The Fey, flushed after an exhausting several bells of training, nodded and bowed to Gaelen as chadins always bowed to their chatok at the end of a lesson.

Gaelen bowed back, then pivoted on his heel.

And scowled when, across the field, a warrior's legs suddenly shot out from under him and the Fey went sprawling backwards into the dirt, swearing. Fey laughter pealed out, and a Spirit master popped out of thin air. Gaelen muttered and rolled his eyes. He was going to regret teaching that weave to certain Fey.

Just this morning, he'd squelched the contest some of the Spirit masters were holding to see how many chatok blades they could pinch without being discovered. Fortunately none of them had pinched his. Or had they? he thought with a frown when an odd flicker of awareness prickled his nerves. He quickly checked his steel to make sure it was all there and all real, then let out a short, relieved breath. It was.

A flutter of color from the corner of his eye made him turn, and then he realized what had set his senses tingling. Ellysetta was waiting on the observation dais at the edge of the field. He jogged towards her, dodging tumbling bodies and slashing swords as he wended his way to the observation dais. As he drew closer, his tingling senses turned into full-blown alarm.

She was pale and drawn. «Vel Jelani.» He sent the curt call instantly, one lu'tan to another, and leapt up onto the dais to kneel at her side. "Kem'falla, you are not well?"

"I'm fine. I …" Her gaze flickered to a point over Gaelen's right shoulder. Bel was sprinting across the field. She stood abruptly. "I'm sorry. Never mind. Please forget I came." She spun away and hurried back towards the Academy doors.

Concerned, but solicitous, Gaelen waved Bel off and followed. "Ellysetta." He caught up with her just inside the hallway. "What is it? Clearly, something has you upset. Here." He opened the door to one of the training rooms where young chadins learned tumbling and hand-to-hand combat. "Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in private."

She bit her lip and stared at the open door, her body poised for flight. "Nei, really, I should go. This was a mistake."

He caught her arm before she could turn away. "Kem'falla."

She froze.

He snatched his hand back as if the feel of her skin burned him. He rarely touched any Fey woman. He'd spent too many years living as an outcast whose touch could caused empathic women excruciating pain. Even though that was no longer the case, he'd not laid a hand so carelessly on a Fey woman in over fifteen hundred years. These last several weeks had made him forget himself.

"Sieks'ta. Forgive me. If you wish to leave, of course you may go. I will not try to stop you. Just remember that I am your lu'tan. If there is anything you need—if there is anything at all that is troubling you—you have only to tell me and I will do everything in my power to put your mind at ease."

She hesitated again. "Gaelen … I…"

The hesitation seemed to invite persuasion. He accepted with alacrity. "If it was important enough for you to come here, it must be important enough to discuss. Tell me what's wrong."

She shook her head. "It was wrong of me to come. This is my problem to solve." She clasped her hands together and began to pace. "I was being selfish even to think of it. Look at you. You have a chance for a new life. A good life. Your honor has been restored. The Fey are beginning to accept you. You have a chance to look after Marissya and watch her son grow to manhood … to live the life that could have been yours if the Mage Wars had never happened. I can't ask you to put all that at risk."

Then, of course, he knew. How could he not? He'd been waiting for it since the day she'd revealed what was killing the kitlings in the egg.

"You want me to teach you to weave Azrahn."

She stopped pacing and met his eyes, her expression one of dismay and regret. "Yes."

The tairen's roar and whoosh of wings made Bel look up into the sky. His brows drew together in puzzlement at the sight of Steli flying away from Dharsa bearing Ellysetta and a warrior who looked like Gaelen on her back.

He started to turn his attention back to his training when the sight of Tealah waving at him from the observation dais stopped him. "Carry on, Fey," he commanded, and jogged over to see what she wanted.

The shei'dalins face was pinched with worry. "Is Ellysetta here? Is she all right?"

"She just left. Why?" he asked. "What's happened?"

"Sareika vol Arquinas saw her running out of the Hall of Tairen, looking as if she'd seen a ghost. And she says Shei'Kess was glowing…the way it does after a prophecy."

Bel glanced up at the rapidly disappearing shape of Steli in the sky, and he began to run.

In the training room that Ellysetta and Gaelen had vacated, the perfectly executed patterns of Gaelen's invisibility weave dissolved, revealing the stunned face of Tael vel Eilan.

He'd followed Gaelen off the training yard, determined to be the Spirit master who won the greatest prize of the day—a blade from Chatok vel Serranis's own sheath. Only, instead of prized steel, Tael clutched a belly that threatened to hurl its contents at any moment.

The Feyreisa had asked Gaelen to teach her to weave the forbidden magic.

Chapter twenty-one

Celieria ~Teleon

"How could I not have known?" Sol Baristani paced the parlor's stone floor. The girls had gone outside to play with their new kittens under the watchful eye of Ravel's quintet. "They are my children. How could I not have known?"