Ash’s review of Be Careful What You Wish For by Nick Howard
Fantasy Romance short story published by Samhain 11 Jan 11

Well…I don’t really have anything good to say about Be Careful What You Wish For. I was looking for something fun and I got something bland.

Gawain never even notices Lilly until she wishes for it, so the entire time I had a hard time believing any of what he says. Nothing about him stands out to me.  Lilly herself is also uninteresting, she has no personality and it’s no wonder she has to make a wish in order to get a man. I know it’s a short story, but not enough time was spent on their development.

Be Careful What You Wish For just feels very stiff and awkward. There is no passion or love or much of any feeling in what they say or do. Everything is done in protocol, even the supposed erotic scenes.  Lilly calmly goes along with everything, because the law says it’s okay. Gawain is trying to win her over, but he talks about spanking her as if he is commenting on the weather.

When I read a novella, I’m looking for a quick, fun read, something that leaves me wanting more.  Unfortunately that doesn’t happen, and the blurb ends up being more exciting than the story.

Grade: D

Summary:

Fairy Godmothers don’t always know what’s best. Or do they?

“If love is pain, I want to be hurt!”

It must have been her distress over being dumped by Sir Justin that made Princess Lilly less than precise expressing her wish to her Fairy Godmother. Otherwise, she would not have ended up the indignant prisoner of Sir Gawain, a vile knight who wouldn’t know how to properly treat a princess if the instructions whacked him upside his armored helm.

She should be angry, but she has no one to blame but herself, and no way out. The Kidnapping of Damsel Laws are very specific—once she is taken, she has no choice but to submit to his seduction. Every kiss, caress…and spanking.

Still, she’s determined not to make it easy for him. If he thinks he will bend her to his delicious…no, barbaric intentions, he has a serious flaw in his logic. Yet as he carefully executes his plan of exquisitely pain-laced pleasure, she finds her body responding quite against her will. And her mind racing with immoral thoughts that threaten her jealously guarded virtue.

Until there is a very small, tiny, remote possibility that Sir Gawain might win her hand…

Read an excerpt.

Action begins the war in this edition of the series in Queen of Song and Souls. I remember my heart thudding with each throw of a fey’cha or thrust of a sword or toss of a magical ball of fire. Ms. Wilson pulls no punches in the beginning of this war with the Eld mages.

The emotion is  high when Ellie is unable to complete her truemate bond with Rain, not knowing why, which pushes him closer and closer to the dying madness that will take him from her permanently if she never succeeds.

This book was to have been the last of the series, but Ms. Wilson’s brain and talent work on overdrive. Thank goodness, her fans say!

My review of QoSaS is below, along with an excerpt from the book. Enjoy!

Sandy M’s review of Queen of Song and Souls (Tairen Soul, Book 4) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy Romance published by Leisure Books 27 Oct 09

This is one of those books you can’t wait to get your hands on. Anticipation courses through you as you open it up and finally get a taste of the wonderful writing, get reacquainted with old friends, and get caught up in the new joys and tragedies they face. But then when you reach the halfway mark in the story, it becomes one of those books that you don’t want to ever end. You want to slow down in your reading and make it last so much longer than the day you’ve already spent with it, but you simply can’t. Everything about this book hooks your emotions and puts you through the wringer over and over again, leaving you both overjoyed and saddened at the same time and also leaving you wanting more.

Right off the bat in this latest installment in her Tairen Soul series, C.L. Wilson not only puts her fans through the emotional wringer, but she also squeezes their heart until it either has to burst with happiness or break with heartache. And all of that is done with that richness of writing that Ms. Wilson is now known for. That alone is worth picking up the books in this series.

Rain and Ellie are still on their course toward their bond of truemates. Ellie has still yet to complete her bond, thus the madness that is inflicted on the mate who has bonded has begun for Rain, the knowledge of which he’s trying to keep from her as they make their way across the land to gather allies in the Mage war that has already taken too many lives. The scenes in which Rain loses control, full of bloodlust, are terrific but heart-rending scenes.

See the remainder of the Queen of Song and Souls review here.

Prologue

Celieria ~ the Garreval

She was only nine years old, and she was going to die.

Lillis Baristani clung to her beloved friend, Earth master Kieran vel Solande, and showered his throat with frightened tears.

Around them the world had gone mad. Magic, blades, and barbed sel’dor arrows filled the air. Blood ran red on the ground. Below, at the base of the Rhakis mountains, dozens of vile, snarling, monstrous wolf-beasts called darrokken were charging up the slope towards the small, fleeing party while the creatures’ evil masters flung globe after globe of blue-white Mage Fire to cut off all chance of escape.

Whatever the Mage Fire touched disintegrated on contact…not dissolved …simply disappeared. Entire chunks of the mountain evaporated in an instant, and the ground was shifting and shaking beneath Kieran’s feet.

“Kieran!” his friend Kiel shouted, pointing uphill. “The mountain!” Another frightful barrage of Mage Fire had dissolved half the peak above their heads. The remaining rock and stone gave a rumbling shriek and collapsed, sending a wall of dirt, stone, and wood rushing towards them.

“Hold tight, little one,” Kieran whispered. Lillis tightened her arms around his neck, pressing so close that her kitten, Snowfoot, mewed a protest and squirmed in the sling tied round her neck. Kieran turned to raise both hands and she felt the electric tingle of his gathering magic. It danced across her skin like crackling sparks of green light. Inside her, Lillis’s own magic rose in response.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face to his throat. Bright Lord, please help Kieran, she prayed. I don’t want to him to die. Or Papa, Lorelle, Kiel, or me either.

She felt the vibrations of Kieran’s throat against her lips as he shouted defiantly and flung out his weaves. The magic left him—and her too—in a great rush. Please, gods, please gods, please, gods.

Incredibly—or, perhaps, miraculously—the crumbling mountainside froze. Lillis risked a glance up to confirm that they were not about to be crushed flat as a griddle cake, then squeezed her eyes shut again.

“Five-fold weaves, my brothers!” Kieran shouted. “Keep that scorching Mage Fire off us!” Suddenly, he gave a grunt of pain, and Lillis felt him falter. Her head lifted, and though the battle raging all around terrified her, she forced her eyes open.

Kieran was arrow-shot. The sight of the ugly black, barbed metal arrow puncturing his thigh made her belly lurch.

**Get down, Lillis,** his voice murmured in her mind. **Run to your father. Kiel and I will hold them off.**

**But what about you?** It was the first time she’d ever spoken to him mind-to-mind. **You’re coming too, aren’t you?**

**In a chime …once Kiel and I deal with these Eld rultsharts.** From a face too handsome to be mortal, his normally laughing blue eyes regarded her with unsettling solemnity, and then she knew what he would not say. He turned his head to press a kiss to her face, then another to the thin arms wrapped so tight around his neck, and though he did not release his hands from his weave, she felt the tug of Spirit fingers prying her grip loose. She fought to cling, but her childish muscles were no match for his magic. Her hold on him lost, she slid to the ground. **Go, kitling. Quickly.** Another nudge from invisible hands shoved her towards Papa.

“Master Baristani,” Kieran cried aloud to her father, “take the girls. Go with the shei’dalins into the Mists! Run!”

Clutching Snowfoot to her chest, Lillis stumbled across the uneven ground towards Papa’s outstretched arms and the small knot of scarlet-gowned healers. Before she reached them, a darting flash of darkness caught her eye and a foul odor filled the air. She turned to find a darrokken rushing towards her, its red eyes glowing like the Dark Lord’s flames, venomous saliva dripping from its yellowed fangs. All over the foul wolflike creature’s scaly back, sores oozed green, odorous slime. She turned to run, but her foot caught between two rocks and she went down. Snowfoot still clutched to her chest, she hit the ground hard. Knees and elbows took a nasty crack, and she bit her lip so hard her mouth filled with the salty, metallic tang of blood. She jumped to her feet, but pain shot out from her ankle, radiating halfway up her shin. With a cry, she fell down again just as the darrokken lunged.

One of the Fey warriors made a sprinting leap towards her, and scarlet-hilted Fey’cha daggers flew from his hands. The razor-sharp blades cut through the monster’s tough, leathery hide, and the darrokken dropped dead in its tracks.

“I’ve got you.” The warrior who’d killed the darrokken reached for her arm, but before he could grab hold, another of the monstrous beasts was upon him. Its fangs sank into his leg, and the Fey toppled, rolling over as he fell and landing with unsheathed blades in his hands. “Run, child,” he cried.

Those were the warrior’s last words. He bared his teeth in a snarl and plunged his red Fey’cha into the vulnerable belly of the beast just as the monster snapped its sharp yellow fangs around the warrior’s throat and ripped. Blood sprayed across Lillis’s face in a hot, red rain. Fey and beast died together, fighting, tearing, and slashing until the last breath of life left their bodies.

“Lillis! Get up! Run!” Kiel cried. His blue eyes were filled with fear, his blond hair spattered with dirt and blood. Two black arrows stuck out of his shoulder like grotesque spines. “Run for the Mists. Lorelle, Master Baristani—go!”

One of the shei’dalins in their party rushed forward to grab Lillis. A rapid healing weave spun out in golden-tinted waves of color, and the pain in her ankle subsided. The woman helped Lillis to her feet while another took Lorelle’s hand and began to run towards the shifting, sparkling clouds that guarded the Fading Lands. More darrokken rushed up the mountainside and dove into the middle of the small group. Lillis shrieked as the monstrous wolf-beasts slaughtered half a dozen more Fey and drove three of the shei’dalins back down the mountain towards the waiting Eld.

When she reached the edge of the Mists, Lillis turned back to watch the battle below. The remaining warriors guarding their escape were falling fast to the ferocious maws of the darrokken, while the Mages continued bombarding the mountainside with their devastating magic. A tide of Fey warriors burst from the Mists-filled pass of the Garreval and raced across the ground at lightning speed, swords flashing silvery bright in the sunlight.

Black Eld arrows turned day to night, and hundreds of Fey went down. Kieran fell with them.

“Kieran!” Lillis shrieked as she watched him fall. “Kieran!” She started to rush towards him, but the shei’dalin grabbed her and held her fast.

“Nei,” the veiled woman whispered. “You cannot go to him. He would not want it. He dies so you may live.”

With unexpected strength, the shei’dalin shoved Lillis towards the shifting radiance of the Faering Mists. “Quickly, into the Mists. It’s our only chance.”

Lillis struggled against her hold, squirming and flailing as the tears poured down her face. She screamed Kieran’s name again and again as the shei’dalin dragged her away. Before they’d gone more than a few steps, the mountain gave a groaning rumble that escalated to a deafening roar.

Kieran’s Earth weave collapsed and the entire mountaintop caved in, sending shards of shattered rocks, splintered trees, and a wave of earth crashing towards the valley below. The ground beneath Lillis’s feet fell away, and with a wail she toppled back into the shining white abyss of the Faering Mists.

Her last sight was of Kieran, screaming defiance as the avalanche enveloped him.

Chapter One

Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Fey warrior, champion of Light.
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Leading a never-ending Fight.

Tairen Soul: Singing, soaring high.
Tairen Soul: Thundering, roaring cry.

Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Fey warrior, fiercest of Fey.
Fading Lands, Faering Mists.
Alone, leading the way.

~ Fiercest of Fey, by Corvan Lief, Celierian Poet

Celieria ~ Orest

Two weeks later

Ellysetta Baristani plunged her hands into the gaping cavity of the dying boy’s chest. Her fingers closed around his heart, pumping the still chambers with desperate force as a blaze of powerful, golden-white magic poured from her soul into his.

The fading brightness of his life force tasted warm and tart on her tongue, like a sun-ripened peach plucked too soon from the tree. So young. So innocent. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Too young for this. Too young for war. Too young to die.

Just like her sisters, Lillis and Lorelle, who’d been lost in the Faering Mists during the battle of Teleon.

“Please, my lady. Save him. Please, save my Aartys. He’s all I’ve got left.” The mother of the dying child stood sobbing beside the table, her eyes swollen and red rimmed, chapped hands twisting the hem of the blood-soaked apron tied around her waist. Her desperation and grief-induced terror pounded at Ellysetta’s empathic senses like hammer blows.

Not that a few more hammer blows made much difference in the emotional din swirling around the scarlet healing tents that had been erected on the mist- and rainbow-filled plazas of Upper Orest. As always when a battle raged nearby, the sheer numbers of wounded and dying warriors made it impossible for the dozen scarlet-veiled shei’dalin healers to weave peace upon them all. Not even the roar of the great Kiyera’s Veil waterfalls could drown out the screams of pain and pleas for mercy.

“I’ll do my best, Jonna,” Ellysetta vowed. She wanted to promise to save Aartys, but the last weeks here on Celieria’s war-torn northern border had taught her too well. Death, once a stranger, had become an all-too-familiar acquaintance.

Ellysetta looked up and met Jonna’s eyes over the boy’s limp body. The weeping mortal woman was one of the hearth witches who tended the wounded and dying. She knew death as intimately as Ellysetta now did, but that didn’t stop her from fighting against it with every ounce of strength she possessed—or from begging for a salvation she knew was beyond the capabilities of all mortal healers …and all but one of the Fey shei’dalins.

