Behind him, standing alone on the ledge, still trapped in her human form, Ellysetta cried out, "Rain, come back! Don't leave me!"

Ellysetta woke with her heart thumping and tears cooling on her cheeks. The emotions of the dream still held her heart clutched tight, making her want to weep in despair for the dying tairen and the terrible, grieving emptiness that had struck when Rain took to the air and abandoned her on that ledge.

«Another nightmare, shei’tani?» The familiar sound of Rain's Spirit voice, low and husky with sleep, sounded in her mind. An arm tightened around her waist. There was a warm, heavy weight pressed against her in her narrow bed-and it was most definitely not her twin sisters, Lillis and Lorelle, cuddling up with her as they sometimes did.

She turned her head slowly, and her breath stalled in her lungs.

For the first time in the last five days, there was no little courtship gift beside her when she woke. There was, instead, a great big one. All black leather, white skin, and inky hair, Rain lay beside her on her narrow bed, his long limbs draped over her.

Thinking she must still be dreaming, she closed her eyes, inhaled, opened them again.

He was still there, solid and warm, his face pressed to her neck.

She should leap up and get dressed before her mother came in and found her like this, but she couldn't seem to move. Instead, she lay there, staring at him in dazed wonder. Through her bedroom window the first pale rays of the rising Great Sun shone down upon them. Dawn was breaking, and Rain Tairen Soul was in her bed.

His eyes opened, and her breath caught again. The brilliant lavender irises were glowing, surrounded by thick dark lashes and centered by slightly elongated black pupils that were growing more catlike by the moment. The limbs draped over her body hardened and drew her more closely to the hard wall of his chest and the harnessed strength of his leather-clad legs.

«Shei’tani?» he prompted.«Were you having another nightmare? »

"No," she croaked. When Rain looked at her with such intensity, she had no desire to speak of the horrifying visions that had haunted her sleep all her life. She cleared her throat and whispered. "It was just a dream.”

«You were weeping.» He touched the dampness on her cheek. "It was a sad dream.”

His hand slid down the curve of her jaw His thumb smoothed over her lips, tracing their outline. His gaze followed, so focused she could feel it brush across her face like a slow caress. The gaze lingered on her full lower lip and glowed a little brighter. The tingle of Spirit magic whispered over her skin. An invisible mouth tracked kisses in its wake. Tell me.”

Breathless from the magic his hands and weave were working upon her, she stammered out a quick summary of the dream. His Spirit kisses slowed when she told him about Fey'Bahren and the tairen dying, and about him singing a vow to the great gray tairen Sybharukai, then stopped completely when she told him how he'd flown off and abandoned her on the mountainside.

He rose up on one elbow, his gaze fixed upon her face. His face was solemn, expressionless except for the warm glow of his eyes. «You wept because you dreamed I left you.»

"No, I ..." A blush suffused her cheeks when his brows lifted at her poor attempt at a lie. The dying tairen had torn at her heart, but that was not why she'd woken with tears streaming down her face. "I begged you not to go, but you just kept flying.”

He pressed a gentle finger to her lips, silencing her. "I would never leave you, shei’tani. Not for any reason. My place is at your side, and has been since the moment you called me from the sky." His hand brushed through the tangled spirals of her bright, flame-red hair.

"I-it was just a dream.”

"You should not doubt me even in your dreams”

In hypnotized fascination, she watched him bend his head over hers. Long black hair draped around her, enclosing her in a shadowy veil within which only she and Rain existed.

"Ver reisa ku'chae. Kem'surah, shei’tani. Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved." He whispered the vow of shei’tanitsa claiming, first in Feyan, then in Celierian, his voice low and stirring. "Trust in that, Ellysetta. Trust in me.”

Slowly his head dipped down and he claimed her lips. Illusion spun away. Reality took its place, so much better than the weave.

Mercy. Her eyes rolled back and her eyelids fluttered down. Good, sweet Lord of Light, was it possible to die of pleasure from a single kiss? It must be, because she had no doubt that she had just died and gone to the Haven of Light.

Flows of warmth wrapped around her, enclosing her in a snug embrace even as his arms did the same. His mouth trailed a burning path from her lips to the line of her jaw and below to the sensitive skin of her neck. She arched her back, baring her throat to his kisses, gasping for breath as sensation threatened to steal all reason. "Stop. You must stop. My parents ..." But her hands clutched him far more fiercely than her words tried to drive him away.

She sensed the power gathering strength within him, knew that the tairen-the fierce predator that lived inside him-was preparing to spring, but before she could even think to be afraid, he released her and twisted in one smooth motion to sit on the side of her bed.

With a groan, he hunched his back and buried his face in his hands. She sat up, staring at the long curve of his spine, the broad strength of powerful shoulders, lean muscle, hard bone, sinew, all trembling.

"Rain?" She reached out a hand, but her fingertips scarcely brushed against his back before he sprang to his feet, scooping up the pile of leather and steel by her bed.