Gradually, the wild whirl of his eyes began to slow and his breathing grew deeper, less ragged. She reached for his hands, gently pried the blades from his grip and dropped them to the ground at their feet. She raised his bloody hand to her face and pressed it against her cheek, then laid her own against his.

He blinked, and a pinprick of darkness formed in the whirling brightness of his eyes. A pupil that expanded slowly, growing and lengthening as awareness returned and Rage faded. His eyes focused, fixing on the bloody hand cupped against her cheek, the spatter of drying scarlet across her face. "Ellysetta?”

He frowned and pulled his hand from her cheek. He stared at his bloody palms, his armor coated in gore. His lips pressed tight, but even that could not stop their trembling. "Nei. Ah, nei. Did I..." He glanced around, horror stamped on his face.

She caught his hands. "Only Eld, beloved. None other." She knew without words what he feared he had done: that he'd slain Fey again in his madness as he had the day he'd turned Eadmond's Field into the Lake of Glass.

His face crumpled. "Ellysetta." He fell to his knees and the tears he'd once lost the ability to shed poured from his eyes. His body shuddered in an outpouring of grief and shame.

And she did the only thing she could: She held him, and loved him, and crooned songs of peace and forgiveness to his ravaged soul.

Vadim Maur called the tendrils of his weave back into himself and breathed in short, quick pants. Sitting for bells on end while his consciousness traveled outside his body to coordinate and oversee the attack had drained him.

Tremors shuddered through his frame, and muscles knotted in painful lumps beneath his skin. As he rubbed at the worst of them, something wet trickled down his arm. He opened his eyes and pushed back his sleeve to find that several new, gaping sores had opened in his deteriorating skin.

Vadim grimaced and dabbed at the suppurating skin with his sleeve hem. Such was the price of weaving magic when the Rot had you in its teeth. The stronger the spell a Mage wove, the weaker he became. The weaker he became, the faster the Rot consumed him.

He'd been taking a chance, holding out for the capture of Ellysetta Baristani. But if he didn't incarnate into a new vessel soon, he risked losing the ability to do so altogether. And no matter how much he wanted Ellysetta Baristani's power for his own, that was not a risk the High Mage of Eld was willing to take.

Two bells later, with much of his strength returned after a lengthy visit to the healers, Vadim Maur stood before the thick, reinforced sel'dor-and-steel door of the torture chamber he reserved for Mages who displeased him. The hinges groaned as the two guards outside the door pulled the weighty thing open. Light from the passageway torches cast a thin, fragile illumination in the chamber's gloom, revealing the shivering form huddled on the chamber's cold floor.

"Get up, Kolis."

The huddled figure flinched but did not respond.

Vadim gestured, and two of the guards hurried into the chamber to grab the High Mage's apprentice by his arms and drag him out into the warmer, less frightening light of the flame-lit hallway. The stench of sweat and worse rose up from the apprentice's limp body, making Vadim's nose wrinkle in disgust. He uttered a spell that blocked the odors and reached out to lift the apprentice's face. The remnants of mucus, blood, and vomit clung to Manza's skin.

"Kolis." The High Mage snapped his fingers in the younger man's face, but still received no response.

Vadim ground his teeth together and released the younger Mage's chin. Perhaps the tortures he had devised for his apprentice had been a bit more severe than necessary. But then, he'd not expected to need Kolis so soon.

Vadim stared in distaste at the bodily fluids clinging to his hand, then wiped them off on the uniform of the nearest guard. "Clean him up and take him to the healers. I want him fit for use within the week."

Celieria

Except for Bel, who came to cut the sel'dor shrapnel from Rain's body, neither Elf nor Fey intruded as Ellysetta spun her healing weaves on Rain and pulled him back from the brink of Rage. Instead, with swift, silent efficiency, the Elves healed the worst of the wounded Fey, while the able-bodied cleared the battlefield. The Fey Fired the bodies of the dead and gathered the sorreisu kiyr of the slain lu'tan, to be given into Ellysetta's keeping. Forty lu'tan had perished in the battle with the Eld.

Several bells later, as dawn broke over southern Celieria, the worst of Rain's Rage had passed. With Ellysetta's help, he had rebuilt the fragile walls of discipline in his mind. Together, they rejoined the others and offered greetings to the Elves.

Tall and slender—clearly not mortal—the Elves shone faintly gold in the pale morning sunlight rather than glowing with silvery luminescence like the Fey. Sleeveless tunics of iridescent bronze scale mail lay over embroidered shirts and leggings in varying woodland hues of green, ecru, and brown. Bows and quivers filled with arrows were slung across their backs. They wore their long, rippling hair pulled back off their faces with a series of small beaded leather ties, baring ears that swept back to a distinctive, tapered point.

Rain cast a narrowed gaze over the Elves' faces. They were strangers. None he had ever met before. Their obvious leader had hair the burnished gold hue of amberleaf trees in the fall The beaded ties in his hair fluttered with a collection of bird feathers. And his eyes—those distinctive, too-piercing Elvish eyes—were the clear, translucent green of a sunlit forest pond.

Those eyes met Rain's with uncanny directness.