Ellysetta bit her lip. Aartys shouldn’t be here on her table—and she couldn’t help feeling partly to blame. After all, if not for her, the Fey might never have engaged their ancient enemy in this new Mage War. If not for Ellysetta, her truemate, Rainier vel’En Daris, would never have blown his golden horn this morning to call his Fey warriors and the mortal men of Orest to battle. And if he’d never blown that blast, the sound would never have spurred Jonna’s young son to snatch up his dead father’s sword and rush to fight alongside the men of Orest and his heroes, the immortal Shining Folk of the Fading Lands.

Yet those things had happened. And now, here they were, a child maimed and dying, his mother weeping and pleading for his life, both utterly dependent on Ellysetta and her magic to snatch his life from the jaws of death.

“Hold his hand, Jonna,” Ellysetta commanded. “Feed him your strength. Call to him. Don’t stop until I tell you.” And then, though she shouldn’t have vowed it, she did: “If there’s any way to save Aartys, I will.”

“Oh, my lady.” Jonna’s lips trembled and tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, thank you, my lady. Thank you.”

She started to come around the table, but Ellysetta stopped her. “Hold his hand, Jonna.” The command came out more curtly than usual. She didn’t want this woman kneeling at her feet, kissing her hem as other Celierians had done when pleading for her to save a loved one. She wasn’t a goddess to be worshiped.

“Teska, Jonna. Please,” she urged more gently. “Hold your son’s hand. There isn’t much time.” And because there truly wasn’t, she infused the words with a spider-silk-thin filament of compulsion, woven from shining lavender Spirit magic.

Jonna instantly snatched up her son’s hand.

“And pray, my friend,” Ellysetta said, adding silently, For all our sakes.

The words to the Bright Lord’s devotion tumbled from the mortal healer’s lips.

Ellysetta flicked a glance at the tall, grim Fey warrior standing near the corner of her healing table.

Without a word, Gaelen vel Serranis stepped forward to lay a hand upon her shoulder. Crackling energy flooded her veins as the most infamous of the five bloodsworn warriors of her quintet surrendered his immense power for her use. The sort of healing she was about to do would take more than her own vast stores of power, and though usually a shei’dalin would rely on her truemate to supplement her strength, Rain was on the battlefield, where the king of the Fey belonged, rather than at her side.

Ellysetta closed her eyes, shut out the world, and gathered her magic. Power came to her call, a dazzling golden-white brightness the Fey called shei’dalin’s love, a healing gift Ellysetta Baristani wielded with a strength the world had not seen since the dawn of the First Age.

Against her closed lids, the pulsating vibrancy of Fey vision replaced physical sight, darkness teeming with the glowing threads of energy that made up all life and substance. Her consciousness traveled down the blinding-bright conduits of her arms, into Aartys’s dying body, then sank deeper. Moving with swift purpose, she followed the threads of her healing weave and descended into the Well of Souls, the blackness that lay beyond and beneath the physical world, the home of demons and the unborn and the dead waiting for passage into their next life.

There, she could see the fading light of Aartys’s soul as he sank into the long, silent dark of the Well. When his light disappeared, he would be lost. Determined not to let that happen, she plunged after him, her presence a dazzling incandescence that lit the shadowy world of the Well like a golden-white sun.

**Aartys.** She wove Spirit, the mystic magic of thought and illusion, hoping to make him feel his mother’s grief and fill him with an urgent need to return to her. **Fight, Aartys. Fight to live.** Death, ultimately, was like drowning. Once the initial terror passed, the dying embraced the numbness and simply let themselves fall, like wrecked ships sinking to the bottom of the sea. **Do not surrender. Reach for my Light. Let me bring you back to your mother. She needs you. She will be lost without you.**

Her weave was strong, her command of Spirit as exceptional as her command of the potent healing magic of the Fey. Yet still he fell.

So tired, his fading spirit whispered. Tell Mam I …His voice trailed off and the pale light of his soul began to sputter.

**Aartys!** Ellysetta dove after him. The threads of her weave stretched to the breaking point as she followed him deep into the Well, deeper than any other healer dared to go, deeper than she should have gone without Rain to anchor her.

**Take my magic, kem’falla,** Gaelen said. **Use what you need, and quickly. You have been gone from yourself too long.**

**Aiyah.** She seized the magic Gaelen had offered for her use—the dark black threads of magic that throbbed with red sparks. Azrahn, the forbidden soul magic.

Ellysetta worked quickly, reluctant to put Gaelen at risk by making him hold his weave for more than a chime or two. Though Gaelen considered the chance to save Fey lives well worth the risk of wielding Azrahn, they both knew how dangerous the magic was. She plaited the cool, dark threads of his Azrahn into her flows of shei’dalin’s love, weaving the strands of icy shadow and warm, healing light together.

The new weave—amplified by her powers as well as Gaelen’s own—let her descend much farther into the Well. But as deep as she went, Aartys remained out of reach.

**Enough, kem’falla,** Gaelen said. **We’re out of time.**

**Just a little farther.**

**Nei. You’ve been gone from yourself too long. If you cannot save the boy now, you must let him go. Your life is too important to risk so needlessly.**

Anger bubbled up inside her. **Needlessly?**

**You know what I mean.**

**Every life is precious, Gaelen.** She’d held too many dying men in her arms, comforted too many stricken loved ones, seen her own mother beheaded by the Eld. She could not bear the thought of one more lost, wasted life—especially not this beautiful boy, whose bright eyes and sunny smile had reminded her of her own young sisters.

Nei, she could not—would not—lose another soul today. Not to magic, not to war, and not to the thrice-flamed Well of Souls!

Cold whispered through her veins. Azrahn surged up from the great, deep source inside her, summoned by her anger. An almost sentient eagerness pressed against her will, as if the Azrahn inside her wanted her to weave it, wanted her to embrace its dark, forbidden power.

For her, giving in to that temptation would come with a terrible price. She bore four Mage Marks, placed upon her by the High Mage of Eld, and each time she spun Azrahn, she risked receiving another one. Two more and her soul, her consciousness, her entire being, would be his to command.

Still, the lure was tremendous. Gaelen’s threads didn’t contain a fraction of the power her own did. She could weave just a little …just enough to save the boy. Perhaps she could even spin it quickly enough that the High Mage wouldn’t have time to sense it and Mark her again.

Yes …yes, just a little, and quickly. Such a small thing. Surely he would miss it.

The siren’s call whispered in her ear. Dimly, she heard someone say her name, as if calling from far away, but the voice was soon was silenced. Forbidden power throbbed in her veins, and all around her, the darkness of the Well of Souls pulsed to the same beat. Her ears filled with muted susurrations, a rhythmic ebbing and flowing, as if she were a child in the womb, listening to the blood rushing through her mother’s veins. The sound was hypnotic …entrancing….

She reached for her Azrahn, let its cold sweetness fill her.

**Ellysetta!** A furious and all-too-familiar voice roared her name. Power rushed into her body, and deep within the Well, her Light flared like an exploding sun.

The jolt sent her weave spearing wildly into the Well, so deep it passed the fading light that was Aartys’s soul. Stunned, she had just enough time and presence of mind to close her weave around Aartys and cling tight before her soul was yanked from the Well and slammed back into her own body.

The shining brilliance of Fey vision faded to darkness. The tranquillity of the Well gave way to a murmur of voices, muted screams of men in pain, the smells of blood and sweat and suffering. Her eyes fluttered as her senses gradually returned to her body.

She was clutched in a hot, hard, golden embrace, but neither that nor the blazing heat of two burning purple suns glaring down upon her could stop the icy shivers racking her frame. She blinked up into the achingly beautiful, utterly furious face of her truemate.

“Rain, I—”

His eyes flared tairen-bright. Pupils and whites disappeared, leaving only spark-filled whirls of lavender that glowed so bright they could have lit a dark room. “Do. Not. Speak.” His nostrils flared, and even the long, inky black strands of his hair crackled with scarcely contained energy. “Just …be silent.” He was so angry, his temper bordered on Rage, the wild, ferociously lethal fury of the Fey.

A choked sound snagged her attention. “Aartys!” she cried.

Powerful arms encased in heavy, golden, tairen-forged steel tightened their grip around her and held her fast. “Is alive and does not need your help.”

She turned her head, but she couldn’t see the boy. Scarlet-veiled shei’dalins surrounded the table where he lay, and the glow of concentrated healing magic shone so bright even mortal eyes could see it.

“Beylah sallan,” she breathed. Thank the gods.

That remark was the feather that broke the tairen’s back. Rain plunked her on her feet, gripped her arms, and gave her a shake strong enough to rattle her teeth. “Thank the gods? Thank the gods?” His Rage blazed so hot, flames nearly shot from his head. “Thank Gaelen for having the belated sense to call me when he realized what was happening.” He shook her again. “Idiot! Ninnywit! Reckless, rock-headed dim-skull! How many times are you going to put yourself in such danger?”

Her brows snapped together. “Me?” she shot back. “That’s a bit of the sword calling the dagger sharp, don’t you think?” She yanked herself out of his grasp and returned his glare with her own. “Do I berate you for all the risks you take in battle?”

He drew himself up to his full height, and with his golden war steel adding significant breadth to his already broad shoulders, he loomed over her. “Don’t try to turn this on me. I am the Defender of the Fey, and we are at war. It is my duty to lead our warriors in battle.”

“And I am a shei’dalin,” she retorted. “The most powerful healer we have. It is my duty to save every life I can!”

“Not at the risk of your own! You were about to weave Azrahn, Ellysetta! Despite the danger—despite your sworn oath never to weave it again unless we both agreed.”

The pain in his voice—even more than the frightening truth of his words—deflated her defensive ire. She had made a vow and nearly betrayed it—nearly betrayed him. Her shoulders slumped and she lifted a shaking hand to her face.

He was right, but before she could admit it and apologize, Jonna gave a short cry. Rain and Ellysetta both turned to the table where Aartys lay. The shei’dalins had extinguished their weaves and were already departing. The boy was sitting up, the gaping wound in his chest gone without a trace, even the dried blood and grime of war washed away by shei’dalin magic. His mother had her arms wrapped tight around him, and her shoulders heaved with sobs of relief and joy.

“Thank you.” Jonna wept, tears raining from her eyes. “Thank you for my son. Light’s blessings upon you!”

Ellysetta found Rain’s hand. He’d removed his gauntlets, and her fingers curled into the broad, warm strength of his.

His eyes flashed a warning at her, but to Jonna he offered only gentle understanding. “Sha vel’mei, Jonna,” he said, his voice a deep, rough velvet purr. “You are both welcome. And you, Aartys . . .” He leveled a stern look on the boy. “I do not want to see you on the battlefield again. Your sword is sharp and your soul is brave, but I need you most here, guarding your mother and the Feyreisa.” He clapped a hand on the child’s shoulder. “There is no more honorable duty for a warrior of the Fey than to protect our women. Do you accept this great honor?”

“You want me to help guard the Feyreisa?” The boy’s eyes went big as coins. He cast a dazed glance at Ellysetta before turning back to Rain. “Aye, my lord Feyreisen,” he agreed. “I do accept.”

“Kabei.” Good. “Then it is decided. Sers vel Jelani and vel Tibboreh”—he tilted his head towards two of the grim-eyed Fey posted at the corners of Ellysetta’s healing tent—“will explain your duties to you. For now, go with your mother and get some rest and a change of clothes.”

“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 at the healing tents. “And I’m every bit as determined to win my war as you. If that means I occasionally have to take risks—just like you do—then, by the gods, that’s exactly what I’ll do!”

“Over. My. Rotting. Corpse.” His teeth snapped together with an audible click. He grabbed her wrist again and put on a burst of speed that forced her to jog to keep up with him.

The collection of bloodsworn black Fey’cha daggers strapped across her chest and around her hips slapped against her steel-embroidered scarlet robes as she ran, and the feeling of being a chastised child dragged along beind an irate parent only chafed her more.

“You’re being unfair!” she exclaimed. “I may not have my wings yet, but I’m a Tairen Soul, too, Rain. I feel the same need to defend our people as you do. Just because the only enemy I can defend them against at the moment is death, that doesn’t mean my efforts are any less vital than yours!”

His eyes glowed so bright they nearly shot purple sparks. “Have I ever suggested they were? Have I not let Gaelen weave the forbidden magic for your use so you could save lives that would otherwise be lost? I do not object to your saving lives. But I will not allow you to risk your own in the process!”

“But—”

“Enough!” he thundered. “You don’t have to like it, Ellysetta, but I am the Feyreisen—both your truemate and your king—and on this matter, I will be obeyed!”

Ahead lay the open plaza near Veil Lake that Rain and the tairen used for launching and landing. Four majestic winged cats, each the size of a house, crouched on the manicured grass at the lakeshore. Their heads were extended as they lapped at the cold waters fed from Kiyera’s Veil, the gauntlet of three-hundred-foot waterfalls that tumbled down from opposing mountainsides at the lake’s western shore.

When they reached the plaza, Rain slowed his pace. Ellysetta yanked her wrist from his grip a second time, marched to the mossy edge of the bricked space, and presented him her back. She pressed her lips in a thin line, angry at his high-handedness. For a woman who’d spent the first twenty-four years of her life as the shy, obedient daughter of a poor woodcarver and his wife, Ellysetta had become mulishly resistant to Voices of Authority. Even when those voices belonged to kings, wedded husbands, and beloved truemates. If Mama were still alive, she would shake her head in despair of her adopted daughter’s willful ways.

