Sol raised stricken eyes to the Fey, who were standing around him in shocked silence. "All you Fey with all your power, can you do nothing? Was Laurie right about this being demons after all?"

Bel swallowed. "Only if the demon possessing her is the spirit of a Fey warrior."

"What do you mean?" Sol demanded.

"We mean she is speaking Feyan," Rain said.

"Feyan? Then what is she saying?" Sol asked.

Rain answered, his face a blank mask. "She said, 'I am the steel no enemy can shatter.'" One by one, Bel, Dax, and Gaelen added their voices to his until they were all repeating the words together. " 'I am the magic no dark power can defeat. I am the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. I am Fey, warrior of honor, champion of Light.' "

"It is the warrior's creed," Gaelen said, "taught to every Fey boy who enters the Warriors' Academy to begin his training in the Cha Baruk."

With a sudden, fierce scowl, Rain knelt beside Sol Baristani and seized Ellysetta by the shoulders. "Nal?" he demanded. "Nal ve sha? Who are you? What is your name?"

Her head lolled limp on her neck. He caught her face between his hands. "Tell me!" The muted pain of her unseen injuries tore at his senses. Within his soul, Rain's tairen roused, hissing, power licking at his limbs and lunging against its restraints.

He felt the sudden wild surge as Ellysetta's own tairen leapt in answer. Her eyes flew open and fixed upon his face. The threads of their bond blazed to life. His tairen, Eras, roared with fury, sensing something else—someone else— there in her soul with them. Before he could react to the threat, Ellysetta's body flared bright with sudden power, and Rain's limbs went abruptly weak. Her pupils widened until no hint of green iris showed, and Rain reared back in instinctive shock and horror as, for one brief instant, her eyes shone pure black, filled with whirling red sparks.

"Ve sha Desriel!" she cried. The combined power left her on a rush. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped, unconscious, in her father's arms.

"What in the Seven Hells just happened?" Dax demanded. "What was that?"

"I don't know," Rain snapped. "Something was there, inside her, something besides her tairen. I don't know what—maybe a Mage, maybe a demon. Whatever it was nearly brought out her tairen, and she can't control it yet. We need to get her to the Fading Lands. Right now." He spun a shout across the common Fey thread. «Fey! Prepare for departure!»

"Rain," Marissya protested. "You can't mean to send her through the Mists now. We have no idea how they'll react to her Mage Marks, and if that seizure nearly brought out the tairen, the Mists may well finish the job."

"Marissya's right, Rain," Bel agreed. "The Mists can brutalize a Fey. She needs time to recover, to rebuild her inner barriers to keep the tairen in check."

Rain turned hard, furious eyes on the pair of them. "We don't have time. I don't know what attacked her just now, but I'll be scorched if we're going to stay around here one bell longer and give it a chance to come back. Marissya, the chime she wakes, weave peace on her. Bel, Gaelen, you two help her build what barriers she needs to keep the tairen caged and protect herself against whatever the Mists might try to do to her."

"Rain?" Sol Baristani interrupted. The woodcarver was still holding his daughter's unconscious body, stroking her hair and rocking her as he had so many times since her earliest childhood. "'Vaysha Dezrielle.' She's said that before during her seizures. Is it also Feyan? Do you know what it means?"

Rain's mouth pressed into a grim line. "It means 'I am Death.' "

Teleon was a flurry of activity as the Fey rushed to prepare for departure. As Rain had commanded, the moment Ellysetta regained consciousness, Marissya began weaving peace on her, while Bel and Gaelen helped her rebuild the internal barriers her seizure had shredded. As soon as they had finished, the Fey began marching out of Teleon.

Ellysetta, still pale and wan from her seizure, desperately tried to hold back her tears as she knelt on the shining, silver-blue steps of Teleon to clasp the twins in yet another fierce hug. She didn't want to let them go, didn't want to think of waking up to a morning when she would not see their sweet, smiling faces. But her seizure and her duty to the tairen left her no choice.

"I will miss you both," she told the twins, pulling back to press kisses on their soft cheeks and rosy lips. "I'll think about you every day—and miss you every chime. I love you so very much."

Lillis and Lorelle were crying as much as she was. "Don't go, Ellie. Stay here with us."

"Oh, kitlings, if only I could." She gave her father a pleading glance. «Won't you reconsider, Papa? Come with us. You'll all be safer in the Fading Lands.»

He shook his head. Even if Papa thought the twins could actually be happy living as mortals in an immortal land, he wouldn't betray his wife's last wishes. "Please understand."

She bit her lower lip, ashamed that she kept urging him to break his vow. «I'm sorry. I just want you all safe.»

"We'll be safe here. The Fey will see to that. And as I promised you, if there is even a hint of trouble, we'll come through the Mists."

Ellysetta dashed away her tears with the back of one hand and gave him a watery smile. "I know, Papa. I'm just selfish enough to want you three with me always."