by C. L. Wilson
Rain was the first to break the silence. “Farsight told me the Elves call this the river of true dreaming,” he said. “Apparently the crystals in the riverbed absorb the light of the moons and the Great Sun and convert it into some sort of magical energy that Seers use to better understand their visions of the Dance. He suggested we might find a swim…enlightening.” He offered a coaxing smile. “I’m not at all fond of Elvish mysticism, but I confess I thoroughly enjoyed the last time we swam in magical waters.”
She turned to glare at him. “You tell me the bond madness has begun. You refuse to let me try to heal your soul in order to prolong your life, and less than five chimes later, you’re thinking about mating?”
White teeth flashed in a rueful smile. “I am your shei’tan. No matter what other thoughts may occupy my mind, the idea of mating with you is always among them.”
When she did not respond to his humor in kind, the small smile faded, replaced by sober, unflinching honesty. “There is enough sorrow and danger in our lives. I am the Tairen Soul. Even without the bond madness, how long we will have together in this life has never been certain. Mage Fire or a sel’dor bolt could take me in the next battle. Would you have us spend what time we have bewailing our fate or would you rather we drink every drop of happiness we can from each moment we have together?”
He was right. Their lives could be cut short at any moment. How could she waste even a moment of the time they had now mourning a future that might never happen? Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Rain…”
“Ssh. Nei avi.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tears away, then took her mouth in a sweet, slow, tender kiss that robbed her of all regret. When he pulled back, his lips curved in a slow smile, and in ancient, courtly Feyan, he said, “So, shei’tani…wilt thou swim with thy beloved in a river of dreams?”
Her lips trembled. He was dying now because of her, because she could not complete their bond. And yet, as his skin touched hers and his emotions flowed freely into hers, she could not detect a single trace of remorse or regret or blame. He loved her unconditionally, even if that love would lead him to his death.
She blinked back the tears he would not have her shed. Never could she have loved anyone more. Never had she felt more undeserving of him. “Aiyah.” She stood up on her toes and found his mouth with hers. “Kem’san. Kem’reisa. Kem’shei’tan.” She murmured the words against his mouth between kisses and sang them to his soul across the threads of their bond. “Ke vo san, Rainier Feyreisen. I love you.”
His eyes glowed warm lavender. “Te ke vo, shei’tani,” he answered. “For the rest of this life and every other life that follows.” He kissed her thoroughly. “No matter what happens, never doubt that. No one—mortal or magic—could be happier than I am to be your shei’tan.”
She managed a slightly watery smile and treasured the small surge of joy it gave him. That reaction gave her the strength to thumb away her tears. “Veli, Rain. Let’s find out how magical this river really is.”
She spun a quick weave of Earth to shed her leathers and steel, and dove into the water. A kaleidoscope of color lit up around her as she cut through the current, and she surfaced in an explosion of shimmering pink and blue light. Her feet settled on the crystal sand of the riverbed, and a tingle rippled through her body. Oh, yes, there was magic here.
She traced her hand through the water, swirling magic in her wake, and a dazzling color lit up the waters in response as the river amplified the glow of magic like a million tiny prisms.
On the shore, Rain shed his war steel and the padded silk tunic he wore beneath, baring the smooth, silky strength of his leanly muscled frame. Tall, unearthly beautiful, Rain shimmered silver in the moonlight as he walked into the river. A small wake trailed out behind him, ripples of scarlet, green, and deep violet.
Droplets of water tracked trails down her skin. The autumn night air kissed her damp breasts with tantalizing coolness and brought her nipples to tight peaks.
His eyes began to glow as he reached for her, but she laughed and danced just out of reach. She cast a teasing look over her shoulder and began to circle him. Ribbons of yellow, pink, and summer blue streamed out behind her.
The colors around him flared with sudden brightness as he spun arms of Spirit that caught her tight and pulled her towards him. “Veli taris, fellana.” Come here, woman.