By the lakeshore, the largest of the tairen, a great white beauty with eyes like glowing blue jewels, lifted her snowy, feline head and turned to pad towards them. Her long tail slapped against several tree trunks as she walked, bringing a shower of leaves raining down in her wake. When she reached the plaza, she spread her wide, clawed wings and reared up on her hind legs to shake the debris from her fur. A deep, throaty purr rumbled in her chest, and she tilted her head down to pin Ellysetta with a whirling, pupillesss blue gaze.

**You worried your mate, kitling,** admonished Steli, chakai of the Fey’Bahren pride. The musical tones of the tairen’s speech danced in the air like flashes of silver and gold and carried with them feelings of panicked fear and images of Rain whirling in the sky and rocketing towards Upper Orest. **You should not alarm him so. Tairen frightened for their mates are dangerous—especially to beings as breakable as mortals.**

“Not you, too, Steli!” Ellysetta crossed her arms, feeling immensely put out. “You think I’m not afraid when he’s out there getting maimed by arrows and bowcannon?”

Steli’s ears flicked and her tail lashed the earth. **Ellysetta-kitling would not scorch the world. Rainier-Eras already has. Without you to anchor him, he would again.**

That simple, inescapable truth deflated Ellysetta’s temper as nothing else could. A thousand years ago, after the death of his first mate, Sariel, Rain Tairen Soul had scorched the world in the blaze of tairen flame, killing thousands in mere instants, millions in a handful of days. He’d paid for that act of Rage with seven hundred years of madness and another three centuries spent battling his way back from the abyss.

**Rainier-Eras is proud,** Steli continued, **and he does not wish to frighten his mate. He does not tell Ellysetta-kitling that each day becomes harder. That each battle weakens what took him so long to rebuild.**

Ellysetta cast a troubled gaze over her shoulder. Rain stood a short distance away, shoulders hunched, pinching the bridge of his nose as he expended visible effort to calm himself. She’d frightened him badly, and his control hung in tatters. Untruemated Fey warriors absorbed the torment of every life they took—the pain, the darkness, the sorrow of lost dreams hanging like burning stones around their necks—and Rain bore the weight of millions on his soul. Mental and emotional discipline was the only thing standing between him and insanity, and her nearly fatal trip into the Well had stripped those protections threadbare. Shame washed over her.

The tairen bent her head and nudged Ellysetta. **Go to your mate, kitling. He needs you. Now more than ever.**

Ellysetta crossed the short distance to Rain’s side. Moss grew green and thick along the edges of the plaza’s mist-dampened bricks. Winter would be upon them soon, and the spray off the Veil would turn to flurries of ice crystals. The nights would grow longer, the Eld Mages more powerful. Despite the brave efforts of Lord Teleos’s soldiers, Celieria stood no chance of surviving the winter as a free land without the help of the Fey. The might of the tairen was the only power Mages truly feared.

Until Ellysetta found her wings, Rain was the only living Tairen Soul capable of Changing to his tairen form and leading the pride into battle. As such, he would have to fight—again and again and again—and the torment of his soul would grow more unbearable with each engagement. Ellysetta hadn’t been thinking about that when she’d made her decision to save Aartys. She hadn’t been thinking about Rain at all.

“I’m sorry, shei’tan,” she apologized sincerely. “I should have been more careful—for your sake if not my own.”

“That’s what you always say,” he replied in a low voice, “but it never stops you from doing what you know you should not.”

She rubbed her forehead, where a headache had begun to throb. “I never meant to go so deep into the Well, but he was a child, Rain. Not much older than Lillis and Lorelle. I couldn’t let him die. Can’t you understand that?”

He sighed. “I do understand, shei’tani. Better than you think.” He turned to face her. “But saving that boy or even a thousand more like him won’t bring Lillis and Lorelle back.” He crossed to her side and took her shoulders in a firm grip. “You’ve got to stop risking yourself this way, Ellysetta. You’re no good to your sisters, or your father, or anyone else for that matter, if you’re dead or lose your soul to the Mages.”

“I know that. I do. It’s just that—” Her voice broke off. She could feel his fear, his love, his guilt for bringing her into the dangers of a Tairen Soul’s life, his terror that he might not be strong enough to hold himself in check the next time she came so close to death.

“Oh, Rain.” She leaned against him, resting her forehead against the unforgiving golden steel of his tairen-forged war armor and laying the palm of one hand against the smooth warmth of his jaw. Though they could not read each other’s thoughts until their bond was complete, they could, when they touched skin-to-skin, feel each other’s emotions as clear as day.

Because he was the strongest of the Fey, the most powerful Tairen Soul in living memory, it was so easy to forget how fragile he truly was, how narrow the band that kept him from plunging into madness.

**Sieks’ta, shei’tan.** I’m sorry, beloved. She wove the apology into his mind on a thread of Spirit, not reading his thoughts, but offering him one of hers. With her hand against his face, her skin touching his, she knew he could sense her sincerity and the great love she bore him just as she sensed his agitation drain away, replaced by regret and weariness.

He turned his lips into her palm and pressed a kiss there. “As am I,” he said. “I know my fear for you is a burden, and it shames me that you must bear it. You are a Tairen Soul, which means you are fierce, born to fight and to defend those in your care; but you are also my shei’tani. I thought I would be strong enough to let you embrace the warrior’s side of your nature. I know now I’m not. I cannot allow you to be harmed—not even by your own actions.”

Ellysetta forced a small smile. “Perhaps when our bond is complete, things will be different.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed without conviction.

Steli’s wings flapped. The white tairen nudged them with her nose. **Time to fly, Rainier-Eras. The day grows late.**

“Aiyah.”

“Where are we going?” Ellysetta asked.

“Crystal Lake,” he admitted.

“The Source in the mountains? But that’s bells away—” She broke off and her brows drew together in concern. Every great city in the Fading Lands had a Source at its center, and the Fey drank the water of those Sources to bolster their strength and replenish flagging magical energies. The only Source that existed outside the Fading Lands was Crystal Lake, and its magic-infused waters fed one of the tributaries that flowed into Kiyera’s Veil and the Heras River.

If the diluted Source waters of the Veil were no longer powerful enough to replenish Rain’s magic or rejuvenate his strength . . .

“It’s more precaution than need,” Rain reassured her, reading her expression. Fey didn’t lie, which meant he was telling the truth—or at least a version of it. “Besides, how long has it been since we’ve managed to do more than snatch a few bells’ sleep together? I thought you might like some time away from the battlefield and the healing tents.”

“I would.” The other shei’dalins slipped back through the Mists every few days to restore themselves in the peace of the Fading Lands. Banished and Mage Marked as she was, Ellysetta didn’t have that luxury. “I suppose we could both use a visit to the Source,” she said, stepping back to give Rain room for the Change.

He waited for her to get clear before closing his eyes and summoning his magic. Flows of power gathered and swirled around him, darkening to a gray mist that sparkled with rainbow lights. The crackling energy of his magic poured over Ellysetta in hot, electric waves. She gasped and closed her eyes on a shudder of shared pleasure as Rain’s Fey body was unmade—his flesh and consciousness flung out into the mist of the Change—then re-formed in a staggering rush into the great, sleek body of his tairen self.

When the magic of the Change cleared, Rain Tairen Soul crouched where Rain the Fey had stood: a magnificent, kingly creature, like one of the sleek black jungle cats Ellysetta had seen in illustrated books of faraway lands, except that a tairen stood easily half as high as a fully grown fireoak, and great, batlike wings sprouted from his back. Even by tairen standards, Rain was an impressive male, with fur a glossy, unrelieved midnight black, a vast wingspan, and radiant, pupillesss eyes that glowed like lavender suns.

He lowered his head to pin Ellysetta with that bright, whirling gaze and rumbled a throaty purr. Her body clenched like a fist, every nerve abruptly sizzling with a rush of pure, primitive heat. She might not yet have found her wings, but the tairen in her soul recognized its mate—and yearned for him with staggering force.

She wet her lips and tried to compose herself while Rain purred deep in his throat and nosed her with unmistakable interest. “Stop that.” She laughed, giving him a shove. She summoned an Earth weave that transformed her gown into steel-studded scarlet leathers, with Fey’cha belts crossed over her chest and her quintet’s daggers sheathed in the belt slung around her hips. A subsequent weave summoned a burst of powerful silvery Air magic that lifted her body up and deposited her into the cradle of the leather saddle that Rain wove for her on his back. She anchored herself in place with the saddle’s leather straps. “I’m ready.”

**Then spin the weave, shei’tani. Around Steli as well as us.**

Ellysetta nodded and reached once more into the well of power that lay within her. Lavender Spirit, the mystic magic of consciousness, thought, and illusion, surged up in a rush and she wove the dense threads of energy in a pattern Gaelen vel Serranis had taught the Fey only a few months ago. She flung the weave out like a net, first around Steli—who promptly winked out of sight—then around herself and Rain, rendering them invisible to both mortal and magic eyes.

The other tairen had left the waters of Veil Lake and padded over to the plaza. They leapt into the air seconds before Rain crouched down on his haunches and sprang skyward, and their presence provided cover for the rush of wind that might have betrayed Rain and Steli’s otherwise invisible launch.

Ringed by the pride and sheathed by invisibility, Rain, Ellysetta, and Steli soared high over the Rhakis mountaintops into the thin, crisp chill of the autumn sky. A dusting of snow capped the high, jagged peaks to the north. Below, just across the Heras River, the southwest corner of Eld still smoldered from the fiery aftermath of the recent battle. What had two weeks ago been a fortified village was now a scorched plain, razed to the ground, every living and dead thing in a twenty-mile radius reduced to ash. Yet still, the Eld came to battle the legions of Orest with relentless determination, wearing them down bit by bit, retreating back into the dense forests of Eld, where, thanks to the batteries of bowcannon trained on the skies, not even the tairen could follow.

To the west, the billowing wall of mist that marked the borders of the Fading Lands rose up from the mountaintops. Rain flew close enough that Ellysetta could feel the tingle of magic from the Mists, and her fingers tightened on the pommel.

From the valley floor, the Mists looked like a line of thunderclouds hugging the crests of the Rhakis mountains. From the sky, however, they looked more beautiful than foreboding, like a radiant veil of shifting rainbows that stretched upward as far as the eye could see.

Ominous thunderheads or shimmering veil, Ellysetta recognized the Faering Mists for what they truly were: a deadly magical barrier meant to keep the enemies of the Fey from entering the Fading Lands.

It was true that many an innocent shepherd had wandered by accident into the Mists, only to emerge again, decades later, unharmed, not aged a day, carrying tales of being feted by the Fair Folk in misty forest palaces. To the not-so-innocent, the Mists were far less kind. Entire armies had been swallowed up, never to be seen again.

Ellysetta’s body tensed with remembered pain. She knew, firsthand, the torments that lay within those shifting clouds. Thanks to the four Mage Marks she bore, the Mists were now more dangerous to her than the Well of Souls, and the last time she’d entered, she’d very nearly not made it back out again alive.

If it were otherwise, she would not be here in Orest, weaving her magic to save lives. She would be in the Mists, searching every gods-cursed fingerspan of the magical barrier, tearing it apart thread by scorching thread if she had to.

Because somewhere in that veil of shifting mist, the last members of her family had been trapped; and she could not reach them …or even tell if they were still alive.

* * *

The Faering Mists

“Lorelle! Papa! Can you hear me? Where are you?” Lillis Baristani’s voice was hoarse from shouting, and the ocean of tears she’d shed had left her eyes swollen and burning.

She turned in circles and squinted in a vain effort to pierce the suffocating veil of shifting whiteness around her. She’d been in the Mists a long time—bells, certainly, maybe even a day or more, though it was hard to tell time when the vapor was eternally lit by its own magical glow. In any event, she’d not seen or heard another living being since the moment the mountain had shuddered like a wild, angry beast and she’d lost her footing and fallen back into the Faering Mists.

Never in all her life had she been so alone. Always, someone had been with her: her twin, Lorelle, or Mama or Papa or Ellie.

Alone was frightening. Almost more frightening than the terrible, monstrous darrokken or the evil Eld soldiers that had attacked Teleon. Almost more frightening than even the sight of Kieran screaming as he disappeared beneath an avalanche of dirt, rock, and toppling trees.

“Kieran?” she cried. “Kiel? Anybody?”

There was still no answer.

Lillis blinked back tears and clutched her small kitten to her chest. “They’re not coming, Snowfoot. I don’t think anyone’s coming.” In the sling tied around her neck, her black-and-white kitten mewed and squirmed and sank its tiny sharp claws into the wool jacket covering Lillis’s pinafore.

Papa had always told Lillis, “If ever you get lost, kitling, stay right where you are. Your mama and I will come to find you.” But Mama was dead—killed by the same evil people who had attacked Teleon—and Lillis had waited long enough in the white blindness of the Mists to know that either no one was still alive to find her or they were looking in the wrong place.

Either way, she couldn’t stay here.

