"Nothing," Rain answered for them. "It's late- We should all get some sleep."

A few chimes later, the remains of their dinner vanished in a flash of Earth and Fire. As Rain spun a cushioned pallet from the wheat chaff and covered it with a scarlet Fey travel cloak, Ellysetta felt eyes upon her, and she glanced up to see Gaelen watching her. He didn't say anything, but then he hadn't said anything all day either. He was waiting, patiently, for her to do the right thing.

"Come, shei'tani." Rain grasped her shoulders and bent to press a kiss on the side of her neck. "Your bower awaits." He smiled and led her to the camp bed.

When she glanced back over her shoulder, Gaelen was busy working with the quintet to spin a five-fold weave around Rain and Ellysetta. His eyes met hers once more, briefly, before he turned away. "What is it?"

She looked at Rain and forced a smile. "I'm just a little tired."

"The weaves should protect you from Mage dreams, and the lu'tan will alert us at the first hint of danger."

She covered his hands with hers. "I know." Stretching up, she pressed her lips to his and let him bear her back into the soft comfort of their bed. He pulled her close against him, his body spooned against hers, wrapping her in a cocoon of warm protection.

The quintet stretched out in the wheat straw nearby. Each warrior slept with one hand on the hilt of a red Fey'cha. Around the camp, all the lu'tan not standing first watch did the same, and their bodies formed ring after concentric ring around the shei’dalin they'd bloodsworn their souls to protect. That shei’dalin lay awake long after the warriors had gone to sleep, worried not half so much about what dangers lurked outside the lu’tan’s powerful protective shields as the ones that lurked within. The dangers that lived inside her.

Eld-Boura Fell

Melliandra's visit to the High Mage's breeding females wasn't as great a pleasure as she'd hoped, nor particularly informative. She felt Shia's absence too strongly, and the new women— three shining folk, and one mortal—had shied away from her when she'd approached. She'd tried to speak with them, but either their memories had been completely wiped or they simply had not trusted her enough to converse.

A disappointing half a bell after her arrival, she departed again, but instead of heading to her next workstation, she stopped by the door to Master Maur's nursery and examined the glowing threads of the ward spells protecting the locked door against intruders. The wards allowed only Master Maur's most trusted umagi through, and even then only once per week at a time known to no one but Master Maur.

The key to the door Melliandra could likely get, but getting past the wards was a different matter. For that, she needed magical help.

The next morning, when the call came to tend the High Mage's prisoners on the lowest level of Boura Fell, it was all she could do to conceal her eagerness behind a mask of sullen apathy. A bell later, she was standing, tray in hand, before the shadow-cloaked last door on the lowest level of Boura Fell.

"Food for the prisoner." Melliandra kept her gaze fixed on the timeworn smoothness of the black stone floor as the guards standing watch outside the cell inspected the unappealing tray of congealed fat and cooked grain.

"Fit for maggots, that is," one of the guards muttered. His ring of keys rattled and clanked as he unlocked the door and shoved it open. "Go on. Deliver that slop and be quick about it."

She ducked through the doorway and hurried across the dank, unlit room. The shaft of light from the open doorway illuminated a portion of the seemingly empty barbed sel'dor cage built into the far wall.

"Back again?" a voice, pitched so low as to be barely audible, growled from the shadows.

She turned her head in the direction of the voice and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. There. Now she could see the faint, almost imperceptible glow of the prisoner sprawled on the floor in the corner.

"Can you feed yourself?" Shannisorran v'En Celay's silvery light was so dim, she knew the Mage's brutes had been at him again, and sometimes, after they finished, nearly every bone in his body was shattered.

"Aiyah. Can't walk or sit, but they left me my arms this time.” She reached into the pocket and pulled out a small cloth bundle. “Good.” With swift furtiveness, she unwrapped the cloth and dropped its contents into the bowl of gruel before pushing the food through the barbed bars of the cell "There's a little cold meat and cheese, wrapped in bread. Take it quickly, before the guards see."

"Why do you bother? As soon as I heal, they just break me again." Even as he asked, his fingers reached for the bowl of food and closed around the plump wad of meat, cheese, and bread. He tore off a small bite with his teeth and chewed.

"I bother because I need you to fulfill our bargain, and when the chance comes, you must be ready." Not long after the High Mage had begun torturing Lord Death's mate, the Fey warrior had agreed to do what neither she nor any other umagi could: kill the High Mage of Eld. That was the only way she and Shia's child could ever be free, so she needed to keep Lord Death alive and as healthy as possible until he had the opportunity to prove worthy of his name. She glanced over her shoulder to check on the guards by the door, then lowered her voice even further. "Do you have a hiding spot in there?"

"What would be the point?" His tone was flat. "It's not as if Maur ever leaves me anything to hide."