"But the Feyreisa—" Aartys began.

"—will not need your protection at the moment, as she will be coming with me."

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Vadim Maur, the High Mage of Eld, shook off the flicker of awareness that had brushed across his senses and withdrew the part of his consciousness he'd sent into the Well. If the brief touch had been the girl, she was gone now, and the protections that barred him from her mind were firmly back in place. He could still sense her existence, but that was all.

"Master?" The timid, subservient voice near his left shoulder broke the silence. "What should I do with him?"

Vadim tightened his lips in irritation, then just as quickly relaxed the pressure when he felt the flesh split and warm liquid ooze down his shrouded chin. Wordless, he dabbed the edge of his deep purple hood against his mouth. His body had grown fragile these past weeks. The Rot had him firmly in its grip, and not even the ministrations of his powerful shei'dalin captives could hold it back any longer. Soon, the truth already suspected by most of his council would be impossible to hide.

His time was running out.

He gazed through the observation portal into the sel'dor cage with its wild-eyed inhabitant: a young man, the last of the four magically gifted infants to whom he'd tied the souls of unborn tairen seventeen years ago. The boy had shown full mastery in four of the five Fey magics, but only a middling level three in Spirit, so there'd never been any possibility of his becoming a Tairen Soul capable of summoning the Change. But his bloodlines were strong, and he'd proven quite adept at wielding Azrahn even in early childhood.

Vadim had been using him as a breeder, but recently, with the Rot advancing through Vadim's flesh and Ellysetta Baristani still so stubbornly elusive, he had seriously considered using the boy as the vessel to house the next incarnation of his soul. At least as a stopgap until the much more powerful Ellysetta finally found her way back into his keeping.

That plan was scuttled now. The boy had gone mad, just like the thousands of others to whom Vadim had grafted tairens' souls over the centuries. The madness usually began after adolescence, starting with voices only the afflicted could hear, then progressing to bouts of Rage, and finally complete savagery and destructive madness and death.

Of all the children to whom he'd bound the soul of a tairen, only Ellysetta had survived twenty-four years without a hint of insanity. That made her an invaluable prize, not only as a powerful vessel to hold Vadim's incarnated soul, but as the key to his long centuries of experimentation.

In the cell, the boy put his hands to his head. Shrieking unintelligible gibberish, he pulled great tufts of hair out by the roots and spun around the room, slamming his body against the wall and ripping at his own flesh.

Vadim's fingers curled in a fist. "Restrain him before he damages himself more. Continue to breed him as long as you can." Too many centuries had gone into the crossbreeding of magical bloodlines to throw the boy away without squeezing as much benefit from his existence as possible. "If he endangers the females, send him to Fezai Madia." The leader of the Feraz witches had been complaining lately over the quality of the slaves he'd been sending for her sacrifices to the demon-god Gamorraz. Insane this boy might be, but there was no denying the strong magic in his blood.

Leaving the observation room, he passed through the nursery and paused to glance into the two cradles resting against the wall. Two infants with bright, shining eyes stared up at him. Both boys, both already showing promise of mastering all Fey magics. Each had the soul of an unborn tairen grafted to his own. Would they go mad, too? Or had Vadim finally discovered the secret to successfully breeding Tairen Souls of his own?

Only time would tell. For now, they represented another generation of possibility, another opportunity to succeed in case Ellysetta Baristani continued to elude him ...

... or in case she fell prey to the same lethal insanity as her predecessors.

Celieria ~ Orest

"Where are we going?" Ellysetta asked as Rain dragged her away from the healing tents. Her quintet had started to follow, but one hot look from Rain had stopped them in their tracks.

"Someplace I can keep you out of trouble."

There was still a snap in his voice, so she offered a small peace offering. "You were good with Aartys."

He gave her a withering look, and her olive branch went quietly up in flames. "Do not attempt to soothe this tairen, shei'tani. You nearly died—or worse—and I will not overlook that."

She bit her lip. He was right. She’d gone too far into the Well, and something had been quite successfully pushing her to use her most dangerous magic. Still... this double standard her truemate imposed on her had gone on long enough.

"Why do you get to be angry, and I do not?"

He glared. "What do you have to be angry about?"

She stopped stock-still and yanked her hand from his grip. "Are you serious? I'm your shei'tani —your truemate—and you: can actually ask me that!" She didn't wait for him to reply. "How many times have you barely made it back to Orest alive? How many times have you crashed into Veil Lake, bloody and half-dead, limbs broken, flesh shredded, enough sel'dor arrows in you to supply an entire company of archers? Yet you expect me to patch you up and send you back to battle time and time again. You and every other warrior who ends up on my table."

"You are a shei'dalin. That is what shei'dalins do."

"Precisely! You fight out there." She jabbed a finger towards the scorched and still-smoking southwest corner of Eld. "Well, that is my battlefield." She turned and jabbed her finger back