room but you. Is that clear?"

Jiarine bobbed a brief, stiff curtsy. "Of course. Your Majesty. As you wish."

"Good. Go sit there, in that chair. There's a book on the stand beside it. You may read to me." Annoura dropped the compress back over her eyes. She heard Jiarine cross the room to the door, whisper something unintelligible to someone outside, then return and take a seat.

The lady's acquiescence pleased Annoura. Ill she might be, but some things the queen of Celieria could still control.

"If there's even a possibility the Mages have claimed your queen's soul, we need to know it," Rain declared after King Dorian spent several chimes detailing the troubled political situation in Celieria City.

Dorian flinched, and Ellysetta's heart ached for him. His deep and genuine love for his beautiful queen was well-known throughout Celieria—even a celebrated point of pride to its citizens—and fear for his wife must be eating at him night and day. «Oh, Rain, no wonder he looks so weary.» His country was at war, his nobles were infighting over the Fey, and now his wife might possibly have been corrupted by the Mages. Those were burdens enough to bring the strongest of men to his knees.

«He'll be ten times worse off if his wife truly is in the service of the Mages.» Rain glanced at Gaelen, who gave a slight nod. "As you know, we now have a way to detect Mage Marks. Gaelen showed us the weave this summer. While Ellysetta spins healing on the queen, Gaelen can check her for Mage Marks. Unless she possesses magic herself, she will not sense his weave."

Dorian looked up from his desk, his hands knotted before him. "You're asking me to let you spin forbidden black magic on my queen."

Rain's eyes narrowed. "I'm asking you to let us check your queen for Mage Marks. If she is Mage-claimed, you need to know. If she's not, it will set your mind at ease. If she bears only a few Marks, you need to know that, too, so you can take precautions to prevent further Marks."

As he spoke, an urgent thread of Spirit stabbed into Ellysetta's mind across the private communication pathway forged by their partially completed shei’tanitsa bond. "Ellysetta, open your senses to Dorian and tell me what you find.. Quickly.»

"What's wrong?» It was a measure of her trust in him that she didn't wait for his answer before tearing down the barriers that kept human thoughts and emotions from battering her empathic senses. With swift delicacy, she sent gossamer-fine threads of Spirit and shei’dalin’s love spinning out towards Dorian.

«I told Dorian this summer that the Fey had learned how to detect Mage Marks, but I never told him it required spinning Azrahn. So how did he find out?»

«You think the Mage has gotten to him?»

«J don't know, but he found out from somewhere. And it wasn't from us.»

Her threads reached Dorian, only to encounter a powerful barrier that blocked her attempted probe. «He has shielded himself from me.» She tested the perimeters of the shield lightly, not daring to press with any substantive power for fear that he would sense her presence. Celierian king or not, he was a descendant of the vol Serranis line, and not without magic of his own. When he frowned and waved a hand near his face as if to shoo away a buzzfly, she yanked her weave back. «Sieks'ta, Rain. I can't get past his shields. If I try, he'll know.»

Abruptly, Dorian pushed his chair away from the desk and stood. "Let us be frank, My Lord Feyreisen. I know about your banishment from the Fading Lands and the reason for it. A messenger arrived not three days ago from Tenn v'En Eilan, the leader of the Massan. He wrote to inform me that he is now the acting ruler of the Fading Lands and to warn me that you and the Feyreisa had been stripped of your crowns and banished for spinning Azrahn."