She stroked Snowfoot’s soft fur and hummed a little song Ellie had always sung to Lillis and Lorelle when they were frightened or upset. The tune didn’t soothe Lillis like it did when Ellie sang it, but Snowfoot stopped his anxious mewing.

“I’ll bet you’re getting hungry and thirsty, aren’t you?” Lillis murmured to the kitten. “I know I am.” She wrapped her thin arms around the tiny feline, cuddling it closer and pressing her face to the soft fur at the top of its head. “Come on, Snowfoot,” she said. “Let’s go find Papa and Lorelle.”

Sometimes it amazes me the villains authors are able to write. I laugh and ask where they get their inspiration, how deep they have to dig. I mean, sometimes it’s spooky how evil these characters can be.

The High Mage of Eld is one of those villains. He’s taken centuries to hatch his plans, to gather an army darker than anything that’s ever been seen, to finally put his plans into motion, when and where to strike. This guy makes the devil look like a boy scout.

One of the best things in these books is when Rain takes flight in his Tairen form. Whether it’s in anger needing to fly it off or to impress Ellie or in battle, Ms. Wilson’s descriptions of him are simply breathtaking. I want a tairen of my own!

Please read my review of King of Sword and Sky and the excerpt following.

Sandy M’s review of King of Sword and Sky (Tairen Soul Series, Book 3) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy Paranormal Romance published by Leisure 30 Sep 08

If you have not read this series of C.W. Wilson’s, you are missing out on some so spectacularly special. Ms. Wilson weaves her brand of magic in the pages of this beautiful fantasy world of the Fading Lands where the Fey and the tairen live. Her characters of full of honor and dignity, heart and passion, and, of course, love. The villainy she etches into her evil characters only causes you to root for the good of her hero and heroine to triumph. And her imagination is simply amazing. You just have to read this series!

In this book we finally get to the Fading Lands. We’ve been reading about them and waiting for them since the first book. But even before that we have to endure the Faering Mist with Rain, King of the Fey and the Tairen Soul, and Ellysetta, his truemate, daughter of a wood carver. The Mist is a barrier around the Fading Lands to keep all within its borders safe from evil, especially the Mages of Eld, who are on the rise once again after being vanquished in the Mage Wars a thousand years ago.

Their entourage makes it through the Mist relatively unscathed — it’s Rain and Ellie who are delayed by their past that the Mist throws in their path, doubling their fears and vulnerabilities. Coming together, however, they fight their way through so that Rain can ready his men for the war that is sure to break out with Eld and Ellie can begin her search for answers to save the tairen.

See the remainder of my King of Sword and Sky review here.

Prologue

Eld ~ Boura Fell

“Two Primages and sixty of my Black Guard slaughtered, and yet somehow the pair of you survived. While my prize escaped.”

In the lowest levels of Boura Fell, the subterranean fortress buried deep beneath the dark-forested heart of Eld, High Mage Vadim Maur paced the sel’dor-veined floor of a small, sconce-lit cell. Before him, two battered and bruised men sat chained to a pair of black metal chairs. One wore the blood-and-filth grimed remnants of an exorcist’s scarlet robes. The other wore shredded and stained crimson rags that had once been the silken garb of a Sulimage, a journeyman practitioner of the vast and ancient arts of Magecraft.

Vadim Maur’s pacing came to an abrupt halt. Luxuriant purple robes swirled about his spare form. Long, bone-white hair slid across his shoulders, accentuating the pallor of a face that had not seen sunlight in a thousand years. One beringed hand shot out. Thin, cadaverous fingers closed around the swollen jaw of Kolis Manza, Eld’s most famous and esteemed Sulimage, who had until only a few days ago served his master Vadim Maur’s bidding in Celieria City.

Now, the Sulimage’s sash had been stripped of its jewels of achievement, and the shredded, honor-bare swath of cloth had been tied around the man’s throat to mock his once-proud status as the High Mage’s most accomplished and magically gifted apprentice.

“Capture her,” Vadim hissed. “Bring her to me. That was my command.” Long, ridged nails dug deep into the Sulimage’s skin. “Yet you returned empty handed.”

“She was too powerful,” Kolis protested weakly. “Not even the Primages could stand against her.”

“Powerful?” Silver eyes snapped with fury, and white frost formed on every surface as the room’s temperature plunged in sharp response. “Of course she was powerful! She is the crowning achievement of my last thousand years of work! The Tairen Soul I created! My greatest triumph—and you let her slip through your fingers!”

“What more could I have done, master? The Fey broke through our defenses.” The Sulimage coughed, then groaned as his broken ribs protested. “I tried to hold them off, to give the others time to get her into the Well, but then she… her magic…just exploded. She surprised us all.”

“Silence!” Vadim’s free hand shot out with vicious force. Despite the High Mage’s great age and increasingly frail appearance, his fist smashed hard against his apprentice’s face. The heavy rings of power decorating each of his fingers amplified the force of his blow, and the crack of bone and the crunch of breaking cartilage echoed off the stone walls of the chamber. Blood sprayed from Kolis’s mouth and nose. A groaning breath wheezed out of his lungs, and he slumped senseless in his bonds.

Vadim turned to the man in the ragged exorcist’s robes and whipped a wavy-edged Mage blade from the sheath strapped to his waist. He snatched a handful of greasy brown hair and yanked hard, pulling back the prisoner’s head and exposing his throat to the dagger’s razor-sharp edge.

Pale blue eyes, surrounded by stubby black lashes, looked up at him in mute fear. Fresh blood trickled from both nostrils and the corners of the man’s mouth, and vicious purpling bruises swelled on skin still mottled from earlier beatings. A pulse beat like a trapped sparrow in the man’s throat, and his barrel chest rose and fell with short, rapid breaths.

The prisoner swallowed convulsively, and the skin of his neck pressed against the razor-sharp edge of the Mage blade. Even that light touch tore a fresh slice in the captive’s skin. No blood trickled from the wound. The dagger’s thirsty black metal drank every drop before it spilled, and the dark cabochon stone in the blade’s pommel began to flicker with ravenous red lights. The man froze in breathless silence.

Vadim’s mouth twisted in a snarl. “And you, butcher’s boy. Did you seriously think for even the tiniest instant that your miserable, insignificant mortal life held any value to me except as a means to capture Ellysetta Baristani?” Vadim leaned forward, letting his silver eyes turn to dark, bottomless wells of blackness sparkling with red lights as Azrahn, the sweet, powerful magic of the Mages, gathered within him.

Den Brodson, son of a Celierian butcher and former betrothed of Ellysetta Baristani, stared up into those twin pits of blackness and knew he was staring death in the face. He’d seen death before, a few days ago in the Grand Cathedral of Light, when Rain Tairen Soul had pulled a Fey blade from its sheath and smiled into Den’s eyes.

Then, Den had turned and leaped into the Well of Souls to escape. Now, gods help him, he had nowhere to go.

The white-haired High Mage leaned closer still. “Your only value to me now is what small service the Guardians of the Well will offer in return for the delivery of your rotting corpse as a sacrifice.”

A mewling whimper broke from Den’s bloodied mouth. He’d seen the Guardian’s handiwork…seen what they did to the dead and dying. As long as he lived, he’d never forget the high-pitched, animal screams of Eld soldiers being eaten alive when fresh blood seeped through their bandages and drew the hunger-maddened demons like wounded creatures drew thistlewolves.

Gods, he didn’t want to die that way. “Please…”

Black eyes sparked with a sudden flare of malevolent red. The High Mage put a hand over Den’s chest, directly over his heart, the fingers curved like claws so that only the fingertips touched. All five, pointed nails gouged into the skin as if the Mage intended to bore through Den’s chest bones and rip out his heart. The black eyes whirled. The skin where the pallid hand touched grew cold.

“No, wait! Wait!” Panicked, Den shoved his feet against the cell floor and scooted his chair back, retreating from the icy hand. The leg of his chair caught on an uneven stone and with a choked wail, he toppled over backwards.

Pain exploded in his skull as his head cracked against the stones. His hands, shackled at the wrists, scraped hard against their metal bonds. The sudden jolt shook his entire body, and a long, narrow parcel of wadded cloth fell out of his robe’s deep pocket to land beside him.

The pair of pale, hulking guards standing near the door strode forward to grab Den’s chair and haul it—and him—back upright. One guard kicked the small parcel, and sent it skittering across the floor. The fabric unwrapped as it went, and a handful of long, crystal-topped needles spilled out, chiming an absurdly cheerful series of tinkling notes as they rolled across the stone floor.

The High Mage went still. His eyes narrowed and lightened from nightmarish black to a slightly less terrifying shade of cold, glittering silver. Sheathing his dagger, the Mage pointed to the scattered exorcism needles. “Bring those to me,” he commanded.

Both guards rushed to obey, gathering up the fallen needles and bringing them back to their master. The Mage examined them closely. Most of the dark crystals topping the needles were dark, but several sparkled with ruby lights.

His jaw clenched. He spun around, grabbed Den’s chin in a fierce grip and shook him, making stars whirl across Den’s vision. “These crystals have tasted blood,” the Mage hissed. “Whose flesh did the needles pierce, mortal? Yours? Or someone else’s?”

Den swallowed the acrid bile rising in his throat. “Ellie Baristani,” he groaned. “She pulled them out to stop us from taking her into the Well.”

The High Mage released Den and straightened. He lifted the needles to his nose and inhaled deeply. His eyes fluttered closed. When he opened them again, the Mage smiled.

“Well, mortal, it seems you will keep your miserable life another day, after all.” He untied the sash from around his waist and wrapped the needles in it carefully, then deposited the small bundle in his own deep pocket. “I do not punish those who please me, and this gift is pleasing indeed.”

The shallow, relieved breath had barely left Den’s lungs before his chest constricted on a new surge of panic when the High Mage lunged and his bony hand closed round Den’s throat.

“Today is my gift to you,” the Mage hissed. “But for life after daybreak tomorrow, there is a price, mortal.” He lifted the Mage blade, twisting the black, razored edge so the light of the sconces made shadows dance across the dark metal. “Accept my Mark. Willingly bind your soul to my service. Or when the Great Sun rises, you will die a death more hideous than any you can imagine.”

Den whimpered.

The Mage smiled, pressed the point of his dagger to Den’s wrist and sliced. Blood welled from the cut and slid down Den’s arm like scarlet teardrops. The Mage lifted the wrist to his lips. Den flinched as a pale tongue flicked out, tasting his blood. “Answer me, boy. Surrender your soul or die. The choice is yours.”

Den’s hand shook. His entire body trembled. How had this happened? How had his plans gone so awry?

The Mage’s grip tightened, pointed nails digging into the soft skin of Den’s inner wrist. “Speak, mortal! Do you accept my Mark? Of your own free will, do you bind your soul to my service?”

Den’s dreams of living in luxury in some remote part of the world, growing fat on the profits of Ellie Baristani’s magic, shattered like broken glass. There would be no palatial estate. No soft-skinned, buxom serving wenches to tend his every need. No lords lining up to seek his favor. There would be no Ellie Baristani on her knees before him, kissing his feet and begging for his forgiveness, whoring herself to please him.

His eyes closed. His shoulders heaved with helpless, silent sobs.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Yes, master,” the Mage’s hissing voice corrected.

“Yes, master.” Tears gathered in Den’s throat and burned at the back of his eyes.

“Then say it. ‘Of my own free will, I accept your Mark and bind my soul to your eternal service.’”

Den heard himself, weeping brokenly, repeating the damning words. Hot tears ran down his frozen cheeks. The cold press of the Mage’s mouth clamped against his wrist and pulled sickeningly as the Mage sucked Den’s blood from the sliced vein. Then came the colder press of that taloned hand gripping the skin above his heart. A sickly sweet aroma filled the air, overpowering, like barrels of rotting fruit. Pure, frigid ice, sharp as a knife, plunged deep into his chest. A will, heavy as stone, pressed down upon his.

He was in a black river, gasping for breath and fighting desperately to stay afloat, while a heavy weight slowly and relentlessly dragged him down. His head bobbed under. The thick, black, oily liquid of the river—so cold, so horribly sweet—enveloped him. His lungs burned as the air in them ran out and the need to breathe became overpowering. He fought, struggled, tried to kick his way to the surface, but the weight anchored him down, dragging him deeper and deeper.

His world was total darkness. No light. No hope. No hint of warmth. His lungs were on fire. If he breathed he would drown. If he didn’t breathe, he would die.

His mouth opened on a deep, desperate, despairing gasp. Oily blackness flooded in, filling his lungs, filling him.

With one last, choking, weeping cry for his lost life, Den Brodson surrendered.

Chapter One

Celieria ~ The Garreval

Seven days after departing Celieria City, the Fey reached the end of the mortal world. As the small caravan of wagons and loping Fey crested the top of a last, rolling hill, Ellysetta’s breath caught in her throat. A great fertile plain stretched out below, miles of land sectioned into hedgerow-partitioned fields, all greening with well tended crops against a dramatic backdrop of majestic mountains thrusting up from the earth like a solid wall.

“Oh, Papa,” Ellysetta breathed.

“’Tis the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” Sol Baristani agreed in a whisper as he sat beside his daughter on the wagon seat, a lit match held, forgotten, over the tobacco-filled bowl of his favorite pipe.

