The guards outside the last cell at the farthest end of the long corridor opened the heavy sel'dor-banded-and-bolted door as Vadim approached. He stepped into the room and summoned light in the sconces high on the walls, illuminating the cage and the matepair within. Even before he'd entered, they had backed into a corner of their cage, and once again-predictable as time-the man had pushed his mate behind him. As if that puny gesture could protect her.

Vadim smiled without a trace of humor. "Shannisorran v'En Celay ... my beautiful Elfeya ... I am not happy that you've both been keeping secrets from your master.”

The roan tossed his head, throwing the long strands of hair out of his face so he could see his enemy more clearly. His broad, naked shoulders squared and his eyes issued an open, almost sneering challenge. "What secrets would those be, Vadim?" Lord v'En Celay's voice was rusty with disuse, but the deep, rumbling tones of it were as proud as they had ever been.

Vadim knew the legends of Shannisorran v'En Celay. He'd been raised on them, as all Elden children were raised on stories of their enemies. He knew that the great v'En Celay, Lord Death, had been the most feared Fey warrior of his time, commanding thousands of his brethren in battle, leading them to victory in some of the world's most savage and bloody battles. The Mages had feared him as much as they feared the Tairen Souls. Lord Death was invincible, ruthless, impervious to pain, privation, and even defeat.

Until he had met and claimed his truemate.

In that one irreversible instant, Lord Death had become forever vulnerable. But until Vadim, no Mage had ever dared turn that vulnerability to its best advantage.

It was Vadim who had conceived the plan of capturing a matepair, for study, experimentation, and breeding. The other Mages had called him a fool, but he had persevered and plotted, winning several of the younger, less hidebound Mages like himself to his side. He had planned the capture of Elfeya, laid the trap, buried himself and five other Mages beneath the stink of rotting corpses while his fellow conspirators had driven the v'En Celay matepair into ambush during the height of the Mage Wars. It was Vadim who sprang the trap, Vadim who captured Lord Death and catapulted himself into the upper political ranks of the Mage Council. He had been the obvious choice to replace the High Mage Demyan Raz after that man's idiotic decision to murder Rain Tairen Soul's mate resulted in the decimation of the Eld race.

And it was Vadim, the High Mage, the visionary, who had devoted the last thousand years of his life to that aim so grand, so glorious that even now his enemies doubted he could ever succeed. Those doubters would soon bow down before his greatness. His ultimate triumph was at hand, and in just a few short bells, he would claim his prize.

Vadim smiled coldly at his too-proud captive. "What secrets,

Lord v'En Celay? Are there so many that you don't know the ones of which I speak?" Not waiting for a response, he purred the answer himself. "The child, Shan. The one you stole from me two decades ago. The one you and our lovely Elfeya somehow managed to convince me had no magic in her, though she's been claimed as truemate by the Feyreisen himself. My child, Shan."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cold kiss. Bright steel. Sharp bite.

Black blood. Red death. My friend

Fey'cha.

-The Blade, a warrior's poem by Evanaris vel

Bahr

"I have worked a thousand years for victory, and you have tried to rob me of it.”

A whip of Earth lashed out, opening a slice of skin across Shannisorran v'En Celay's back, adding another runnel of blood to the countless wet trails already there. The man who had once been named Lord Death barely flinched. Over the years, pain had become a familiar friend. If Vadim Maur flayed the very skin from his bones, Shan doubted he would do more than groan even while his body writhed. Except for Elfeya. It was agony for her to watch his punishment, and her agony wounded Shan in ways the High Mage's worst blows never could. When he would have slipped forever into the hazy, sweet freedom of madness, she kept him anchored. The irony of it had not escaped him over the last centuries. In the true dichotomous nature of shei’tanitsa, she was both Shan's greatest blessing and greatest curse.

Vadim Maur knew it and used that truth to his best advantage.

A lash made of Earth was both painful and bloody, unlike Fire, which cauterized the wounds even as it made them. Elfeya had never liked to see Shan's blood running over his skin, not even before the Mage Wars, when most wounds had been slight nicks inflicted while he taught Fey younglings the complexities of the Dance of Knives.

It looks worse than it feels, Elfeya.”

Love and sorrow flowed through him, healing and wounding all at once. «I know, beloved.» It hurt her to do nothing, not even take the edge off his pain, but they had long ago agreed that she should never attempt even the smallest bit of magic in the High Mage's presence.

Not that it would matter much longer. The child's true nature was stirring. The bonds he and Elfeya had placed on her were weakening just as the fear of her own magic they had regretfully instilled in her was waning. There was precious little time before she revealed what Shan and Elfeya had struggled so long to hide.

Rain Tairen Soul had claimed the girl as his truemate. He must protect her now that Shan and Elfeya no longer could. Shan had never known Rainier vel'En Daris well, but his father Rajahl had been a good man and a fierce warrior, a blade Shan had trusted at his back. Gods willing, his son would be the same, strong and fierce enough to face the Mages and win.