She laughed again and let him pull her close. Her lashes fluttered down as his real hands closed around her, and her laughter changed to a slightly breathless moan. “Taris ke sha.” Here I am. Her head tilted back, and her hair fell freely to her waist. She loved the feeling of strength and protectiveness that always came with even the simplest touch of his hands to her skin. Adoration…even reverence…mingled with the hot stamp of desire. Never had there been a woman born who felt more cherished than she did when Rain Tairen Soul took her in his arms.
“Rain…” She murmured his name deep in her throat as the burning heat of his mouth closed around her and his tongue and teeth teased the sensitive skin of her breasts until a mere breath made her tremble. He hadn’t summoned his magic, yet he ensorcelled her as surely as if he’d spun a Spirit weave to captivate her mind and set her senses afire. He purred against her skin, and the vibrating hum made her body convulse in plea sure. Her fingers knifed into the thick, inky silk of his hair and clutched his head, holding him to her.
She’d never felt beautiful in her life, until him. Even free of the glamour that had hidden her Fey appearance behind a mask of plain, awkward mortality, she still felt more like Ellie Baristani than Ellysetta Feyreisa. Except when Rain looked at her and touched her the way he was doing now.
She skimmed her nails across the silky skin of his back and gave a throaty growl as his muscles twitched and shuddered in response. Desire roared through her in a fiery rush, his and hers combined, the sensations and emotions so intertwined she could not separate them. Her sex throbbed with a hot, heavy ache, and her hips bucked against his in instinctive, rhythmic demand.
Rain shuddered as heat blasted through his veins. Tender devotion incinerated like thin silk wrapped around a white-hot coal, softness replaced by consuming heat. His teeth grazed her skin, nipping with sharp little bites that made her gasp and arch against him.
His tairen roared inside him, turning blood to fire and flesh to burning stone. Give us our mate. Take her. Claim her. Make her ours. The fierce snarl whipped through his mind. His tairen growled and hissed, baring fangs and claws. There was no sweet gentleness when tairen mated. There was only fire and heat, the rush of the wind, the stab of talons gripping tight, the scream of desire and fierce possession that rocked the heavens.
Spirit spun from his fingers in wild waves, and the river around them blazed with fiery lights. Hands, teeth, tongues, lips, wings, talons, his Spirit bodies—both Fey and tairen—caressed and tormented her, claimed and plundered. Gone was the gentle lover. He poured out upon her his magic, his essence, the blazing need of his soul, the primal core of him that existed when all else was stripped away: pure, dominant male energy, unyielding and fierce, aggressor and defender, protector and conqueror, the darkness to her light.
Ours, his tairen hissed. She is ours. Our mate. Our female. Our pride.
“Kem,” he snarled to Ellysetta, sending the claim in Spirit and across the threads of their bond as well. Magic flowed across her naked flesh, drawing her muscles tight, detonating shuddering bursts of plea sure in her breasts, her loins, her womb. She screamed and his soul flared with triumph as her plea sure fed his own. “Ve sha kem. You are mine. Say it.”
She clutched at him with greedy, wordless hunger. Her mouth dragged across his skin, trailing fire in its wake. Her legs wrapped around his waist, trying to draw him to her, her own tairen seeking completion without submitting to his claim.
“Say it,” he demanded. His hands clutched her hips, fingers sinking into her flesh as he raised her up. The head of his sex brushed against the soft entrance of her sheath, tempt
ing her, teasing her with the promise of what she desired. Her hips bucked again, and her teeth closed on his neck in a swift, sharp bite, a female tairen’s nip of irritation and command. He tossed his head back, shaking his wet hair out to its full length, but he refused to give in.
In the pride, the females were makai, those who led the pride. But in mating, it was the male who staked his claim with unyielding dominance. A tairen male pursued his mate with relentless intensity, chasing her through the skies, using his greater speed and endurance to wear down her willful resistance. He herded her where he wished her to go with darting passes and daring swoops. He demonstrated his mastery of the skies by diving towards her on a collision course, only to pull back at the last moment so that he merely brushed her flying form, wingtip to wingtip, fur to fur. And with each brush of tairen bodies, he released the heady mating scent that teased and tormented her, driving her wild until she could do nothing but scream a final roar of defiance and succumb to him.