Together, father and daughter stared in awestruck wonder at the majestic peaks filling the horizon.

At first glance, the mountains almost appeared to be a single range but Ellysetta knew from the countless histories she’d read that they were actually two separate mountain ranges. The fierce Rhakis arrowed down from the north, nearly colliding with the stately swells of the Silvermist range. Only a scant mile separated the two, an infamous pass known as the Garreval, gateway to the Fading Lands.

Misty clouds swirled across forested cliffs and steep highland pastures of the Silvermist mountains. The clouds hovering over the Rhakis were less gentle, dark with rain and boiling into lightning-shot thunderheads as the sharp peaks continued northward towards Eld. Those soft clouds and fierce storms merged into a dense, shimmering fog that filled the pass between the two ranges, and Ellysetta gave a small shiver at the sight.

The Faering Mists. The magical barrier that surrounded the Fading Lands, impenetrable to all but the Fey.

The match Sol held over the tobacco-filled bowl of his pipe burned down unnoticed until the heat scorched his fingers. “Sweet brightness!” he yelped. Hissing, he shook the match out, tossed the scorched remains over the edge of the wagon, and blew on his stinging fingers.

Ellie turned, trying to stifle her laughter as she reached for his hand. This wasn’t the first time her father had seared his hands on a matchstick. It wouldn’t be the last. His attention was too easily caught by some real or imagined beauty—often while he held a lit match in his hand, thanks to his fondness for his pipe.

“I’m all right, Ellie-girl,” Sol protested when she took his hand.

“I know, Papa, but Marissya says I should practice whenever I get the opportunity.” She held her father’s hand in hers and focused on the reddened flesh, trying to block out the flood of thoughts and emotions that poured into her mind when she touched his skin.

Love. Worry. Instinctive fear, tinged with guilt. He still wasn’t comfortable with the shining brightness and palpable magic of the beautiful stranger sitting beside him.

Ellie forced back the stab of pain his fear caused and tried to focus her thoughts the way Marissya v’En Solande, the Fey’s most powerful healer had shown her. Throughout the week-long westward journey across Celieria, Marissya had spent several bells each day with Ellysetta, teaching her how to wield her own powerful healing magic.

Though Ellysetta still had much to learn, she now understood on a conscious level the basic patterns of the healing weaves she’d been unconsciously spinning all her life. Marissya assured her she’d soon be able to summon and spin those weaves on demand, using only the amount of power needed to weave them, but restraint was something Ellie still had difficulty mastering. The powerful, hidden barriers that had kept her magic bottled up were gone now, and the weaves she’d once spun with such subtlety now surged forth at her call like a river gushing through a shattered dam.

Remembering Marissya’s admonitions, Ellysetta reached down into the well of energy at her center, carefully calling forth the glowing threads of power she would need. Red Fire to draw the heat from the wound. Green Earth to heal the damaged flesh. Lavender Spirit to steal away the pain. And something else Ellysetta had discovered while observing Marissya during their lessons. A special, golden something that Marissya called a shei’dalin’s love, the mysterious force that was unique to Fey women. It made all the threads of the shei’dalin’s weave shimmer with a warm, golden cast. No Fey warrior could spin his magic the same way.

“It springs from the compassion and empathy of a Fey woman’s heart,” Marissya had told her. “It isn’t a seventh branch of magic. We cannot separate it out and weave the shei’dalin’s love by itself. It’s just the natural way Fey women weave magic.”

“And do I weave shei’dalin’s love the same way?”

At that, Marissya had laughed. “Feyreisa, you do nothing the same as other Fey.” Then, still smiling, she’d added, “I’m sure you must, Ellysetta, but when you weave, your magic is so bright, its power blinds me.”

Now, holding Papa’s hand in hers, she attempted to summon her magic and wield it with control and restraint, as Marissya had been trying to teach her.

She found the threads, wove them in a loose healing pattern, and with a gentle “push” of power, sent the weave into her father’s hand. The push slammed out of her with the force of a hammer strike, her weave flaring with blinding brightness.

The startled jerk of Papa’s body and sudden widening of his eyes made her grimace in dismay.

“Light save me,” she muttered under her breath. Then, in a louder voice, she said, “Are you all right, Papa?”

Sol blinked several times and took cautious inventory of himself. When he didn’t find any missing—or extra—appendages, he gave a smile. “Well done, Ellie-girl. The finger’s good as new.” He held up his hand to show her.

Sure enough, the angry red burn on the tip of his finger was gone. But that wasn’t the problem. She watched her father run his newly healed hand through his hair. His hand stopped in mid-motion.

“Oh,” he said. Sol Baristani was of the age when many mortal men began “thinning the forest” as Papa put it. Or, rather, he had been. Keeping his gaze fixed on her face, he patted the newly thickened growth of hair crowning his scalp. “Well…er… that’s not so bad. Provided it’s not some frightful shade of green.” His brows drew together in mock concern, and he added in a hesitant, rather fearful tone, “Er…it’s not green, is it, Ellie?”

Ellie sighed. “No, Papa, it’s not green.”

With a twinkle in his eye, he pretended relief. “Well then, there you go.” He laughed and grinned, and reached across to pat her hand. “You did good, Ellie-girl. You may have overdone the weave a little, but the finger’s healed. Besides, what man wouldn’t like a little more hair when his own starts to go missing, eh?” Thrusting his pipe stem back between his teeth, he lit a fresh match and held it to the bowl, puffing until the shreds of tobacco began to glow orange and puffs of fragrant smoke wreathed his newly regenerated headful of hair…and a face that had lost at least ten years of age in an instant.

She forced a smile. “Beylah vo, Papa.” Weaving youth on mortals wasn’t one of the things Marissya had taught her—but apparently the patterns were very similar to regular healing.

A happy shriek sounded at Ellysetta’s right. The Fey warrior, Kiel vel Tomar, his long silvery-blond hair woven into a plait, ran past with Ellysetta’s nine-year-old sister Lorelle perched on his shoulders. Kieran vel Solande, Marissya’s son, followed a few paces behind. Lorelle’s twin, Lillis, sat on Kieran’s shoulders and kicked his chest with her heels as if he were one of the Elvish ba’houda horses pulling the wagons in their caravan. Her small fingers clutched tufts of his thick, wavy brown hair.

Lillis and Lorelle were clad in miniature versions of Marissya and Ellie’s brown traveling leathers, which they had insisted Kieran weave for them. Kieran and Kiel had done their best to keep the children’s minds off the grief of Mama’s death by making each day of the trip a new adventure. The twins had taken to the idea, enthusiastically using even the briefest stops as an excuse to explore—always under watchful Fey eyes, of course, but rarely in clean, tidy places. The keepsake boxes Papa had carved for them years ago were now overflowing with treasures from their journey: small rocks, wildflowers, snail shells, bird feathers, whatever caught their attention.

Kieran cast a grin Ellysetta’s way. His steps faltered as he caught sight of Sol Baristani; then his gaze shot to Ellysetta. She blushed furiously. A shei’dalin’s ability to restore mortal youth was a secret the Fey had guarded for millennia, and she had just revealed it for anyone to see.

Fortunately, before he could say anything, Lillis tugged on Kieran’s hair and bounced on his shoulders. “Faster, Kieran!” she cried. “They’re beating us!”

With a final look and a shake of his head, Kieran turned away and raced down the grassy hill after Kiel and Lorelle.

Ellysetta watched them and the tension that had been growing in her all week squeezed her chest tight. They were nearing the end of the journey. One more day, two at the most, then she would leave what remained of her beloved family to follow her new husband Rain through the mysterious Faering Mists, perhaps never to return.

Sol patted her hand and nodded his chin in the direction of the twins. “It is good to hear them laughing again.”

“Yes,” she agreed. The twins hadn’t had much cause for laughter of late.

“They miss their mother,” Sol said. “They try to smile and laugh for my sake, but I hear them each night, crying into their pillows and pleading for her to come back.”

Just that quick, Ellie’s own sharp grief struck hard. Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “I miss her too, Papa.” Stern as Mama sometimes was, Ellie had never doubted her love—and never loved her back with any less than her whole heart.

“Oh, Ellie.” Sol slid an arm around his daughter’s shoulders and pulled her close. “My sweet, Ellie-girl. We all miss her.”

She turned her face into his neck as she had so many times in the past and sobbed. And her father held her, as he always had, patting her back and rocking her as if she were still the small child who’d crawled on his lap for comfort after evil visions tormented her dreams.

She cried until her tears were spent, and when they were done, wiped her eyes as best she could and begged again as she had so many times this last week, “Won’t you please come with us, Papa? Rain will grant you and the girls escort through the Mists. You could live there, with us, in safety.”

Sol sighed. “We are not Fey like you, Ellie. Our home is here, in Celieria, and the last promise I ever made your mother before…” His voice thickened. He drew a quick breath and swallowed the lump in his throat. “I promised her that day before she left for the cathedral that if anything ever happened to her, I’d make sure the twins were raised in Celieria, among their own kind.”

“Papa, she asked you for that promise when she still thought I was demon-possessed and the Fey were evil. She realized her mistake in the end. Don’t you think she’d realize her mistake about this too?” They’d been over this a thousand times since leaving Celieria City. “Wouldn’t she’d rather know the girls were safe regardless of where they live?”

“I gave her my word, Ellie. Shh.” He put a finger on her lips to forestall further objections. “It was my last vow to her, as sacred to me now as if I’d sworn it to her on her deathbed. So long as there is a chance of the girls living here in peace among our own kind, then here we will remain. You’re Fey, Ellysetta. You belong in the Fading Lands. We are mortal, and we belong here.” His eyes were filled with sadness but also unwavering determination.

Seeing that look, Ellysetta knew she’d lost. Her father was the most loving man she’d ever known, but when he had that hint of steel in his eye, it meant he’d made up his mind and would not be budged. She bit her lip, stared at the hands clasped tightly in her lap and nodded.

She heard her father sigh again, saw him shift in the periphery of her vision. His hand, broad and bronzed and callused from his years of woodcarving, reached out to cover hers. Love, rich and sweet and steadfast as love ever had been, poured into her through the touch, along with pride and gratitude, and a thought that rang in her head clear as a bell.

I love you, my sweet Ellie-girl. No man could love a daughter more, and no man could be prouder than I am of you. Though I will do everything I can to honor your mother’s wishes, I won’t risk my children’s safety needlessly. If trouble comes, the girls and I will pass through the Mists. That’s my oath to you.

Through vision blurred by swimming tears, she met his eyes and saw for herself the truth she could feel through the touch of his skin. It was more than she’d expected. His promise was an oath he considered as binding as the vow he’d made to his wife.

As the wagon continued its swift, smooth roll down the grassy hill towards the fertile plains of the Garreval below, Sol looked out at the majestic mountains and green fields.

“This is a beautiful place,” he said. “I think your Mama would have been very happy here.”

Ellie laid her head on her father’s shoulder. “I think so too.”

* * *

“The redirection weaves are up. The Garreval is secure.” Belliard vel Jelani, General of the Fading Lands, released the net of Spirit threads tying him to the dozens of Fey scouts spread in a five-mile radius around their destination. As they had all week, the warriors had cleared the caravan’s path of mortals and spun redirection weaves to turn away curious locals and Eld spies.

Just over three weeks ago, Celierians and their families had lined the roads and cart paths from the Garreval to Celieria City to watch the immortal Fey run past on their annual trek to the nation’s capital. This time, not one mortal would see or remember the Fey’s passing.

Bel turned to find Rain staring off towards the Fey caravan, his face drawn. “Rain? Something is wrong?” Bel’s hand went instinctively to his steel, his fingers hovering over the hilts of his Fey’cha throwing daggers.

“Nei.” With obvious effort, Rain dragged his attention back to his best friend. “Well, aiyah, but no different from the wrongness that has followed us since leaving Celieria. She weeps again for her mother.”

Bel glanced down at his hands, away from the pain in Rain’s lavender eyes. For all his power—impressive even by Fey standards—Rain could not weave the sorrow from his beloved’s heart. Oh, he could have spun a rosy illusion of happiness upon her—or asked another Fey to steal her memories—but that was not the Fey way. Both honor and love bound him, and he could do only what Fey men had for centuries: stand strong for his mate and offer what comfort his love could provide.

“You should go to her,” Bel said.

Rain sighed and shook his head. “Nei, she needs him more than me now—someone who loved her mother as deeply as she did.”

Bel had known Rain too long not to hear the comment left unsaid. “Everything Lauriana Baristani did, she did for love,” he reminded Rain gently. “And in the end she gave her life to save her child.”

“I realize that,” Rain replied, “but I cannot pretend an affection I never felt.”

Bel nudged a large clump of field grass with the toe of one black boot. Lauriana had never wanted Ellysetta to wed the Fey king, and she’d made sure everyone—including Rain—knew it. “Perhaps,” he finally said, “Ellysetta doesn’t need you to pretend love you did not feel. Perhaps it is enough just to know you are there, loving her.”

“She knows.” Rain swept a sharp gaze over the valley below. “So, there’s been no unusual activity in the last four days, and not a single person following us since we left Celieria City. I’m not sure if I should be relieved or suspicious. The Eld I knew would never let us get away so easily.”

