“Neither was I when Sariel died. Yet you’ve told me so many times that what I did didn’t make me evil. Was that all a lie?”

Her gaze shot to his. “Nei, of course not!” “Then how am I to be forgiven for what I did in war, yet you are not?”

She hated when he turned her own arguments against her this way. “You weren’t Mage Marked, Rain. You weren’t told you’d been born either to save the world or destroy it.”

“True. I wasn’t born to save the world. I was merely born to slaughter millions.”

“You were born to end the Mage Wars,” she corrected sharply, “and in doing so to save all those people the Eld would have enslaved if you hadn’t done what you did.”

His hands cupped her face, and his eyes brimmed with sorrow and love and such understanding she nearly wept. “Aiyah, shei’tani. That I was. And though I will never forgive myself for what I did, every day when the doubts creep in, I remind myself that the gods made me for their own purpose. That no matter how seemingly dark and terrible that purpose was, they trusted me to fulfill it. And I remind myself every day, that somehow, I must have proven myself worthy in their eyes because they sent me you, my soul’s mate and the beacon that drew me back from Shadow.” His thumbs brushed lightly across her lower lip in a tender caress. “Perhaps, shei’tani, it’s time you began to believe the same about yourself.”

Her lashes fell to cover her eyes. Almost since the first moment she’d met Rain, she’d been telling him to forgive himself, to see the Light in his soul that even the Scorching of the World had not been able to dim. Now their roles were reversed, and she was bewailing her own sad plight as if no one in the world had ever walked so Dark a path.

And yet, the doubts were there. She could not deny or ignore them. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I’m not good enough? What if Tenn and the Massan were right, and I’ve already done all I was meant to do, and the only way to save the world is for someone to kill me before I fall to Darkness?”

His thumb brushed against her lower lip, and though sorrow shaded his eyes, there was a steady calmness, an acceptance about him, that she’d never seen so strongly before.

“Then we will die together, Ellysetta.” The corner of his beautiful mouth titled slightly upwards in a mournful ghost of a smile. “Whatever your fate, I will share it. Wherever your Path leads, there, too, walk I. Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.”

She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, not so much embracing him as trying to merge her body into his until there was no part of them that stood apart. She kissed him with desperate passion, as if his lips could wipe out the pervasive sense of doom that sapped her courage and filled her with fear.

“Kiss me, Rain. Love me.”

“I will. I do.” He touched his mouth to hers in a kiss of gentle devotion, but she would have none of it. Her lips parted, and she took his mouth with urgent need at the same time her body surged against him. Earth weaves spun from her hands, and his armor dropped from him like leaves from an autumn tree.

He pulled back, frowning. “Ellysetta?”

“Ssh. No more talk. I don’t want any more talk. I just want you. I want this.” Her nails raked down his naked flesh, teasing him, scoring his skin with a combination of pain and pleasure that made him gasp and his eyes turn bright as stars. She wanted heat, wild and passionate, not tenderness. She called his essence with ruthless command and shared hers in such an unfettered rush that he cried out, barely managing to remain on his feet as every muscle in his body went hard as stone, then began trembling uncontrollably.

She pushed him back onto the bundles of fur that served as their bed, stripping her own leathers with impatient weaves. Naked, she crouched over him. Nails and teeth raked and nipped. He reached for her, but she evaded his hands. Fire and Air danced across his skin in alternate waves of heat and cold. He reached for her again, and she growled a warning in her throat. He bared his teeth and growled back. He caught her in a firm grip, his fingers sinking into her flesh and driving her inexorably towards union.

Passion unraveled the tight barriers in his mind, and his escaping thoughts intruded on her own, memories of the fire and screams of great, winged tairen coming together in the sky in a fierce mating.

She inhaled sharply, feeling the burn in her flesh, the hunger tightening her womb and inner muscles. Hands gripped her hips, and he plunged inside her in one swift thrust, wrenching a ragged cry from her throat. Oh, gods. Her eyes closed. Flames consumed her as her body stretched and burned to accommodate him. His hips thrust again.

“Rain!” She clawed at his shoulders, fought him for control, as a tairen female battled her mate for sexual supremacy until he proved his strength and dominance and established his right to mate her and father her kits.

Stars exploded against the back of her eyes, and it was her turn to tremble uncontrollably as his hands and mouth and magic and the pounding rhythm of his hips drove her to first one peak, then another and another until she could not think, could not speak. Until she could barely even breathe without setting off yet another deep, shattering orgasm.

In the end, even that was not enough. Because when they were spent, and Rain lay sprawled and sleeping beside her own limp, perspiring body, she could still feel within her a spreading black ice deep within her core, chilling her from the inside out.

Celieria ~ Celieria City

Master Gaspare Fellows, the Queen’s Master of Graces, held a scented handkerchief to his nose and rolled his eyes. The wharfs. Why did questionable personages always arrange their nefarious assignations at wharfs? Of course, since the nefarious person in question was a ship’s captain, he supposed it made sense. But, gods have mercy, the stink of sweat, bodily excretions, and rotting fish offal was blinding.