“Oh, Tajik.” No wonder he harbored such enmity towards the Elf king. If Galad Hawksheart had intentionally sent Rain to his death, no power on earth, the Seven Hells, or the Haven of Light would have spared him from her wrath. She laid a hand upon her uncle’s arm. “Kem’san avi i ver’baloth.” My heart weeps for your sorrow.

“Beylah vo, kem’jitanessa.” He covered her hand. “Now perhaps you will understand that when I say you be wary of Elf-gifts, it is no idle warning. I know just how far Hawks-heart will go to protect his precious Dance. If he thought tormenting your dreams with those Sentinel blooms would benefit the Dance, he would give them to you without a qualm and never tell you their true purpose.”

Was it possible? Could the Elf king have gifted her with the Sentinel wreath not to protect her from the Mage’s dream-attacks, as he had claimed, but rather to open her mind to prophetic Elvish dreams?

Your Elvish blood awakens.

The memory of Hawksheart’s words echoed in her mind. Since the moment she’d drunk the Elves’ liquid sunlight and placed her hand on the Elf king’s Mirror, her dreams had not stopped or grown less frightening. Instead, they hummed with a sense of veracity she could not shake, no matter how much she wished to.

The dream she’d just had, and several others before it, were no Mage-spawned nightmares sent to torment her. They were potential verses of her Song, brutal, vivid visions of the dread future that awaited her if she did not find a way to complete her truemate bond with Rain and defeat the High Mages’ evil plans for her.

Ellysetta pressed the heel of her palm to her heart. The walls felt like they were closing in, as if the weight of the world were pressing down upon her, oppressive and suffocating.

“I need some air,” she said, and bolted for the door.

Except for the guards standing at their posts and the occasional footstep of a watchman going about his night duties, all of Kreppes lay silent and still beneath the starry, moonlit winter sky.

After rushing from her suite in the west wing, Ellysetta climbed the stairs to the ramparts, where the cool air and open sky made her feel less closed in. She walked along the northern battlement in the company of her quintet and looked out over the river into Eld. She didn’t know what she was expecting to see. Some sign of malevolence, perhaps, or approaching evil, but all she saw was the unbroken darkness of Eld’s great forests, stretching across the horizon, and the silvery shine of moonlight reflecting on the swirling confluence of the mighty Heras and the Elden river Azar.

“Doesn’t look like such a threat, does it?”

She turned to see King Dorian step from the shadows of the wizard’s wall, the raised walkway spiked with high, open-roofed towers set back from the main battlements.

“Your Majesty.” She inclined her head. “Forgive me. I didn’t see you there. I did not mean to intrude.”

“Your presence could never be an intrusion, Feyreisa.”

The compliment flowed off his tongue with both courtly ease and surprising sincerity. How strange it seemed. She’d grown up all her life seeing this man’s image on the coins that passed from one Celierian hand to another in commerce, and now, here he was, standing beside her on a silent night on the eve of war, offering the pretty charm of a courtly Grace. Master Fellows, the Queen’s Master of Graces who had taught a woodcarver’s daughter the ways of Celieria’s royal court, would have beamed with pride.

“It is strange, how peaceful it looks.” The king continued, nodding towards the vast, shadowy forest to the north. “I have fought in three wars before this. Always, I could see my enemy approaching. I never realized what a comfort that was.” Hands braced on the flat surface of the stone crenel, he scanned the dark horizon. “I keep looking for the campfires, the ships, the troops that experience tells me must be there, yet, my reports say this enemy can simply appear, with no warning, and in great strength. This… nothingness… is very unsettling.”

“Perhaps the waiting is actually the first part of the attack.” A chill breeze blew through the fortress’s night shields. She drew her velvet robes tighter and plumped the fur collar higher about her neck. “To constantly be on your guard, knowing your enemy is stalking you, but not knowing how or when the next blow will come… such torments are one of this Mage’s favorite weapons.”

“No doubt because it is so scorching effective.” Dorian pushed back from the wall and turned to face her. “Is that what it’s like to be Mage-Marked? To feel as if you’re constantly waiting for an attack? “

The question took Ellysetta by surprise. No one had ever asked her what it was like, to be Mage-Marked, and though Dorian had always treated her with impeccable courtesy, he’d never invited personal confidences.

“I suppose it is, in a way,” she answered. “The pressure is always there, but it doesn’t just come from without. It also comes from within.”

“How so?”

“Well, he doesn’t just attack you. He also tries to trick you into betraying yourself. Sometimes, the tricks are very persuasive.” All her life, she’d battled the Mage and the nightmares he sent to torment her. Since coming into her power, that torment had only grown worse. “I doubt I could have lasted this long if not for Rain. He is my strength.”

Dorian looked away. “You are very lucky to have a love so selfless and steadfast.”

His glum tones made her empathy flare. The sense of loss—even despair—that had surrounded him these last days, spurring his temper, fanning his anger, suddenly made sense.