When the song reached its apex, the tairen on the lair floor flung back their heads and roared. With wings flung wide, fully extended and trembling, their massive chests expanded on a single, communal inhalation. In the center of the ring, Merdrahl bared his deadly fangs and screamed a final, fierce, earthshaking roar of love and sorrow, pleading and command.

Fire exploded from the throats of the surrounding tairen, enormous, unstoppable jets of consuming flame. A fiery furnace raged where Merdrahl and Cahlah had been. Ellysetta raised a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding inferno, yet she could not look away. Tairen wings pumped like bellows. Great clouds of flame and smoke billowed outward, flooding the cavern floor. Heat blasted upwards, flinging Ellysetta off her feet.

She rolled over on her hands and knees and started to rise, but a familiar cold tingling, like the bite of an ice spider, washed over her, sapping her legs of strength. The sensation grew stronger, shooting up her spine, making her every muscle tremble. Fear clutched at her throat.

«Rain …»

Her hesitant call went unanswered. She crawled to the edge of her perch. The cavern floor was completely submerged beneath a deep, raging ocean of fire that buffeted the ledge just below hers. No part of the tairen was visible, yet she knew they were there, at the center of the inferno, unharmed and feeding the flames. She could hear them singing, a single, sustained note resonating in her mind.

She crouched on the ledge, shivering despite the heat. Her flesh trembled as though it would dissolve off her very bones. Beneath the pure, endless aria of the tairen, she could now hear whispers. Insidious, frightening. Voices beckoning, hissing, pleading. Wordless commands that pulled at her and shot terror through her heart.

And then she heard the sound of her name, spoken as if from some nameless monster of the dark. Ellysssettttttaaaaaa.

Gasping, she flung herself back from the edge, scrambling for something, anything to hold on to. As if what called her name could reach out and grab her. She found a small boulder and clutched it with frantic strength, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Rain!" She screamed his name aloud, shrieking it into the fiery wind. Then again, in Spirit and along their bondthreads, like a talisman against the summoning darkness. «Rain!»

Across the room, the tairens' single, sustained note ended, and a gentler melody ensued, tender and sad, but with a light, hopeful chord running through it. As quickly as they had come, the whispering voices were gone, and with them the disturbing chill that had crawled across her skin like ice spiders. The tairen's roar quieted, and through her tightly shut eyelids she could see the brightness of their flames dimming until the lair was once again shrouded in shadow.

Rain found her clinging to a small boulder. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and even in the dim light he could see the pulse pounding in her throat and hear her shallow, gasping breaths.

"Ellysetta?"

The first touch of his hand made her flinch, and he frowned in concern. Her flesh felt chill to the touch. She was shivering—and clearly terrified. "It is over, shei'tani. There is no need to fear." Tenderly he brushed her hair back from her face and cupped her cheeks, letting the warmth from his flesh seep into hers. All he could think was that the tairen rite of passage had terrified her. She'd probably believed she would be burned to death in the flames. "Sieks'ta. I am sorry. I should have warned you about the Fire Song. I know how frightening the rite can seem, but I swear to you, shei'tani, you were never in danger."

Sariel had always feared the tairen. They had welcomed her as Rain's mate, but she had never been comfortable around them. She had rarely accompanied him to their lair. Ellysetta was a Tairen Soul, so he'd thought she would understand better, would feel at home here, as he did, but clearly he'd expected too much, too soon.

He stifled his disappointment and pressed his lips to the smooth skin of her forehead. «Sieks'ta, beloved. Forgive me. I should have prepared you, given you time to adjust before thrusting you into the pride and expecting you to understand our ways.» He had not pushed Sariel to accept the tairen half of his soul, nor would he press Ellysetta to accept more than she could. When she was ready, the pride would be waiting.

"I'm not afraid of the tairen." Ellysetta's voice was a hoarse whisper. "I wasn't afraid of the fire either, though perhaps I should have been."

Rain pulled back to look at her. Her eyes were open, her face pale. Her fear was just beginning to subside. "Then what was it that frightened you so badly?

"It was the darkness, the cold." Her voice shook, and she began to shiver again. "The voices, calling to me."

His brows drew together. "Ellysetta, there was no darkness or cold, only fire. There were no voices, except the tairen singing Cahlah and Merdrahl and their lost kit into the next life. We did not call to you."

"It wasn't you or the tairen. It wasn't the Shadow Man either. It was something else. Something horrible. Something evil." Her fingers clenched, digging into his shoulders. "Rain, it knew my name."

"Shh." Rain smoothed a hand over Ellysetta's wild curls and sent a concerned look to Sybharukai. Neither he nor the tairen had sensed any danger, and yet he could not doubt Ellysetta. What she believed, she believed absolutely.

What if Ellysetta, who could bring a dahl'reisen back into the light, could sense what even Sybharukai, wise one of the tairen, could not? Worse, what if the evil that had drained the life's essence from Cahlah and her kits had made Ellysetta its next target? A low growl rumbled in his throat. The entity that had slain Cahlah and her kits was a mysterious, invisible, untrackable foe that had triumphed over Fey and tairen alike for centuries.