“Say it,” he rumbled again. “Ve sha kem.” A bump of his hip brought another tantalizing brush of his sex against hers. “You are mine. Say it.”
She clawed at him, snarled at him, twisted and writhed in his grip, but he would not relent until finally, exhausted and aching for him, she growled, “Aiyah, ke sha ver. I am yours.”
“Forever, kem’tani.” And, gripping her hips, he plunged into her core. Their eyes closed and their heads flung back on a mutual cry as he filled her, joining them in body as their magic swirled and twined about them.
When he opened his eyes again, the world around them had changed.
They were not in a magical river in Elvia anymore, but lying together, his body covering hers, on a silken couch in a tent whose purple silk drapes swirled and flapped in a warm night breeze, redolent with the heady scent of tairen. Muted roars rumbled in the night, and flashes of fire lit up the distant sky where tairen played near the snowy peaks of the Feyls. He recognized the place as the shellabah on his ancestral family lands near the Feyls.
He stared down into her face as his body surged into hers, and her gold-kissed hair spilled about her head in a wild tangle. He frowned…not gold. Her hair should be…? Thought disintegrated. His back arched, ecstasy splashing across his senses. “Fellana, what you do to me.” His hips surged again and he watched her face. Her eyes were closed and her lips parted on a gasp.
“No more than you do to me.” Her voice was a husky purr, rich and deep and throaty. It hummed across his skin and vibrated in his soul in a place no other woman had ever touched.
His hands stroked the silky, pale skin, its silvery glow so bright it was as if the Mother Moon herself shone from within. So soft. So sweet. All woman. All his. His own true love. He bent to trail kisses down her arm, her palm, drawing the delicate, slender fingers into his mouth. His tongue slid across the sensitive pads of her fingertips and touched lightly on the delicate edges of her fingernails.
She stretched and purred like a cat, and a smile spread across her face. Such luminous beauty. So unexpected, so perfect in every way. If he had ever dreamed of a truemate, she would have been the woman in his arms. Silken curls like sunlight gleaming on golden seas. A body strong and yet soft beneath his hands. And eyes…Her lashes lifted, revealing eyes of purest tairen green, pupil-less and blazing with the magic of her kind. Tairen’s eyes. Her eyes. The eyes of the soul that he loved.
Tears sprang up, surprising him, shimmering on his lashes. “How could you do it?” he asked. “How could you give up the sky for me?”
She pulled him down for a kiss, licked at his tears in the way of her kind. She was still, in so many ways, more feline than Fey. “Van, kem’san, kem’Fey, I would give up much more than that to spend a lifetime with you. In the pride, love is a choice, and I chose you.”
“But your wings…your beautiful wings…”
She smiled. “How can I miss my wings when you make my soul fly?” She wrapped her arms and legs around him and purred against his throat. “Make me fly now, Van. And fly with me.” She gave a smile that was pure woman—nei, pure female, fierce and free. She was silken heat, hot as tairen flame; and he was burning stone, hard, unyielding, absorbing her heat, amplifying it and feeding it back to her with each demanding thrust of his body in hers.
Her inner muscles clenched tight around him, making his eyes close on a sudden gasp and wringing a cry from his lips. “Fellana—”
Rain’s eyes flashed open as Ellysetta’s body clenched tight around him. Her hair shone bright as flame in the moonlight, and her eyes had gone pure tairen, pupil-less and blazing bright.
“Make me fly, Rain.” Her body surged against his. Her nails dug into his back like claws. “Fly with me.”
“Aiyah.” His voice rumbled low and guttural, choked with emotion and need. His body surged into hers, one powerful, driving thrust after another, as if through strong merging of bodies he could also merge their souls. The water around them whirled with explosions of vivid color as their passions burned higher and hotter. He could almost see them, two tairen joined in a fierce dance of mating, soaring and plummeting, tails twined together, wings outstretched.