Bel took the hint. “Perhaps our decoys are working.” A separate party of Fey had gone north, towards Orest, accompanied by a magic-warded wagon, so that Eld spies might think it held Ellysetta and her family.

“Let us hope so,” Rain said, his face set in stone. “But let us also prepare for the alternative—and not only from the Mages. If the dahl’reisen learn that Ellysetta can restore souls…”

Ice shivered through Bel’s veins. “You don’t think Gaelen would…” His voice broke off in disbelief, then surged back in protest. “He is Ellysetta’s lu’tan.” After Ellysetta restored his soul, Galen had bloodsworn himself to her service, vowing to protect her for the duration of his life and the death that followed. No lu’tan would break that vow. “Gaelen is Fey once more. His honor has been restored. Do not forget, without him Ellysetta would already be in the hands of the Mages.”

Rain’s jaw set. “I have not forgotten. Nor do I forget that all it takes is one look at his face without that scar, and his dahl’reisen friends will know the truth.” Of all the Fey, only dahl’reisen scarred, and they only when they made the kill that tipped their immortal souls into darkness. When Ellysetta had restored Gaelen’s soul, she’d wiped his dahl’reisen scar from existence. “No matter what trust you may feel for Gaelen as a fellow lu’tan, do not let your guard down. The dahl’reisen cannot be trusted, and they could attempt to use his long acquaintance with them to their advantage.”

Rain’s expression grew grim. Bel felt the brief surge of power, quickly harnessed, that came in response to whatever unpleasant thoughts were crossing Rain’s mind.

“I think I will return to Ellysetta after all,” Rain said.

He stepped back and the brief surge of power became a breathtaking flood as he summoned the Change. Sparkling gray mist billowed out in whirling clouds around Rain, and when it cleared a death-black tairen crouched in his place. The great winged cat fixed one large, glowing purple eye upon Bel, and a throbbing Spirit voice sounded in Bel’s head, powerful and resonant with the rich musical tones of the tairen.

**To Teleon, brother, and tomorrow, to home.**

* * *

Ellysetta climbed out of the wagon to walk the last mile across the greening plains of the Garreval as twenty Fey raced on ahead to secure their destination: the outpost built at the base of the ruins of the once-great fortress of Teleon. Lillis and Lorelle walked beside her, their small hands clutching hers.

She would always be grateful for this time Rain had given her with her family. He could have flown her straight to the Fading Lands on tairen-back but he had not. Knowing how dear her family was to her, he’d arranged for all of them to travel together. The Elvish ba’houda horses, bred for endurance and speed, traveled much faster than mortal steeds; but Rain in tairen form, using magic to power his flight, could have traversed the thousand miles across Celieria in a single day.

Even though he still left small courtship gifts on her pillow each morning, this extra time with her family was his true gift to her, and she worked to sear every precious memory into her mind. Like this one: the girls tripping through the tall grass at her side, their hair bouncing with their steps. A slight breeze blowing, fragrant with the scents of mist off the mountains and warm grass waving in the wind. She squeezed the twins’ small hands and watched dimples flash in their cheeks as laughter bubbled from them.

Dear gods, how she loved them. And if any harm ever befell them because of her…

**No dark thoughts, shei’tani.** The admonishment slipped into her mind on a now-familiar weave of Spirit.

Ellysetta glanced up at the great winged black cat soaring swiftly towards her over the top of a nearby hill. **Not so dark this time,** she answered. **Only a little grey.**

She could not blame him for thinking the worst. Her mind had not been peaceful since leaving Celieria City. The High Mage might not know where her body was, but despite Rain’s presence and the twenty-five fold weaves the Fey placed around the camp each night, the High Mage been able to find her soul more than once when she dreamed. He’d not managed to put another Mark on her, but each time he’d found her, she’d bolted out of sleep with her tairen roused to a raging bloodlust, roaring for death and vengeance.

Consequently, she’d spent most nights wide awake and flying the moonlit skies with Rain.

**I was just thinking I’ll miss my sisters when we’re gone. And I can’t help worrying about their safety**

**Kieran and Kiel will allow no harm to befall them.** The two Fey and two hundred of their brethren would be staying behind at Lord Teleos’s ancestral estate near the Garreval to guard Ellysetta’s family.

Rain swooped down the side of the hill fast and hard, Changing in mid-flight to the black-leather-clad form of his lean Fey body. He landed running, and a brief, swift jog brought him quickly to her side.

Just the sight of him and his glowing lavender eyes made Ellysetta’s breath catch in her throat. All Fey were ravishing creatures, but the legendary Rain Tairen Soul outshone them all. He was an immortal king whose unshielded Fey beauty dazzled the senses, his face a masterpiece of breathtaking male perfection, saved from prettiness by the thrust of strong bones beneath the skin and the aura of deadly promise that swirled just below the surface.

He was a Tairen Soul, the strongest and rarest of all Fey, a master of all five branches of magic wielded by the Fey, capable of Changing into one of the magical, fire-breathing tairen of the Fading Lands.

He was her truemate, the other half of her soul; and when at last Ellysetta found the courage and unconditional trust necessary to embrace the darkest shadows of his soul and her own without fear—to bare without reservation every thought, every fear, every shame and Eld-spawned malignancy inside her—then at last their souls would join for all eternity. If she failed, their uncompleted bond would drive Rain to madness and eventually death.

Yet even knowing that, Rain’s love—intense and absolute—shone from his eyes as he approached, setting Ellysetta’s senses aflame. She began to tremble. **Shei’tan.**

Luckily, before Ellysetta could embarrass herself, her young sister Lillis squealed and threw herself into Rain’s arms, shattering the intoxicating spell holding Ellysetta captive.

“Will you take us flying again today, Rain?” Lillis’s long eyelashes fluttered and her rosy lips curved in a beguiling smile. Only nine years old she might be, but Lillis Baristani had already honed her feminine wiles to an art.

“Oh! Yes! Yes! Please do!” Choosing natural exuberance over winsome guile, Lorelle bounded up, grabbed Rain’s free hand and jumped up and down with excitement.

Ellie smothered a laugh. Lillis and Lorelle had shed their fear of Rain and his power. He had become part of their family. Which also meant he’d become a hapless male to be twined around their fingers.

Rain, in return, had learned how to relax around them and let them draw out the Fey-gentleness in his heart. Though he was a man who could slaughter his enemies without mercy, with the twins, he now laughed and smiled like a man who had never known darkness.

“Let us get you safely settled in your new home first, ajianas. Then I will take you both flying again.”

Of course, he still had to work on how to say no.

“Hooray! Hooray!” Lorelle threw up her arms and danced around him in enthusiastic circles.

“Can we have a new kitty in our new home?” Lillis asked, fluttering her lashes again. “Since we had to leave Love behind.”

Kieran had convinced the girls that Love the kitten, who had a terrible aversion to magic, would be miserable living in the Fading Lands or staying with them so close to the powerful magic of the Mists. They’d reluctantly agreed to leave Love behind in Celieria City with Gaspare Fellows, the Queen’s Master of Graces.

Rain smiled. “A new kitten? I imagine Kieran and Kiel can arrange that. Perhaps one for each of you, hmm?”

Lillis strangled him with more hugs, then leapt out of his arms so she and her twin could run tell Kiel and Kieran they were going flying again and that Rain had said they could have a new kitten.

Ellie shook her head and watched them go. “One day you will have to learn the fine line between loving adoration and slavish devotion.”

He pressed a kiss on her palm. “Let me give them what gifts and freedoms I can. Their lives will soon have restriction enough. Teleos!” Rain lifted a hand to the Fey-eyed Celierian Great Lord, Devron Teleos, who stood beside the truemates Marissya and Dax v’En Solande, staring in silence at the place that was to be the Baristani family’s new home. “How long has it been since you’ve been to the Garreval?”

Teleos’s mouth drew down in a grimace. “I’ve made a point of visiting all my holdings at least once every year, but as you see, there’s not much to draw me here.”

Below, on the lower slopes of the Rhakis mountains, the remains of a once-great fortress rose from the tumbled rubble of silvery blue stone: Teleon, the former family seat of House Teleos. Even after a thousand years, its once-fabled beauty still lay shattered and abandoned, its Fey-spun towers and parapets crumbled, the remains covered in lichen and mosses and crowded with tufts of cliffgrass. A small stone outpost—crudely built and clearly mortal in origin—had been constructed atop a small hill at the base of the mountain, not far from the remains of what had once been a glorious gate into the walled city-fortress. Smoke curled up from a vent hole in the outpost’s small central hall.

Ellysetta tried to hide her dismay. This was her family’s new home?

As if hearing her thoughts, Lord Teleos said, “I feel a poor host for offering my guests so rude an accommodation.” The Celierian Great Lord, a descendant of Rain’s long-dead friend Shanis Teleos, eyed the remains of his once-great family estate with grim eyes. “Rain, are you sure the Feyreisa’s family would not be better served in one of my more respectable holdings?”

Rain smiled and shook his head, his straight, silky black hair sliding over his black-leather-clad shoulders. “Nei, this is perfect for our needs.”

“This was a place of great beauty once,” Lord Teleos said in a sorrowful voice. In the days before the raising of the Mists, his family had been close friends of the Fey, and the many Fey ancestors in his family tree had left Devron and all his forebears stamped with Fey eyes, a glow to their skin, and lifespans much longer than those of pure mortals. Teleon, which had once been an estate of inestimable beauty, had been a gift from the Fey to their kin in House Teleos.

“Aiyah, it was,” Marissya agreed. “I remember the terraced gardens with all their fountains. It reminded me of Dharsa.”

Lord Teleos regarded the ruins of his family estate with somber eyes.

“I always wished my ancestors had repaired it once the poison of the Wars was cleansed, but perhaps it’s best they never did. Mortal hands could never have done Teleon justice.” He sighed. “Some things, once lost, are better left in the past.”

Rain made a sound in his throat that sounded like something torn between a growl and a laugh. “And some things deserve to live again.” His eyes crinkled at the edges. “You did say we could make it habitable, Dev.”

Teleos’s brows drew together. “You mean to restore Teleon?”

“Aiyah te nei.” Yes and no. And on that mysterious note, Rain smiled and said, “Come. I think you will find you are not so poor a host as you fear.”

Brimming with curiosity, Marissya, Dax, Teleos and Ellysetta followed Rain as he led them the final half mile to the foot of the mountains.

Near the gate of the small outpost, and stationed along its outer wall, two dozen armored Celierian soldiers stood at attention. To a man, they sported snarling tairen’s-head helmets and white tabards edged with scarlet and emblazoned with the arms of House Teleos: a golden tairen rampant on a white field with a rising red sun. Pennants of white, scarlet and gold fluttered in the breeze.

They passed through the open gate, but when Lord Teleos would have headed for the main hall in the center, Rain stopped him. “Nei, Dev, not that way.”

Bel ran up just as the small party rounded the corner of the hall and started towards the back wall. Ellysetta turned to greet him, only to find him frowning up at the mountain towering over the back wall of the outpost. The shimmering radiance of the Mists was very bright, like a shadow made of light rather than darkness. Though mortal eyes would not see it, the whole mountainside glowed and rippled with undulating bands of magic.

Rain turned to cast a glance over his shoulder and smiled at Bel’s perplexed look. The rear stone wall of the outpost lay before him. Rain took another step. The air around him rippled like water in a pond.

With one more stride, Rain passed through the wall and disappeared from view.

“Spit and scorch me,” Dev breathed. He glanced at Marissya and Dax, then charged after Rain, plunging headfirst into what seemed like solid stone. The air rippled again, and Lord Teleos vanished too.

“Spirit weave,” Kiel said, his eyes sweeping over the mountainside. There was no sign of Rain or Lord Teleos, only the rear wall of the outpost and, beyond that, the tumbled remains of Teleon scattered across the mountainside, tufts of cliff grass and stands of hardy mountain trees waving in the breeze.

“Scorching clever one,” Bel said. “They’re using the magic-shadow off the Mists to mask the energy of the weave. Not even a Spirit master would see it until he was almost on top of it.”

“Well?” Kieran said with an eager grin. He held out a hand to Lillis. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go see what’s behind the weave.”

With a burbling laugh, she stuck her hand in his and they ran up the trampled path after Rain and Teleos. Lorelle grabbed Kiel’s hand and yanked the Water master with her as she darted forward in hot pursuit.

Ellysetta, Bel and Sol followed close behind, and when they stepped through the rippling wall of illusion and cast eyes on the sight beyond, Ellysetta’s jaw dropped open in stunned wonder.

“Bright Lord save me,” Sol whispered, staring awestruck at the gleaming magnificence before him. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

“It’s like a magical palace from a Fey tale,” she breathed.

They were standing at the open, arching gate of an immense mountain fortress of unparalleled grace and beauty. Silvery blue stone soared high into the sky in a dazzling display of Fey artistry and architecture. Crenellated walls gave way to lush, gracefully terraced gardens bursting with trees, fountains, fragrant shrubs and flowers. Pennants in the bold colors of House Teleos fluttered in the breeze from every tower and along the series of interior walls that ringed up the mountainside and circled the upper keep with level after level of protection and silvery blue beauty.

