«Ha! You see? It's not so funny anymore, is it?» She ran a frustrated hand through the wind-tangled spirals of her hair. «I'm like a rultshart in a spider-silk shop. If Marissya asks me to summon a puff of Air, I call a gale so strong it knocks her off her feet. If she asks me to summon Water, I nearly flood the encampment.»

«Your power is vast,» Rain soothed, «and no longer restrained by the weaves set upon you in childhood. You simply need time and practice to learn how to wield it in moderation.»

She sighed. «Even assuming I can learn to control my power enough to spin the right weaves, what if healing doesn't stop whatever's killing the kits?»

His right wing dipped, and he banked, wheeling back around towards the south. «Then we go to Dharsa and start from the beginning. Perhaps you can help us discover something we have overlooked all these years.»

«Rain, be realistic.»

«I am. I asked for the key to saving the tairen and the Fey, and the Eye sent me to you. To me, it seems quite clear that whatever is killing the kitlings, you are integral to making it stop. I do not doubt this, even though you do.»

Rain's wings spread wide, and he sank through the sky in a circling glide, alighting on a stretch of empty field. A cradling ribbon of Air magic deposited Ellysetta on her feet while the Change swirled around Rain's tairen from in a sparkling mist.

His hands rose, long fingers threading into the wild spirals of her flame red hair, the pad of his thumb brushing across her lips and leaving tingles of awareness behind. "We're here, shei'tani."

Ellysetta glanced at their surroundings. Nothing looked familiar.

"Where is 'here'?"

His eyes went dark. "This is Eadmond's Field."

The Lake of Glass stretched out for miles, its dark, glossy surface glittering beneath the dim light of the moons overhead. Mist swirled in ghostly eddies along the silent, lifeless shores of the lake, and in the scant moonlight the shifting vapors looked like spectral maidens dancing forlorn pirouettes.

Ellysetta could hardly breathe as she regarded the wide expanse of what once had been the most infamous battlefield in the history of Celieria. Here, a thousand years ago, Rain's first mate, Sariel, had been slain by Elden Mages, and in grief-stricken madness over her death, Rain had given himself to the Wilding Rage and scorched the world with tairen flame.

As they approached the southern shore of the glass lake, they passed a bronze statue set in a circle of carved stones. Her throat grew tight as she realized the bronze was a life-size replica of the doomed couple immortalized by Fabrizio Chelan's famous painting, Death of the Beloved: Rain Tairen Soul clutching his dead mate, Sariel, and crying out his despair to the heavens. The stones circling the statue retold the fateful battle through scenes carved into diamondine granite. Millennia would pass, she realized, before weathering finally laid to rest the story of Rain and Sariel.

Ellysetta traced the last of the etched slabs, reading the tragic conclusion of the tale she knew so well. " 'Some say if you walk to the center of the lake, you can still see the Lady Sariel, beautiful as a sunrise, appearing merely to sleep beneath the surface.' " Rain's sudden stab of sorrow slapped her senses, and she gave a gasp of dismay. "Oh, Rain, I'm sorry." She'd told the tale so often to her sisters, the words had spilled out automatically. "I shouldn't have read that aloud."

"Nei, it's all right," he said. "I like that story much better than the truth."

She bit her lip, hating her thoughtlessness. She knew the fanciful Fey tale couldn't possibly be true. The Mages had severed Sariel's head and burned her with Fire.

"I killed millions that week," Rain added. His voice was a low scrape of sound. "Thousands of them here. Eld and their allies mostly, but even Fey and mortals and Elves and Danae who were not quick enough to flee my wrath."

Ellie knew that too. Celieria had erected smaller memorials at various points around the site in memory of all the allies of Celieria who had perished in a sea of tairen flame. The flame had rained down without cease, turning the very earth into a lake of molten obsidian glass that swallowed every trace of the armies on the battlefield.

Ellysetta left the circle of stones and went to his side. "You must stop blaming yourself, Rain. You didn't know what you were doing."

"I knew," he corrected her. "I was simply beyond caring."

The Wilding Rage had taken him: the terrible fury of the Fey, a sweeping, conscienceless wrath that knew no mercy, no remorse, just the pitiless, relentless drive to destroy whichever enemy had spawned it.

From here, Ellie knew, Rain had flown northward, searching out the armies of the Eld and their allies, raining fire and death upon all in his path. He'd blanketed the entire nation of Eld in scorching clouds of tairen fire, leaving naught but smoldering ashlands in his wake. Even then, his Rage still shrieked for more blood, more death. He'd skimmed along Eld's eastern coast, boiling the seas with tairen flame and sinking fleets of enemy naval vessels. By the time the Fey and the tairen had finally forced him from the sky, half the continent lay in ruin and millions had perished.

"You ended the Wars," Ellysetta reminded him.

"I almost ended the world."

"But you did not. Even in your Rage, you focused the bulk of your fury on the Eld."

He would not let her cling to her illusions. "I was coming south to scorch Celieria off the map when Marissya and the others stopped me."