"Azrahn?" Rowan interrupted. He speared Rain with an incredulous look. "Gaelen is a dahl'reisen who freely admits to wielding Azrahn, and you let him draw breath within the same room as the Feyreisa? Have you gone mad?”

"He has," Kieran muttered.

"Gaelen is dahl'reisen no longer," Marissya answered, flashing a dark look at her son. "The Feyreisa restored his soul. What would you have Rain do, slaughter him now that he is whole once more? Or banish him for something he did while living outside our laws?”

"The Dark Lord has bloodsworn himself to the Feyreisa." That dry remark came from Teris, the new holder of Fire in Ellysetta's primary.

Rowan's jaw dropped, and he turned a shocked look on Rain. "You have gone mad.”

"Rowan." Marissya gave him a warning look. "Is everything all right with Talisa?”

Shaking his head with astonished incredulity, the warrior was slow to answer. "The husband came, demanding her return. Lord Barrial nearly drew steel on him before he would leave." He flicked a quick shuttered glance at Gaelen, then directed his attention to Rain. "It was all I could do to keep Adrial from slitting diSebourne's throat.”

"Adrial is still with his shei’tani?" Rain asked.

"Aiyah.”

"Did the husband find him there?”

"Nei, Adrial had enough sense to cloak himself in Spirit before diSebourne entered." Rowan's jaw flexed. "Can you not speak to the king, Rain? Is there no way to dissolve the marriage, as your betrothal was dissolved?”

"Some other time it might have been possible. But you heard the nobles tonight. Dorian rests on the blade's edge of a rebellion. Even if dissolving a marriage were within his power, Dorian couldn't do it now. Not to benefit the Fey at the cost of his own subjects. Go back to Adrial; tell him to have patience.”

Even as he said it, Rain knew the advice was worthless. No amount of patience would make Talisa a free woman. If she left her husband of her own volition, diSebourne could simply claim the Fey had used magic to control her mind. There were many Celierian who would be all too happy to believe it.

Rowan started to leave, then stopped at the door and turned to pin Gaelen with a fierce glare. "I'll be watching you, dahl'reisen, with red never far from my fingertips.”

"It's heartwarming to be the object of such affection," Gaelen quipped when the door closed behind Rowan with a bang. "What did you expect, vel Serranis?" Rain asked.

"Death," he said simply. "But I received salvation in its stead." He bowed in Ellysetta's direction and gave a fanning wave. "I will do everything in my power to prove myself worthy." He straightened, and his shoulders squared. "And you, Tairen Soul, should not make me the focus of your suspicions when the High Mage has fixed his eye upon your mate.”

"I am quite aware of the Eld threat. But the attacks on Ellysetta and the recent host of troubles with Celieria all appear to have been orchestrated by dahl'reisen, not by Mages." Rain nodded to Marissya, who took her brother's hand again.

"I ordered no attack on your mate. Not by command or implication," Gaelen said.

"Truth," Marissya said.

"And yet your Fey'cha ended up in the hands of a street child who stabbed her with it last week." Rain lifted a brow. "How do you explain that?”

"I've fought along the borders for the last seven centuries. I've lost a blade or two in the process. One of those could easily have fallen into enemy hands." Gaelen frowned. "Since I did not order that attack, the most obvious suspects are the Mages, but that makes no sense. This High Mage is no fool. Why would he send a search party to Norban to torture a woodsman and slay two Fey for what they learned about the Feyreisa if he simply intended to kill her?”

"The blade was numbed," Marissya said. "Perhaps it was meant only to injure.”

"To injure?" he repeated. "For what purpose?" Gaelen had walked the earth for twenty-five hundred long years. More than half that time, he'd spent fighting Eld. He knew their ways. And he knew the Mages never acted without purpose.

The Fey'cha was meant to implicate him, obviously. It was only a diversion, a false trail. But the attack itself ... a numbed blade not meant to kill. Was that a false trail, too? Images whirled in his mind: the tortured woodsman, the two dead Fey, the Mage searching for a lost child who he claimed was the daughter of the High Mage of Eld. Another image superseded the others: a great and legendary treasure bearing pestilence in its golden chalices.

Gaelen's gaze swept across the room to fix on Ellysetta, and horror dug its talons deep in his belly. He'd come to kill her, and she'd saved his soul. She was innocent, as bright a soul as he'd ever seen. But what if there was darkness in her even she did not realize?

Conscious of Marissya's hand on his skin, he clamped a fierce hold on his thoughts. His face went still as stone. "You said there've been several attacks on the Feyreisa," he said to Rain. "What else has happened besides the stabbing?”

"She received an ensorceled gift yesterday," Rain answered. "When she touched the thing, it summoned a demon and opened some kind of ... rift behind her.”

"A rift?”

"Like the portals demons use to escape the Well of Souls, only much larger.”

"Did anything come through it?”

"Nei. But she was being directed towards it by a Spirit weave.”