With their bodies united, their emotions so closely entwined he could not tell them apart, Rain knew what it was to be pure Light, untainted and absolute. There was no place for Shadow, no place for sorrow or guilt, fear or regret, no place for Rage or remorse. At this moment, he was just Rain, beloved of Ellysetta, whose passion burned bright as the hottest flame and whose soul soared higher than even tairen dared to fly.
Celieria City
The prancing little prissypants had survived!
Gethen Nour stormed about the confines of his boardinghouse room, heaping curse after curse upon the perfumed head of Gaspare Fellows, Master of Graces. The knife wound should have seen him dead from blood loss within minutes.
He stopped walking. The Velpin. The Light-cursed Velpin. The Fey had put a cleansing weave on the waters a thousand years ago, and one of the side benefits was a mild healing effect. No doubt that had helped keep Fellows alive until the Fey found him, sealed his wound, and took him back to the palace, where one of the local hearth witches had managed to revive him enough for him to give the name of his attacker.
And now the city streets were crawling with King’s Guards looking for the missing courtier, Lord Bolor.
He was ruined.
Returning to the palace was out of the question. He’d be imprisoned and held for torture or Truthspeaking. The queen already despised him, so he could expect no aid from that quarter. As his closest companion in the court, Jiarine would likely be questioned and tortured as well, and even if she invoked the spell to wipe her memories, its effects were not indefinite. She’d give him up to save herself.
And returning to Eld was no better option.
The High Mage had already expressed his displeasure with Gethen’s performance in Celieria. To return in utter failure—as the Primage who had revealed his presence to the mortals…
Gethen shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about.
No, he couldn’t stay here, and he couldn’t go home. He had to go somewhere else. Merellia, perhaps, or Droga. Or, better yet, someplace no Mage would think to look for him—someplace the long arm of the High Mage hadn’t yet reached.
Gethen snatched the small leather case stuffed in the armoire and began throwing into it the cache of magical implements he kept hidden here. Selkahr crystals, rings, and bands of power for the Mage spells he’d thought he might need here in Celieria, somulus powder, other herbs and potions. He had another such cache at the Inn of the Blue Pony. He’d go there, collect it, then find some way to smuggle himself out of the city. He didn’t dare use the Well of Souls to travel for fear the High Mage would detect him.
Throwing on a cloak with a deep hood, he exited the room and snuck out the back door of the boarding house into the alleyway.
From the darkness, a familiar voice said, “Going somewhere, Nour?”
Gethen
spun, magic sparking to his fingertips, but before he could raise his shield, he felt the prick of a dart stab into his neck. His vision went dim, and his legs collapsed beneath him.
“Please, I don’t know anything.” Jiarine Montevero wept as the guard dragged her down the corridor of Old Castle Prison. “I’ve already told you everything! I don’t know any more. Please! You’ve got to believe me!”
After Master Fellows’s revelation that Lord Bolor was the Mage who had tried to kill him, Prince Dorian had convinced his mother to let him bring everyone closely related with Lord Bolor to Old Castle Prison for questioning. Since Jiarine was Bolor’s most constant companion in the court, she had, of course, been among the courtiers taken and detained.
She’d spent all afternoon being questioned. How well had she known Lord Bolor? What had they spoken about? Did she know where he was? Thanks to the memory spells she’d invoked the moment she realized the guards were coming for her, she’d been able to answer all their questions with bewildered innocence.
Now it was the middle of the night, and the guards had come to take her from her cell again. She was certain this did not bode well. Worse, the memory spell had long since worn off.
The guards delivered her into what was clearly a torture chamber: stone walls lit by the flickering orange firelight of bare torches on the walls, a table laid out with all manner of knives and pincers, what looked to be an ancient rack to stretch limbs until bones popped from their sockets. A cloaked figure stood in the shadowy corner of the room.
The guards pressed her into a chair, locked the manacles welded to the armrests into place around her wrists, and left the room.
Alone with the cloaked man in the corner, Jiarine began to shake as genuine terror set in. “P-please. I swear to you, I’ve told you all I know. Call a shei’dalin. Truthspeak me! I’ve nothing to hide.”