"I had to face worse," Rain informed him, "so don't look to me for sympathy.”

"Lord of Light love her," Rowan vel Arquinas, holder of Fire in Ellysetta's quintet, groaned from his rack and flung an arm over his face. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you about the keflee. I'll never hold something like that back again.”

"The next time you think to play a joke on me, vel Arquinas," Rain warned, "remember this.”

"I will. I will." Rowan had admitted last night that he'd talked Bel and the others into keeping Ellysetta's extremely sensual appreciation of keflee a secret in the hopes of using that knowledge to play a joke on Rain. Of course, as tame and well-behaved as Rowan had been last week, Rain should have known he was plotting something. The Fey was deadly fierce in battle, yet unrepentantly wicked outside of it. Only his brother Adrial and his sister Sareika-both of whom he utterly adored-were safe from his jokes.

Kiel vel Tomar, the Water master of Ellysetta's quintet, attempted to rise up on his elbow, only to go pale and flop back down. "Can a Fey die from too much sex?" he asked.

"Yes," Bel replied bluntly. "Another bell and we would all have proven it.”

"What's wrong with Adrial?" Rain glanced at Rowan's brother, who was still unconscious in his rack, his black hair spilling down off the pillows in tangled waves.

Rowan shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. "He seems to have gotten the worst of it.”

"By far," Kieran vel Solande agreed, plucking more than a dozen rumpled pink cards from the waistband of his breeches, each printed with the name of a Celierian pleasure girl who'd invited him to visit again when next he came to the city. At a mere four hundred years old, the son of the truemates Marissya and Dax v'En Solande was the youngest Fey in the quintet-the only Fey child born since the Mage Wars, in fact-but he was so powerful and so skilled with his blades, Rain had not hesitated to appoint him the Earth master of Ellysetta's quintet. "The weave drove us all, but nowhere near as badly as it drove Adrial.”

Rain looked at them, the five who represented the best of all Fey warriors, and shook his head. A child with a wooden sword could defeat them at this particular moment. "You reek of spirits. Were you drinking as well as mating?”

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Rowan muttered.

"We were hoping to dull the effects of the weave." Kiel was looking decidedly green around the gills. Giving a rattling moan, he lurched to his feet and stumbled rapidly towards the bathing rooms down the hall.

Rain smothered a laugh. "Well, I would suggest you seek out Marissya for a healing, but I think you all deserve to suffer a while longer.”

After trading a few more insults, he sobered. "Give Adrial another bell or two, then wake him up," he said. "gavel's quintet guards Ellysetta, and she's protected by a twenty-five-fold weave, but I want you there as soon as you're fit. Something attacked her last night.”

"What?" Bel shot to his feet. To their credit, Rowan and Kieran-and even Kiel, who had just stumbled back from the bathing rooms-also flashed to stone-cold lethalness in an instant, their hands instinctively reaching for weapons. "Why did you not tell us immediately?”

"She is unharmed," Rain assured them. "And there was nothing you could have done even if you had been there. The attack came through her dreams.”

"Mages?" Kieran asked.

Rain nodded. "Most likely. The shields did not protect her, and neither Ravel nor any of his men sensed anything until she woke screaming.”

"We will wake Adrial and go to her immediately." Bel's face was an expressionless mask.

If Fey men sensed emotion the way empathic Fey women did, Rain knew he would be feeling Bel's shame and self-reproach washing over him in waves. The warrior was Ellysetta's bloodsworn champion-willingly bound by lute'asheiva to defend her against all harm-yet he'd not been at her side when she'd been attacked.

"Nei, let Adrial sleep, and do not torment yourself." Rain reached out and clasped his friend's shoulder. "There is nothing you could have done, my friend.”

"I should have been there.”

"As should I," Rain replied. "But I was miles away on a beach at Great Bay, fighting her weave and trying desperately to keep my distance lest I dishonor myself entirely.”

Bel's eyes narrowed. "I know you are not taking this as lightly as it seems. Your mate was attacked. Where is your rage?”

Flags of color warmed Rain's cheeks. A Fey warrior should be deathly furious over an attack on his mate, yet Rain's calm would not wane.

"She would not let me keep it." His hands spread before him, palms open in a gesture of surrender. The blood of millions lay upon those hands, and yet at this moment he could scarcely see the stain_ "Last night, my song sang to her, and she spun the first thread between us." While trying to soothe the terrors of her nightmare, he'd sung tairen song to Ellysetta. The music had resonated in her soul, as a tairen's song resonated in its mate's, and in one perfect moment of communion, Ellysetta had forged the first shimmering filament of oneness between them.

Even now, the memory of that joy brought tears to his eyes.

Bel stared. "Tears," he murmured. "From eyes that have not wept in a thousand years." His cobalt gaze moved over Rain's face, searching for every tiny difference. "The bond truly does begin.”