Kieran nodded. Tairen Souls were born to defend the Fading Lands. Every one of them expected to die in battle, and except for the occasional accident, every one of them did. A Tairen Soul also knew, before binding himself in e’tanitsa, that his duty to the Fading Lands came before his duty to his mate. But Tenn was a truemated Fey Lord, and his strongest instinct was to keep his mate safe.

“The girls are already asleep.” Dax, Kieran, and Kiel turned as Marissya joined them on the terrace. “I never realized how dear they had become to me until we thought they were lost. It is good to have them back.” Her expression turned somber. “They were asking for Ellysetta.”

Kiel and Kieran shared an uncomfortable silence.

“We thought it best to not tell them that Rain and Ellysetta had been banished,” Kiel admitted. “In fact, I think it’s best if we tell them she and Rain are away fighting the war and will return when they can. It’s true enough. If Rain and Ellysetta could return tomorrow, I’m sure they would.”

“You haven’t heard then?” Dax said.

“Heard what?” Kieran asked.

“Bel sent word on a private weave this morning. Rain and Ellysetta were shot down over Eld yesterday. No one’s heard from them since.”

Celieria ~ Dahl’reisen Village in the Verlaine Forest

The dahl’reisen carried the unconscious bodies of the Tairen Soul and his mate to a small cabin not far from the smithy. There, Sheyl scrubbed their wounds clean of sel’dor powder before slowly and painstakingly removing each ragged shred of the black Elden metal from their bodies.

She regretted the brutal but necessary weave that had robbed both Fey of their senses. She knew the Tairen Soul’s hesitant trust in his dahl’reisen rescuers would be gone when he woke, but after witnessing how difficult it had been for him and his mate to suffer the removal of their manacles, she’d suspected the surgery to remove their sel’dor shrapnel would have been beyond their capacity to endure. The Mages had engineered sel’dor to block Fey magic, cause immense pain, and resist efforts to remove it. Not even powerful Fey healers could coax sel’dor out of flesh using magic, and there was no magic—regardless of how powerful—that could completely weave away the pain. Neither she nor Farel was willing to risk having their village destroyed by a Tairen Soul driven mad by his truemate’s pain.

She worked on the Tairen Soul and his mate for bells, opening wounds with a razor-sharp black Fey’cha, digging about with long steel pincers to remove the sel’dor fragments, then probing with bare fingers to make certain she’d gotten it all before healing the damage both she and the Eld weapons had caused. Two other village women with healing talents assisted her.

By the time she was done, the small steel bowl beside the raised surgery cots was filled with bloody black metal ranging from small pea-size bits to long, dagger-length shards. Sheyl had seen more than her share of wounds filled with sel’dor shrapnel, and she was amazed that Rain Tairen Soul had even managed to survive, let alone retain his faculties, with that much of the poison metal in his body.

It was a testament to his strength and endurance—and to his mate’s powerful magic. She’d probably been healing him from the moment he was first struck, though it was obvious neither of them was aware of it. Sheyl had seen it clearly the moment they rode into the village, the Light flowing from Ellysetta into her mate, the shadows of pain and death flowing out of him back into her. Without her, he would almost certainly have died.

Sheyl closed the last of the Tairen Soul’s wounds and laid another weave upon the matepair to guarantee they would sleep the night. Ellysetta’s Light was too dim for Sheyl’s liking, and she needed uninterrupted rest to recuperate. Only then did Sheyl open the door and admit the other village women waiting outside.

The women bustled in and began the familiar task of making Sheyl’s patients comfortable after their surgery. They deftly stripped the remaining clothing from the unconscious Fey couple and washed them thoroughly with warm water and soap to cleanse away all traces of blood and grime.

“Sheyl.” One of the women summoned her to Ellysetta’s side. “Look.”

The woman was standing over Ellysetta, holding a curling black spiral of Azrahn in her palm. On Ellysetta’s left breast, just over her heart, four shadowy points lay like a ring of bruises against her pale, luminous flesh.

Sheyl recognized the Marks instantly. Memory—premonition—flashed. A cry of denial rose up in her heart, but her expression remained carefully blank.

“What are we going to do? Four Marks. Her presence puts us in terrible danger.”

“Calm yourself. She’s been unconscious almost the entire time. Even if the Mage was watching through her eyes, he couldn’t have seen much.”

“Farel will still want to know.”

“And I will tell him,” Sheyl assured her. “Now finish drying them, and have the men carry them to the top room. Tell Imrion and his brothers to spin a weave around the cabin to block what they can of the dahl’reisen’s pain from the Feyreisa. Shutter the windows and post guards at the door. I will take their armor and leathers to be cleaned and mended.” She gathered up the discarded pile of golden armor and studded red leather and let herself out of the cabin.

Farel was waiting for her across the yard. His face was as blank as hers. She wasn’t ready to face him yet, so she turned away and carried the armor and leathers to a small cabin farther down the main village thoroughfare. She gave them to another of the village women and stayed to chat. He waited, patient as time itself, until she abandoned her attempt at procrastination and went to him.