PROLOGUE

Northern Celieria ~24th day of Verados

Death raked like a knife across Ellysetta Baristani’s empathic soul. Talisa Barrial diSebourne was dead. Killed by the tairen venom in the red Fey’cha her husband, Colum, had thrown at her Fey truemate, Adrial vel Arquinas.

Of Colum diSebourne—Talisa’s husband—there was no sign.

The scorch of ozone, the odor of powerful magic released with explosive force, still hung heavy in the air. No one needed to draw Ellysetta a picture. She’d felt Colum’s hate-filled fury, felt Talisa’s death. Adrial’s wild, deadly Rage. She’d sensed the moment Colum’s anger turned to terror, seen the unmistakable explosion of Adrial’s magic, and then… nothing. A vacuum of emotion, the utter stunned silence of disbelief, followed at last by grief and accusation and a chaotic whirl of unchecked thoughts and feelings.

Colum had discovered his wife returning from the forest with her Fey lover, and he’d set into motion the series of events that had led to this: Talisa and Adrial dead. Colum… simply gone.

“My son.” Great Lord Sebourne—Colum’s father—stepped into the open space where his son had been. His eyes swept the clearing. His jaw thrust out aggressively. “Where’s my son?”

“He’s gone,” Talisa’s father, the Great Lord Cannevar Barrial, answered in a bleak voice. “They’re all gone.” His sons Luce, Parsis, and Severn stood in stricken silence beside him. He swiped at the tears brimming in his eyes and glared at his neighbor. “I hope you’re jaffing satisfied, Sebourne.”

Kneeling on the ground beside the bodies of Talisa and his brother, Rowan vel Arquinas fixed his grief-stricken gaze on Ellysetta. “Please, Feyreisa. Save them. If anyone can, it’s you.”

Rowan’s ragged plea spurred her to action. She crossed the field and dropped to her knees beside the fallen truemates.

“Rain, try the Shadar horn on Talisa,” she commanded. A gift from the Elf King, Galad Hawksheart, the curling horn from the magical horses called Shadar was reputed to be an antidote to any poison—even irreversibly lethal tairen venom.

“Ellysetta.” Rain, Ellysetta’s unbonded truemate, laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s too late, shei’tani. They’re already gone.”

Her gaze shot up, pinning his. “I have to at least try to save them,” she protested. “You know I must.”

Compassion and understanding softened his expression. Her mate, the King of the Fey, who had once scorched the world in a fit of grief-stricken madness, was no stranger to death or the desperate desire to prevent it. “There’s nothing to be done. They have passed beyond the Veil. Even if you could call their souls back into their bodies, you would only summon them as demons, not as the friends we knew.”

The sounds of shouting made them turn. Lord Sebourne and Lord Barrial were at each other’s throats, swords drawn. All their men had blades in hand as well, ready—even eager—to spill their own countrymen’s blood.

“What are you thinking?” Ellysetta cried. “Haven’t you had your fill of death?”

Though the Fey-Celierian treaty that prohibited Fey from manipulating mortal thoughts with their magic—and though that was precisely the crime for which Adrial vel Arquinas had been sentenced to death—Ellysetta still did it. She spun a weave of peace upon the enraged men, stealing the raw heat of their anger.

“Sheathe your swords,” she commanded, infusing her voice with compulsion. “There will be no more killing here today. Lord Barrial, Rowan, tend to your dead. Lord Sebourne, mourn your son. For the sake of the dear ones each of us have lost, let there be peace between us.”

Though Sebourne sheathed his sword, not even Ellysetta’s weave was enough to still his anger completely.

“Peace?” he spat. “There will be peace when Celieria and her king are free of Fey manipulations and control.” He turned to the king, and declared, “Sebourne will not fight beside these Fey rultsharts. I will not spill one more drop of Sebourne blood on their behalf, or trust them at my back. I pray gods you soon find the strength to cut free of their strings.”

Raising his voice, Great Lord Sebourne shouted, “Warriors of Sebourne! Mount up. We ride for home!”

CHAPTER ONE

I watch my loved ones weep with sorrow,

death’s silent torment of no tomorrow.

I feel their hearts breaking, I sense their despair,

United in misery, the grief that they share.

How do I show that, I am not gone…

but the essence of life’s everlasting song

Why do they weep? Why do they cry?

I’m alive in the wind and I am soaring high.

I am sparkling light dancing on streams,

a moment of warmth in the fays of sunbeams.

The coolness of rain as it falls on your face,

the whisper of leaves as wind rushes with haste.

Etrrnal Song, a requiem by Avian of Celieria

Celieria ~ Kreppes

24th day of Verados

“The bodies of Talisa and Adrial have been sent back to the elements,” Rain said.

After Talisa’s and Adrial’s deaths, the King’s Army continued marching to the great walled city-fortress of Kreppes to prepare for war. Rain and the Fey had stayed behind with Great Lord Barrial and his sons to say their final good-byes and return the bodies of their loved ones to the elements from whence they came.

Now, as he and Ellysetta stood before Celieria’s king in the chambers Great Lord Barrial had surrendered for Dorian’s use, Rain feared that the deaths of Adrial, Talisa, and Colum diSebourne on the fields of northern Celieria today had destroyed far more than three lives.