"The Feyreisa's power is vast," Marissya interrupted, drawing the general's intent blue gaze to herself, "but she never summons it on her own behalf. Whatever torments Rain suffered no doubt roused her tairen's protective instincts. I have not seen her like this since her mother was murdered before her eyes."

The hard intensity of Tajik's gaze faltered. Outside the bonds of truemating, there was no stronger Fey instinct than the warriors' need to protect their women from harm, and the image of a Fey maiden shattered by the loss of a beloved mother roused that ingrained protectiveness with a vengeance.

"Rain will not calm until she does." Marissya edged closer. Ellysetta turned her head, piercing Marissya with a look that made the shei'dalin gasp and stop in her tracks. Ellysetta's eyes were pupil-less, whirling kaleidoscopes, blazing with tairen power. The shei'dalin's body went stiff, and for an instant an aura of bright light flamed around her.

Dax lunged toward his truemate, but Gaelen clapped a swift, hard arm around his bond brother's chest, holding him back. "Don't be a fool, Dax. Ellysetta won't hurt Marissya."

A moment later, the light around Marissya winked out. Dax broke free of Gaelen's hold and caught her as she stumbled.

Marissya took a deep breath and steadied herself before waving him off. "Las, shei'tan. I am unharmed." Never taking her eyes off Ellysetta, she wiped the sheen of perspiration from her upper lip. The Feyreisa hadn't hurt her, it was true, but Marissya felt as if her entire being—body and soul—had been seized, ripped open, and scoured by a merciless inquisitor.

The sensation was one Marissya knew all too well, though she'd never been on the receiving end of it. At least, never such a ruthless and brutally efficient weave of it.

Ellysetta had just Truthspoken the most powerful shei'dalin in the Fading Lands.

And not kindly.

Marissya blew out a breath. No wonder Ellysetta feared shei'dalins so much. A few chimes of that ravaging scrutiny, and even Marissya would have collapsed in a boneless puddle of shattered will and weeping helplessness. And Ellysetta hadn't even needed to lay a hand upon her to do it.

Whatever the Feyreisa had discovered—or found absent—inside Marissya apparently satisfied her, because when the shei'dalin stepped forward a second time, Ellysetta allowed her approach without protest.

Half-afraid that if she dared too much, Ellysetta's wild power might rouse again, Marissya quickly healed the physical effects of stress and shock and did what she could to help mend the barriers in Ellysetta's mind. The Mists had not been gentle with her. Each moment of the healing, while Marissya's consciousness was tied to Ellysetta, she was aware of the hot, angry hissing of the tairen, a violent sentience seething just below the surface.

Marissya had no desire to feel the full brunt of that power unleashed upon her.

When she was done, she pulled her hands back quickly and didn't protest when Dax snatched her up and hauled her several steps away from Rain and his truemate.

"Is she well?" Tajik stood tense, staring at the still-radiant, flame-haired woman standing so fearlessly beside the great black tairen, her pale, gleaming hand stroking its pelt.

"She is fine," Marissya assured him. "I was right. The Mists roused her tairen, but she is calming now."

The Change swirled about Rain, and the sudden burst of magic made Tajik fall instinctively into a warrior's slightly crouched attack stance, his hands on red steel.

Ellysetta's head jerked around, her eyes blazing at the perceived threat, and Tajik's body went rigid, his spine poker straight. A fierce consciousness invaded his own, spearing past all his shields straight to his core.

«Aiyah, you should fear us. We are fierce.» The voice, so soft, rang in his mind with the force of a gong, leaving him trembling in its wake. «Do not threaten us.»

She released him from his stunned paralysis, turning to face the tall, black-haired Fey beside her. Rain's eyes were blazing, power sparking around him like fairy flies. His arms caught her around the waist, and his mouth swooped down to capture hers. Unmindful of the gathered Fey looking on, he kissed her with a passion that nearly set their onlookers aflame.

«Shei'tani…Ellysetta …» His voice sang to hers in vibrant tones, shimmering down the threads of their bond and the new, fiercely blazing connection between them that hummed with wild, raw power.

Rain did not know what had happened to them in the Mists, nor at the moment could he bring himself to care. Whatever the Mists had done, whatever their reasons for it, they had brought both his tairen and hers to savage life, and in that moment of primitive wildness, when her soul and her tairen had screamed in rage and reached for him and his, the power and fury of their tairen had arced between them like searing flames shot straight from the heart of the Great Sun. Or, rather, like savage jets of tairen flame, the fire that burned all things. That thread of pure, intense power had pierced the wildest depths of his soul and anchored there.

The fiery bond thread was still there, neither extinguished nor dimmed, untamed by the others, yet braided so tight the three had nearly become one.

When the fierce radiance of their power and the wild fury of their tairen at last began to subside, the Feyreisa released her mate and turned to face the Fey. Tajik's breath caught in his throat once more. The menace of the tairen was gone, leaving only luminous, golden beauty. To look upon the unveiled countenance of any shei'dalin was to know the face of love, but with the Feyreisa, the effect was overwhelming. When her gaze fell upon him, her eyes like radiant suns, it was as if the gods themselves shone a light straight into his heart.