Ellysetta shifted, pulling away to tread water in the cooling lake beside him, "What are you thinking, Rain?"

He righted himself and frowned. "I'm thinking there's a mystery here. You're right that there's something different about this Source, but I can't put my finger on it."

You mean tairen flame doesn't have the same effect on all Sources?"

"I don't know that anyone has ever tried it. Except for Dharsa and here, most Sources don't empty into a large body of water." Most fed straight into a city fountain, to be used for drinking. "I'll have Marissya ask Tealah to see if she can find anything about Crystal Lake in the Hall of Scrolls. For now, we should be getting back."

They swam to the shore and spun light Fire weaves to warm and dry themselves before Ellysetta donned her leathers and Rain his steel.

"Rain." The light touch of Ellysetta's slender hand upon his carried with it a swell of warming love and troubled regret. "About earlier ... when I went into the Well after Aartys..." The delicate copper arches of her brows drew together over shadowed leaf-green eyes. "You were right to be angry with me. I went too deep. I nearly lost myself—and I did nearly weave Azrahn, but honestly, Rain, I didn't mean to." She blew out a breath. "I only meant to use Gaelen's power, as I've been doing."

Rain hadn't liked that either, but since the practice saved precious Fey lives, he had grudgingly allowed it. After all, a Fey king banished from his own country for weaving the forbidden magic himself to save his mate could hardly protest the use of the same magic to save someone else.

"So what happened?"

"I couldn't reach Aartys. He'd fallen too far into the Well. I was going to lose him. Gaelen's magic wasn't enough. And then .. ." Her voice trailed off.

"Then what?"

She wet her lips and pushed spiraling coils of flame red hair behind her ears. "Then something started .. . pushing me to weave my own Azrahn."

He didn't like the sound of that. "The Mage? He sensed you in the Well?"

"Nei, I don't think it was him. I think it was me. Some part of me wanted to weave Azrahn, Rain, even knowing what would happen if I did."

She lifted a troubled gaze to his face, and he knew she was searching for the horror she feared would be there. Months ago, she would have found it. Months ago, he'd believed Azrahn could never be woven for good. But he'd watched her save four tairen killings trapped in the Well of Souls by spinning that forbidden magic. He'd spun it himself to save her. Most of all, he'd seen the dazzling blaze of her unshielded Light.

"If you hadn't come," she admitted, "I would have spun it."

"But you didn't, Ellysetta."

"But I would have, Rain. I would have"

He gripped her slender shoulders and held her gaze with unwavering confidence. "But you didn't."

She was still so afraid of herself so afraid that the dark taint she sensed within wasn't just the shadow of the High Mage but proof that some part of her own soul—a part unrelated to the High Mage's Marks—was evil, just as her mother had once feared.

"When we get back to Orest, we'll talk to Gaelen," Rain said. "He was there in the Well with you. Maybe he sensed something you didn't. Or maybe he can explain what happened and help keep it from happening again." Vel Serranis was more familiar with Azrahn and Mage Marks than any other Fey. The infamous former dahl'reisen had spent a thousand years outcast from the Fading Lands, living on the borders between Celieria and Eld, secretly fighting the Mages to protect the homeland that had banished him. And though he'd broken more Fey laws than Rain cared to count, the skills and knowledge he'd acquired while living his lawless existence had already proven invaluable to the Fey.

Ellysetta smiled crookedly. "So stop worrying until Gaelen says I should?”

He feathered a thumb across her lower lip. "Something like that." He dropped a kiss on her lips, then stepped away before the kiss turned into something more. "We should go. I don't want to fly you over Elden land after dark."

He summoned the Change, tossing back his head as the familiar blast of energy shot through his veins, searing and sundering him. His body was unmade, his consciousness flung out into the rainbow-shot gray mist of the Change; then both body and mind gathered hack together in his other form... his stronger, more savage form.

The black tairen, Rainier-Eras, flexed the hands that had become paws large and strong enough to pluck fully grown cattle from a field. Long, razor-sharp claws curved out and dug deep into the rock and shale of the lakeshore. Whiskers twitched and the nostrils of his sensitive nose flared as he scented both the warm. Fey sweetness of Ellysetta and the deeper, richer presence of the as-yet-unseen tairen that dwelled within her soul, the mate to the tairen he was now. The Source must have brought that powerful magic much closer to the surface. He had never sensed her tairen so clearly.

His chest filled with a low, rumbling growl, the need to claim and dominate rising swiftly. Tairen were intelligent creatures, but they embraced their most primitive instincts, living by the laws of the pride, not the civilized world. They claimed their mates, defended their pride, protected their young, and slaughtered their enemies without regret.

And right at this moment, Rain's tairen was very much aware of the mate he recognized but could not yet claim. His tail thumped the ground and he couldn't stop himself from leaning in and dipping his head down to sniff Ellysetta, nudging her with his nose while the growl kept rumbling softly in his chest.