"What are you waiting for?" Vadim snapped at the child. "Bathe him.”

The girl raised her head and looked at him. Large, startling silver eyes surrounded by a fringe of black lashes stared at him from beneath slashing dark brows and unkempt hair. Cold eyes, ancient eyes-his eyes.

Then he realized who she was. The granddaughter of his great-grandson, or something like that. One of his numerous progeny. Vadim couldn't remember her name, but it didn't matter. She had been born utterly without magic. A worthless lump of flesh, good for nothing but serving her betters.

His hand shot out and smacked across the face with a sharp crack, enough force behind the blow to knock the child to her knees. "Insolence is not tolerated, umagi. Lift your eyes to me again and I'll pluck them from your head.”

Without a sound, the girl picked herself up off the floor. Eyes lowered with appropriate submissiveness, she stepped towards the chained Fey, dipped her cloth and soap in the basin, and began to bathe the years of grime off the prisoner's skin. The three burly servants who had accompanied the girl into the room unshackled one of the prisoner's wrists and feet at a time so the child could reach his back.

When she was finished, the servants lifted the basin of water and emptied it on the man strapped to the table. He gasped for air and shook his head to clear the water from his eyes. Water and grimy suds streamed off the table and ran in soapy rivulets towards the drain in the center of the room. The girl toweled most of the moisture from the man's body and the table; then she and her fellow servants gathered the buckets, bowed to Vadim Maur, and left.

The High Mage ran a hand through Elfeya's silky curls. Such bright, distinctive hair. She really was an incredibly beautiful woman. He'd not brought her to him for several years now because she'd been so fragile and had needed time to recover her physical and mental strength. She was stronger now-his visit to her earlier this week had proved that. His fingers stroked her neck. She didn't glance at him, didn't shiver, didn't even catch her breath. She merely stood there and endured, her eyes locked with the eyes of the man on the table.

"You may go to him now," the Mage told her, knowing that everything in her body, everything in her soul was drawing her to that man, even as her brain-educated by centuries of torment-screamed for her not to give in to her desires.

Torture was so much more excruciating when the memories of pleasure were fresh in one's mind. Fear was so much stronger when one remembered what, exactly, one stood to lose. If these two had robbed him of his greatest triumph all those years ago, as he suspected they had, their punishment would be worse than anything they had yet endured in his keeping. And they would have this time together, this small bit of happiness, to make the pain all the more exquisite.

"Touch him." The High Mage bent close to her ear and whispered, "I know you want to. How long has it been? Three years? Five?" And he knew she would know exactly how many years, months, days, bells, even instants had passed since last she'd touched this particular man. "Look at him. Look how his body begs you to touch him.” The man on the table was fully, helplessly aroused, no more able to fight his body's instincts than she was. "Go to him. Touch him. Mate with him as you are aching to do”

With a low cry, the sound of a soul in torment, Elfeya flung herself forward, racing across the room to the imprisoned man. She grabbed his face between hands that trembled. Tears rained down her face, falling upon his lean cheeks and merging with the answering tears that streamed from the corners of his eyes. Her flame-colored hair spilled across his chest like liquid fire. She kissed him with frantic, helpless need and sobbed into his mouth, "Vet reisa ku'chae. Kem surah, shei'tan. Kern surah."

Lauriana went about her errands in a dazed fog, her body automatically carrying her from shop to shop while her mind kept playing and replaying those brief moments in the kitchen when she'd entered and seen.... what? She wasn't exactly sure what she'd seen. It had happened so fast, and she'd been tired after yet another night spent tossing and turning and waking from dreams she couldn't remember but which left her with an awful feeling of impending doom.

Had Ellie moved the flowers ... or had they moved themselves, as it had seemed at first glance? She didn't know. But she couldn't shake the feeling that it was magic. That Ellysetta, her sweet kitling, had been weaving evil, unnatural magic, just like the Fey she'd always been so enamored of.

Oh, gods, why had she ever let Ellie nurture her fascination with the Fey? She could have stamped it out years ago, but she hadn't. To see the way little Ellie's eyes shone when Sol told her Fey tales of princesses and magic Fey giftfathers and the heroic quests of legendary Fey warriors of old ... not even Lauriana's deep aversion to magic had been impetus enough to rob her daughter of those happy moments. What was the harm, she'd thought, in letting a child enjoy a few stories?

You reap what you sow, Lauriana, and just look what your indulgence has wrought. A daughter betrothed to the worst Fey of them all ... a daughter who is turning her back on everything you taught her and abandoning the Way of Light.

The thoughts preyed on Lauriana's mind, beating at her relentlessly.

In desperation, she headed to the small West End chapel where she and her family worshiped, hoping Father Celinor might be able to offer some sort of guidance.

She should have known better. The young priest was as enamored of the Fey as Ellysetta.

No sooner had she begun to explain her fears than he'd begun defending the Fey, extolling their virtues and cautioning her not to condemn them for the extraordinary graces the gods had granted them.