Shei’tani… shei’tani… nei…

Death wasn’t peaceful.

It was full of shouts and clanging steel, the roars of tairen, and searing heat like the fire of the gods… images flashing for barest instants before his eyes, lights, shadows, familiar faces, a whirl of trees and stars overhead… smells, like the aroma of a campfire burning in a chilly winter night and the odor of something noxious that made him gag and retch.

Hands held him down. Pinned him as he fought and Raged against them. He shouted obscenities, epithets, cursed them and their offspring to eternity burning in the Seventh Hell.

Then silence fell over him like a heavy blanket, and death became a still, black sea into which he sank with an exhausted sigh.

Celieria City ~ The Royal Palace

As he had every night since receiving news of Prince Dorian’s demise, Kolis Manza slipped into the king’s bedchamber by way of the servant stairs that opened to the king’s dressing room.

Master Maur was growing impatient to have Celieria firmly under Mage control. He’d sent a special envoy with an offer to end all hostilities if Annoura agreed to terminate the Fey-Celierian alliance and send what was left of her armies against the dahl’reisen, who had been hiding in the Verlaine Forest and using it as a base to attack Eld and murder Celierians along the border who opposed them. Despite a firm push or two from Kolis, Annoura had as yet refused to agree, and it now fell to Kolis to ensure she woke in a more malleable frame of mind.

He stood in the darkened dressing chamber until he heard Annoura settle into bed, then waited for her breathing to assume the steady rhythm of sleep before he slipped into the room and padded silently across the floor to her side.

He blew a puff of somulus powder in her face even though he doubted it was necessary. Annoura wanted to believe. She wanted to think Dorian had really returned to her, that it was truly he holding her in his arms each night, making love to her.

He began to spin the Spirit weave of Dorian, returning to his love, but as he reached for the tie of her nightgown and sent the first, faint pulse of masked Azrahn into her body, he froze. His nostrils flared, and in a sudden motion, he snatched the wavy-edged sel’dor dagger from the sheath at his waist and plunged it into Annoura’s chest.

The queen’s expression didn’t change, and her breathing continued uninterrupted. But the area of her chest around Kolis’s dagger spat small showers of lavender sparks.

“I told you a Spirit weave wouldn’t fool him for long.”

The voice came from an empty part of the room. Kolis leapt to his feet, Mage Fire blooming in his hands just as five-fold weaves and several red Fey’cha flew from the empty room around him. His Mage Fire dissolved, and he staggered as the blades sank into his chest.

Five Fey and a mortal materialized inside the room.

“You!” he exclaimed, staring in disbelief at the mortal’s face. “But you’re…” His words slurred as the tairen venom raced through his body. His eyes rolled back and his body collapsed.

Prince Dorian—the new King Dorian XI—eyed the twitching corpse coldly. “Dead?” he finished. “So they tell me.” He flicked a glance at the Fey. “Get this piece of krekk out of my palace.”

Leaving the Fey to dispose of the body, Dorian exited his father’s bedchamber and strode down the hallway to a warded room where Gaspare Fellows and the dahl’reisen sent by Dorian’s father were watching over his unconscious mother, the queen.

The dahl’reisen looked up when he entered. The spiral of shadowy Azrahn in his palm winked out, and he nodded. “It worked, Your Majesty. The Marks are gone.”

Dorian closed his eyes and bowed his head in weary relief and murmured a brief prayer of thanks that at least he’d been able to save one person he loved. He sat on the edge of the bed beside his mother and took her hand as the dahl’reisen removed the weave keeping her unconscious.

His mother’s lashes fluttered, then slowly lifted. Her delicate silver brows drew together in hazy confusion when she saw him. “Dori?”

Tears sprang to his eyes. “Yes.” He pressed a kiss to her hand. “It’s me.”

“You’re alive!” She sat up, flinging her arms around him. “Thank the gods. They said your ship went down.”

“It did, Mama. The Danae saved me. The Tairen Soul’s trip to Elvia brought us the allies we needed to defeat the enemy at Great Bay.”

“Oh, Dori!” Abruptly, tears filled Annoura’s eyes, and her features twisted with a mix of elation and grief. “Dori… oh, Dori, he’s gone. He’s gone.”

“I know, Mama.” Dorian put his face against his mother’s neck as he hadn’t done since childhood. They both wept, mourning the loss of the husband and father who’d been the center of their lives.

Eld ~ Boura Fell 9th day of Seledos

Damn them! Damn them! Damn them for their incompetence!

Vadim Maur snatched the silverglass mirror off his bedchamber wall and smashed it against the stone. It exploded with a satisfying crash, sending shards and splinters of glass flying in all directions. He grabbed the carved chaise in the corner of the room and slammed it into the wall until it broke into kindling. The small private desk and chair suffered a similar fate a few chimes later.

Vadim stood in the center of the wreckage, panting with exertion and trembling with rage.

Did he have to do everything by himself?

Kolis Manza was dead. Prince Dorian—the new king—was not. Annoura and the unborn child who were to have been Vadim’s power in Celieria were lost to him. And working in league with the dahl’reisen, the new King Dorian had instantly begun a purge of not only his court but the entire city. Centuries of planning and careful cultivation were unraveling with increasing speed.