The dagger struck her between the shoulders. It didn't hurt much. Just a tiny explosion of pain. A single searing stab, gone almost in an instant. But the blow robbed her of breath and strength, and she felt forward into Adrial's arms.

"Adrial." She blinked in dazed surprise. "Adrial, I..." Her thoughts tangled. Her vision began to blur, and her words slurred. "Adri... al..."

The last thing she saw was his beloved face, and the last thing she felt was his love, tinged by desperate horror as tairen venom raced through her veins and death dimmed her vision.

Adrial clutched Talisa's body to his chest, her chestnut hair spilling over his arms. "Talisa... shei'tani . . . nei . . . nei. Nei va. Don't go! Ster eva ku. Stay with me. Teska. Teska." His shoulders quaked with racking sobs and tears poured freely down his face as her eyes glazed over. Her limbs gave a final, weak twitch, then went limp. "Ah, nei, nei. Teska sallan. Ku'ruveli, shei'tani. Come back to me." He knew the instant her soul slipped free of her slender body. Her passing ripped him apart from the inside out, leaving a gaping hole where her brightness had taken root.

He flung back his head and howled as the agony of her death shredded his soul,

In the skies over Celieria, Adrial's pain seared Ellysetta's empathic senses like a bolt of lightning. Her fingers clenched around the pommel of the saddle and her body shuddered with the force of his devastation. Then another emotion chased after the first, every bit as jotting, and infinitely more alarming.

«Rain!» She leaned forward, grasping thick handfuls of the fur at his neck in her urgency. "Hurry. Hurry!»

Without a word, Rain put on a burst of magic-powered speed, and his tairen form raced across the sky, leaving the lu’tan far behind.

Adrial's head snapped down. His eyes flashed open, glaring from beneath dark brows, pinning Colum diSebourne with the deadly force of the Rage in his blazing gaze. Setting Talisa's body on the ground, he rose to his feet. White sparks of Air whirled around him, flashing with red sparks of Fire. Green Earth flowed out from his body like wild, ravenous tendrils of some carnivorous plant. They dove into the soil, and the ground began to tremble and shake. The wind began to howl and spin, gathering force and speed.

Adrial vel Arquinas was a master of Air and Earth, and in his Rage, not even the sel'dor shackles that bound him could suppress his great magic.

"Adrial!" Rowan called his brother in desperation. He tried to summon his own command of Fire and Earth, hoping to counteract Adrial's weaves, but without the Rage to feed his power, the sel'dor shackles blunted his efforts.

Fearful for the king's life, archers fired arrows at Adrial, but the cyclones whirling about him snatched the arrows in mid-flight and tossed them to the ground like matchsticks. His shining Fey skin grew brighter and brighter as he drew deep from the source of his power, gathering the magic, absorbing the energy into his own flesh, and holding it there until he glowed star-bright and looked more like an avenging Light Warrior of Adelis than a Fey.

The ground trembled, and everyone but Adrial stumbled and nearly fell. Weaves of green Earth erupted like vines from the grass at Colum's feet, twining up his legs, imprisoning him in curling shackles of solid stone. The vortexes spinning around Adrial expanded and joined together, forming a single, large cyclone of air that encompassed Adrial and diSebourne, isolating them in the center of a whirlwind.

"She was returning to you." Magic vibrated in Adriel’s voice, each word filled with palpable energy that reverberated like the deep tolling of a giant bell. "We had agreed I would go back to the Fading Lands and she would live out her life with you. But you would not even give us that. You would rather shatter her heart and destroy her hope than live knowing that any part of her belonged to another."

Adrial raised his shackled hands. His palms, like his eyes, now radiated blinding light. Colum began to choke and gasp for air. His eyes bulged. The skin at his temples rippled and his head tossed from side to side. His mouth opened in a wordless, gurgling scream, and his body swelled like a grotesque balloon.

"For your crimes against my shei'tani, mortal, I sentence you to death. May your soul rot forever in the Seven Hells."

Adrial brought his hands together in a thunderous clap. Magic shot from his fingertips like a geyser of fiery light, shooting not up into the sky but horizontally across the distance and into Colum's chest. DiSebourne's body lit up like a candleshade.

For one instant, Talisa's husband stood there, bulging eyes rolling back in his head, body convulsing in violent seizures. But then Adrial's magic ignited the flammable gases he'd expanded inside Colum's body, and diSebourne exploded in a fiery blast of light and magic.

When the blast faded, diSebourne was gone, the vortex around them had died, and Adrial fell heavily to his knees. The captain of the king's guard cried out a command, and a volley of arrows darkened the sky. Adrial's body jerked as dozens of the missiles pierced his chest and back, but the arrows only finished the job Talisa's death had already begun.

"Shei'tani," he breathed on the last gasp of air in his lungs. His body toppled across hers and he gave himself willingly to the waiting darkness of the Well.

With his shei'tani's body in his arms and her name emblazoned on his soul forever, Adrial vel Arquinas passed through the Veil and was no more.

The Fey sang bittersweet songs of lost love and second chances and the promise of future joy as they prepared to send the bodies of their brother Adrial and his shei'tani back to the elements.