“Ellie! Papa! Come look!” Lillis and Lorelle stood in the center of a small grassy park nestled against the second inner wall. They laughed and danced beneath the graceful, arching branches of cherry blossom trees as pale pink petals rained softly down upon them. Kieran and Kiel watched the children with indulgent smiles.

Lord Teleos stood dumbstruck at Rain’s side as Ellysetta and Sol crossed the lower courtyard to join the twins. “You did it,” he said. “You restored her to her former beauty.”

“Not completely,” Rain admitted. He dragged his gaze away from Ellysetta and the children and gave Devron Teleos his full attention. “A number of the gardens and buildings on the middle levels are still just Spirit weaves, but the walls and gates are real, and defensible, as is the manor at the top.”

“Even so…this is an amazing feat. How did you manage it?”

“Three thousand Fey stand guard at the great war-castles of Chatok and Chakai beyond the Mists. While we journeyed across Celieria, they came through the Mists to prepare a suitable home for the Feyreisa’s family. And to prepare Teleon for battle once more.”

Lord Teleos turned to him in surprise. “You think the Eld will strike here? With the Mists blocking any hope of entrance to the Fading Lands?”

Rain looked across the flagstone-cobbled courtyard to the lower garden, where Ellysetta, Sol and the twins were inspecting a marble fountain of dancing maidens whose slender, upstretched fingers rained veils of clear water into a small pond.

His expression lost any hint of softness. “If the Eld come,” he said, “I doubt it will be passage through the Mists they’re after.”

Chapter Two

In sorrow, the blood-sown earth despairs, and granite stone weeps bitter tears.
In fields once green, love lies entombed beneath a silent lake of glass
Forged in raging tairen flames, dark with the death of dreams.
There, shades of men and once-great kings yet battle evil’s tide
While silvery maidens softly dance and sing of love that died.

Sariel’s Lament by Avian of Celieria

Ellysetta stood on the balcony of a well-appointed bedchamber in one of Teleon’s spacious upper towers and looked up at the Mists. Several bells earlier, the setting sun set the Mists ablaze, giving the illusion of a curtain of fire burning across the world. Now the night was deep and the Mists were a shifting, shimmering glow of multicolored radiance against the dark of a near-moonless sky.

Rain and Lord Teleos had spent the day inspecting Teleon’s defenses and assisting the Fey in weaving silvery blue stone into magic-warded buildings and fortifications, Marissya, Ellysetta and the too-exuberant twins—who simply could not bear to be cooped up inside—had ventured through acre after acre of terraced gardens and countless miles of corridors, rooms and levels of the newly restored fortress. Though, as Rain had said, many of the middle gardens and buildings were naught but the shells of Spirit weaves—and how unsettling it was to enter a building only to have it disappear once you crossed the threshold!—there was still plenty of Earth-spun reality to explore; and the Fey who would be stationed here to protect the Baristanis would continue the reconstruction their brothers had begun until all of Teleon was restored to its former glory.

The girls, Ellysetta knew, would be happy here. With so much room to play and so many wondrous secrets to be discovered, it would be a long time before they felt the urge to stray from the safety of the keep in search of adventure.

The clap of bootheels on stone made her cast a glance over her shoulder. Still clothed in black leather and full steel, his Fey skin as pale and luminous as pearls in moonlight, Rain approached. He’d been meeting with Teleos, Bel, Kieran and Kiel to discuss the defense of Teleon and review troop strength and dispersal in the rest of Teleos’s holdings.

War was coming. No matter how some still tiptoed around the truth, all of them knew it. They only hoped there would be time enough to prepare before Celieria’s borders erupted into open battle.

And though it seemed a terrible thing to ask, Ellysetta had secretly prayed that when the attack came, the Eld’s first strike would come in some far distant part of Celieria like Orest or Celieria City so the Fey would have enough warning to evacuate Lillis, Lorelle, and Papa to safety behind the Faering Mists.

That secret prayer seemed ill-considered now. The hearth witches of the north—and there had been plenty of them living in her childhood town of Hartslea, despite the strong Church presence there—believed that wishing harm upon others would bring three times that harm to the wisher. Was hoping the first battle of a war started somewhere else the same as wishing harm upon another? Ellysetta shivered at the prospect.

“Cold?” Rain asked.

“A little.” She seized on the excuse, not wanting to admit how nervous a silly superstition made her.

“There is a thing I need to do tonight before returning to the Fading Lands. I had hoped you would come with me, but if you are cold, perhaps you should stay here, instead, and try to get some sleep.”

“No, I’m fine.” She reached for his hand. “Of course, I’ll come with you.”

“Then let’s go—and bring your cloak.”

Ten chimes later, they were soaring through the night skies high over Teleon. Ellysetta stretched out her arms and turned her face up to the stars. Rain spun a light Fire weave to keep her warm as the chill, thin air swept past.

**Hold on.** The brief command was her only warning before Rain twitched back his rounded tairen ears, spouted a warming jet of flame that lit the night, then tucked in his mighty wings and dove.

Ellysetta screamed with laughter and grabbed for the high, curving pommel of her saddle just as the unsettling thrill of weightlessness came over her. Together, she and Rain fell through the sky, plummeting freely towards the ground miles below. The moonlit sky went silvery white, and fine droplets of water misted Ellysetta’s face as they plunged into a cloudbank. She caught the tangy-fresh chill of cloudmist on her tongue, drinking its bracing sweetness.

One heartbeat, two, then they burst through the clouds back into the crisp, clear darkness of the night.

Tairen wings spread wide, snapped taut, and the wild, reckless plunge became a swooping ascent. Ellysetta screamed again, a breathless, exuberant sound, and clutched the saddle tight. **Rain! I think I left my stomach back there.**

The now-familiar, chuffing sound of tairen laughter joined the rush of the wind in her ears. **Hold on again, shei’tani. This is even better.**

Flows of magic spun out to bind her securely into place and Rain shot forward on a thrust of a magic-powered speed. The world rushed by in a dizzying blur, and with a subtle shift of his wings, he sent them spiraling into a corkscrew roll. Shadowy earth and moonlit sky whirled in a wild kaleidoscope before Ellysetta’s dazzled eyes.

Another woman might have shrieked in fear and begged him to stop. Ellysetta only flung back her head and laughed in delight. Freedom coursed through her veins like a potent drug.

She would never tire of flying. The limitless joy of dancing laughter-spangled winds, the thrill of diving through misty clouds and soaring so high she could almost scoop stardust with her fingertips: flying was a joy so rich, it chased back all sorrows and fears. Well, she amended silently, almost all.

**Rain, do you honestly think when we get to Fey’Bahren, I can just walk in and spin a weave that will cure the kitlings of whatever is killing them?** That was the reason Rain had come to Celieria to find her. Unbeknownst to the outside world, a mysterious sickness had been killing unborn tairen kitlings in the egg for centuries, decimating their numbers until scarcely more than a dozen of the great cats still lived A magical oracle called Shei’Kess, the Eye of Truth, had sent Rain to Celieria to find the key to saving the dying tairen.

She, Ellysetta Baristani, was that key. Even if none of them actually knew how she was going to manage the miracle.

**I know it doesn’t sound like much of a plan,** he said, **but the tairen have never let any of our healers into the lair—not even Marissya. You, however, are both a Tairen Soul and my truemate. You’ll be able to enter the lair and weave healing on the kits as no other shei’dalin has been able to.**

**This assumes I’ll even know what weave to spin when I get there—let alone how to spin it.**

**That’s why Marissya will be going with us to Fey’Bahren—so she can continue your training and counsel you while you’re healing the tairen. Besides, you may not even need her help. She tells me you have been doing well in your studies.**

**She is being kind.**

**I doubt that. I heard you healed Ravel’s new Fire master well enough this afternoon while I took your sisters flying.**

She gave a short laugh. **Oh, yes, I healed him all right. I made that wound vanish as if it had never been.**

**There, you see—**

**And I erased every hint of weariness from the last week of travel,** she informed him. **And wiped clean every shadow on his soul. And filled him with such an abundance of energy that he shone like a newly minted coin and spent the rest of the day racing circles around my quintets until Bel and Ravel both threatened to pull red on him if he twitched another muscle.**

There was a brief silence; then Rain said in an oddly choked voice, **Well, shei’tani, there are worse tribulations in life than healing a Fey too well.** Chuffing tairen laughter vibrated in his throat.

Her eyes narrowed. He found that amusing, did he? **And when he wasn’t annoying his brother Fey, he was following me around like a lovesick puppy.**

The chuffing laughter changed instantly to a low, rumbling growl. Licks of flame seared the air before Rain’s muzzle. **Oh, was he?** The fur on the back of his neck rose up, and his rounded ears lay back. Tairen were territorial creatures, and they definitely did not appreciate encroaching males trespassing too near their mates.

**Ha! You see? It’s not so funny anymore, is it?** She ran a frustrated hand through the wind-tangled spirals of her hair. **I’m like a rultshart in a spider-silk shop. If Marissya asks me to summon a puff of Air, I call a gale so strong it knocks her off her feet. If she asks me to summon Water, I nearly flood the encampment.**

**Your power is vast,** Rain soothed, **and no longer restrained by the weaves set upon you in childhood. You simply need time and practice to learn how to wield it in moderation.**

She sighed. **Even assuming I can learn to control my power enough to spin the right weaves, what if healing doesn’t stop whatever’s killing the kits?**

His right wing dipped, and he banked, wheeling back around towards the south. **Then we go to Dharsa and start from the beginning, asking the Eye of Truth for guidance and searching the Hall of Scrolls in the hopes of finding answers. Perhaps you can help us see something we have overlooked all these years, or perhaps your presence will induce the Eye to be more helpful.**

**Rain, be realistic.**

**I am. I asked for the key to saving the tairen and the Fey and the Eye sent me to you. To me, it seems quite clear that whatever is killing the kitlings, you are integral to making it stop. I do not doubt this, even though you do.**

Rain’s wings spread wide and he sank through the sky in a circling glide, alighting on a stretch of empty field. A cradling ribbon of Air magic deposited Ellysetta on her feet while the Change swirled around Rain’s tairen form in a sparkling mist.

His hands rose, long fingers threading into the wild spirals of her flame-red hair, the pad of his thumb brushing across her lips and leaving tingles of awareness behind. “We’re here, shei’tani.”

Ellysetta glanced at their surroundings. Nothing looked familiar.

“Where is ‘here’?”

His eyes went dark. “This is Eadmond’s Field.”

Ellysetta’s breath hitched.

Eadmond’s field.

The place where, a thousand years ago, the most infamous battle of the Mage Wars had been fought.

The place where Rain’s first mate Sariel had died.

The place where Rain Tairen Soul had gone mad and scorched the world.

Lady of Light and Shadows is the second half of C.L. Wilson’s original 1,000-page manuscript. That’s one of the reasons (a 1,000-page manuscript from a new author being another) her Tairen Soul series was rejected several times before finally being published. At that time, C.L., in her wildest dreams, never imagined her book would go well beyond that thousand pages to culminate in five books. When dreams fly, they go fast and far.

In this book, Ellie is coming into her own, learning she’s more than who she thought she was all her life. Her romance with Rain is still fledgling but progressing toward something that calls to her soul. Of course, evil magic is not too far away no matter where this couple is. Especially now that Ellie is learning how to use her magic and also learning more about the darkness residing within her.

Below, enjoy my original review of LoLaS, along with an excerpt from the book.

Sandy M’s review of Lady of Light and Shadows (Tairen Soul, Book 2) by C.L. Wilson
Paranormal/Fantasy Romance published by Avon 28 Sep 10 (reissue)

Even though she is a woodcarver’s daughter, Ellysetta Baristani holds a powerful magic within herself, magic she is afraid to wield. She’s hopeful with her truemate’s help to learn to harness that magic to avoid such disasters as the one she wielded at her first official function as queen to Rain Tairen Soul’s king of the fey.

She not only has embarrassed herself, Rain, and all noblemen and women present, but she’s made it much more difficult for Rain to garner the votes he needs to halt the proposed opening of Cerelia’s borders with Eld, the place where evil magic resides within their mages. Then there are her dreams and nightmares that scare her to the point of wishing she had no magic. Ellie knows something horrible is going to happen, something that involves her and she doesn’t know what it is or how to stop it. All of the polishing in the world to make her a queen will make no difference if that evil finally claims her. If it weren’t for Rain, she doesn’t know what she would do.

Becoming more and more frustrated with the Cerelians’ lack of suspicion concerning the Eld mages’ current plans and their loss of trust in the fey, it is Rain’s courtship of Ellie that keeps him sane. He knows she is frightened of her magic, and now she has begun to share his dreams, which is making her situation all the more dire than ever before.

Teaching her how to call and use her magic has been going well, but it is those moments alone with his beloved that fill his heart with love and life, something he desperately needs as he gathers the evidence the Cerelian Council demands before they will deny their foolish plan to open their world to the evil just beyond their borders. Unbeknownst to both Rain and Ellysetta, that evil has already infiltrated their world and is working its way toward pulling them into an unknown from which they will never recover.

Fighting for their future together from attacks on several different fronts, including her mother, is taking its toll on Ellie and Rain, and it seems every day brings another problem that has to be resolved. Feeling more and more confident the mages are closer than any of them realize, Rain is determined to move their wedding up and then quickly whisk Ellie off to the fading lands where she will be out of harm’s way.

But as last-minute preparations are being made and Rain is in the middle of the city leaders’ vote concerning their fate, Ellie is finally faced with the fear that has haunted her all her life and she’s fighting with all she’s got for everyone and everything she holds dear. The one time she needs her magic and her psychic link to Rain is when it seems to desert her and she is within evil’s grasp. Will Rain be able to reach her in time to save his truemate, the one and only person who completes him heart and soul? Will Ellysetta finally be able to cleave to her magic and become the woman she’s meant to be?

C.L. Wilson has done it once again with her sequel to Lord of the Fading Lands. Lady of Light and Shadows throws us straight into the lives of this endearing duo who work their way into our hearts all over again when their story picks up right where it left off in the previous book.

Rain and Ellie’s courtship, although wonderful to behold, is fraught with tension from different corners, but when Rain takes to the skies again in his tairen form with Ellie on his back, all is right with the world for a little while.

There is more heartache this time around, though; and the evil that was kept to the background before comes barreling full throttle into the forefront and pulls no punches.

Ms. Wilson’s writing is a wonder to behold and read. She will keep you in awe with emotion and suspense until the very last word, and then she will make you desperately long for the next edition of this beautiful four-book fantasy.

Grade: A+

Summary:

Since her earliest memories, Ellysetta Baristani has feared magic, even as she has been inexorably drawn to all things Fey, especially the poetry and legends of Rain Tairen Soul. Now claimed as Rain’s truemate and no longer able to deny her own magic, Ellysetta is swept into the very center of a struggle filled with the magic and darkness she has always feared. The High Mage of Eld wants to capture her. The most murderous dahl’reisen who ever lived wants her dead. And her enemies will corrupt even the people she loves most in their quest to claim her magic for themselves.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series:

I dream of wing and fang and pride, I dream of venom swift and sure.

I dream of song and cloud and sky, I dream of flame that scorches pure.

I dream of dancing crystal winds, and soaring high above the world.

I dream of enemies and prey that flee my dread and fiery roar.

Tairen Dreams, by Jion vel Baris, Tairen Soul

Ellysetta Baristani stood in the dark, fire-lit cavern of Fey’Bahren, the fabled nesting lair of the tairen. Nearby, six leathery eggs lay incubating in a thick, cushioning layer of hot black sand. A massive, cinnamon-furred tail curled protectively around the eggs, its black tip rising and falling rhythmically, raising clouds of fine dark dust as it thumped the sand. The dust swirled about Ellie like shadowy mist, darkening her skirts with a fine layer of sooty ash. Unshed tears clogged the back of her throat and stung her eyes.

The tairen were dying.

Ellie couldn’t explain how she knew it. The knowledge was just there in her mind, and it felt familiar, as if it had been there for a long, long time.

Calah, the last fertile female of the tairen pride, was growing feebler with each passing day, her life’s essence draining as she struggled to maintain the viability of her six unhatched kitlings. The last hope of a future for the tairen rested with those tiny, unborn lives—three of them female— their life force weakening even as their small bodies matured in the egg.

The mother tairen’s cinnamon fur was dull and shedding. Her proud feline head—larger than Ellysetta’s body—rested wearily on her forepaws, and her piercing golden eyes were closed. Breath heaved in and out of her enormous body in great windy gusts. She had not eaten in two weeks. Her mate, Merdrahl, was frantic with worry. He paced restlessly by the entrance to the nesting grounds, brown wings rustling, massive paws padding not so silently back and forth across the sands, low growls emanating from his powerful chest and rumbling through the cavern like thunder. His dark brown tail curled and uncurled, flicking in agitation. His fur was ruffled, his ears laid back, and his fangs dripped deadly tairen venom. Every so often, he would pause, dig his claws into the rock, and heave an angry jet of flame.

If Merdrahl could have slain something to bring peace to his mate and protect their offspring, he would have. And Ellysetta would have helped him.

A growl sounded overhead. She looked up into the gleaming, pupilless green eyes of Sybharukai, the wise one, oldest of all female tairen and makai— leader—of the Fey’Bahren pride. She crouched on the ledge above, her unsheathed front claws curling into the rock of her perch. Her dark, silver-tipped gray fur gleamed like thunderclouds and smoke in the flickering light of the cavern. The rounded points of her ears flicked continuously. Her dark gray tail swished restlessly in the air, and the lethal bony spikes hidden in its furred tip stabbed at the rocks around her. Her wings unfolded and stretched high above her back, flapping twice. The sharp claw at the mid-span joint on each wing gleamed like a curved mei’cha blade in the flickering light.

**I will find a way, Sybharukai.** A deep, masculine voice sang the vow in the rich, vivid tones of tairen song.

Heat curled in Ellysetta’s belly, drawing inner muscles tight in a series of small, rippling shudders of remembered pleasure. She turned and found Rain standing beside her.

Rainier vel’En Daris, the Tairen Soul, the legendary Fey shapeshifter who had once scorched the world in a wild, grief-stricken fury over the death of his beloved mate, Sariel.

Rain Tairen Soul, King of the Fey, who had stepped from the sky to claim Ellysetta as his shei’tani, his truemate, the only woman ever born with whom he could form a soul bond even stronger than the love bond he’d held with Sariel.

His long black hair hung down his back, straight and fine, framing a face of breathtaking masculine beauty. Black Fey leathers hugged broad shoulders, slim hips, and long, lean legs. His deadly swords and the scores of throwing knives tucked into the bands criss-crossing his chest gleamed golden in the flickering firelight. His lavender eyes were glowing, his beautiful mouth grim.

“I will find a way,” he said again, aloud this time but still addressing the majestic gray tairen. “I will not fail you.”

Turning, he strode off the nesting sands towards a wide opening at the end of the cavern. Ellie hurried after him and together they jogged up a long, winding passage through the mountain and emerged on a wide, sunlit ledge high above the Fading Lands. Ellie raised a hand to shield her eyes, blinking at the brightness of the Great Sun.

When her eyes adjusted, she gave a gasp of awe-filled wonder. They were standing near the top of the steep, dark mountainside of Fey’Bahren, the tallest volcano in the majestic Feyls range that formed the northern border of the Fading Lands. Below, the rippling golden grasses of the Plains of Corunn spread out for miles. She drank in the breathtaking scenery, which seemed at once familiar yet new, like a forgotten memory, freshly renewed.

“Oh, Rain,” she breathed. “It’s so beautiful.”

Beside her, magic gathered as Rain summoned the Change.

Ellysetta’s body tingled as the surge of energy swept around and through her. A fine gray mist billowed about him, about them both, and she threw back her head on a swell of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Though it was Rain, not she, who was the shapeshifter, she felt his body dissolve and expand as if it were her own, felt the echo of awareness as his Fey senses grew even more acute. Fur sprouted, wings spread, claws speared the rock.

Moments later the mist cleared, and a magnificent death-black tairen with huge lavender eyes crouched on the ledge where Rain Tairen Soul, the Fey king and Ellysetta’s betrothed, had stood. The tairen spread his enormous ebony wings, gathered strength in his haunches, and sprang into the air with an echoing roar.

Behind him, standing alone on the ledge, still trapped in her human form, she cried out, “Rain, come back! Don’t leave me!”

* * *

Ellysetta woke with her heart thumping and tears cooling on her cheeks. Another dream, one that seemed so real. The emotions still held her heart clutched tight, making her want to weep in despair for the dying tairen and the terrible, grieving emptiness that 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 her limbs. 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.

I look at this cover now and think how crazy I was to judge the fantasy story inside as something I probably wouldn’t like. Now this cover as well as the other four in this series are some of my favorites. The old saying is true: Don’t judge a book its cover.

This is the story that started it all. Rain Tairen Soul is called from the sky by his truemate, Ellysetta Baristani. It’s been centuries since a Tairen Soul has found a truemate. And thus begins their journey of learning of each other, falling in love, and binding their souls together as one, all the while fighting evil to save the Fey and the Tairen and their world as they know it.

C.L. Wilson has made reading this book a truly amazing experience.

The following is my original review of Lord of the Fading Lands and then an excerpt for your reading pleasure today.

SandyM’s review of Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy/paranormal romance published Oct 2, 2007 by Leisure (Dorchester)

I have found my book of the year. Maybe even my book of the decade. C.L. Wilson’s LORD OF THE FADING LANDS is simply wonderful, fantastic, terrific. How easily I have to eat my words. When I first looked at the cover of this book, I thought, “Uh-oh, I have a feeling I’m not going to like this one, it’s fantasy.” Now, I don’t have a thing against fantasy books. I just love my historicals and paranormals more, so I don’t read many fantasies. Even as much as I loved LotFL, I don’t think I’m going to be a 100% lover of fantasies (I will give some a try here and there, however), but I’m definitely now a die-hard fan of C.L. Wilson’s.

After fighting in the Mage Wars a thousand years ago, losing his heartmate in those wars, and also losing himself in grief so deeply that he breathed fire on half the world, burning anything and everything in his wake, Rain Tairen Soul is coming out of his self-imposed reclusiveness to save his people, the fey, and the tairen.

See the rest of The Lord of the Fading Lands review here.

Prologue

Loudly, proudly, tairen sing,

As they soar on mighty wings

Softly, sadly, mothers cry

To sing a tairen’s lullabye

The Tairen’s Lament, Fey Nursery Rhyme

The tairen were dying.

Rain Tairen Soul, king of the Fey, could no longer deny the truth. Nor, despite all his vast power and centuries of trying, could he figure a way to save either the creatures that were his soul-kin or the people who depended upon him to lead and defend them.

The tairen—those magnificent, magical, winged cats of the Fading Lands—had only one fertile female left in their pride, and she grew weaker by the day as she fed her strength to her six unhatched kitlings. With those tiny, unborn lives rested the last hope of a future for the tairen, and the last hope of a future for Rain’s people, the Fey. But today, the painful truth had become clear. The mysterious, deadly wasting disease that had decimated the tairen over the last millennium had sunk its evil, invisible claws into yet another clutch of unhatched kits.

When the tairen died, so too would the Fey. The fates of the two species were forever intertwined, and had been since the misty time before memory.

Rain looked around the wide, empty expanse of the Hall of Tairen. Indeed, he thought grimly, the death of the immortal Fey had begun centuries ago.

Once, in a time he could still remember, the Hall had rung with the sound of hundreds of Fey Lords, warriors, shei’dalins and Tairen Souls arguing politics and debating treaties. Those days had long passed. The Hall was silent now, as silent as the long-abandoned cities of the Fey, as silent as Fey nurseries, as silent as the graves of all those Fey who had died in the Mage Wars a thousand years ago.

Now the last hope for both the tairen and the Fey was dying, and Rain sensed a growing darkness in the east, in the land of his ancient enemies, the Mages of Eld. He couldn’t help but believe the two events were somehow connected.

He turned to face the huge priceless globe of magical Tairen’s Eye crystal called the Eye of Truth, which occupied the center of the room. Displayed on the wings of a man-high stand fashioned from three golden tairen, the Eye was an oracle in which a trained seer could search for answers in the past, the present, and the infinite possibilities of the future. The globe was ominously dark and murky now, the future a dim, forbidding shadow. If there was a way to halt the relentless extermination of his peoples, the answer lay there, within the Eye.

The Eye of Truth had been guarding its secrets, showing shadows but no clear visions. It had resisted the probes of even the most talented of the Fey’s still-living seers, played coy with even their most beguiling of magic weaves. The Eye was, after all, tairen-made. By its very nature, it combined pride with cunning, passion with often-wicked playfulness. Seers approached it with respect, humbly asked it for a viewing, courted its favor with their minds and their magic but never their touch.

The Eye of Truth was never to be touched.

It was a golden rule of childhood, drummed into the head of every Fey from infant to ancient.

The Eye held the concentrated magic of ages, power so pure and undiluted that laying hands upon it would be like laying hands upon the Great Sun.

But the Eye was keeping secrets, and Rain Tairen Soul was a desperate king with no time to waste and no patience for protocol. The Eye of Truth would be touched. He was the king, and he would have his answers. He would wrest them from the oracle by force, if necessary.

His hands rose. He summoned power effortlessly and wove it with consummate skill. Silvery white Air formed magical webs that he laid upon the doors, walls, floor, and ceiling. A spidery network of lavender Spirit joined the Air, then green Earth to seal all entrances to the Hall. None would enter to disturb him. No scream, no whisper, no mental cry could pass those shields. Come good or ill, he would wrest his answers from the Eye without interruption—and if it demanded a life for his impertinence, it would be unable to claim any but his.

He closed his eyes and cleared his mind of every thought not centered on his current purpose. His breathing became deep and even, going in and out of his lungs in a slow rhythm that kept time with the beat of his heart. His entire being contracted into a single shining blade of determination.

His eyes flashed open. Rain Tairen Soul reached out both hands to grasp the Eye of Truth.

“Aaahh!” Power – immeasurable, immutable – arced through him. His head flung back beneath its onslaught, his teeth bared, his throat straining with a scream of agony. Pain drilled his body like a thousand sel’dor blades, and despite twelve hundred years of learning to absorb pain, to embrace it and mute it, Rain writhed in torment.

This pain was unlike any he had ever known.

This pain refused to be contained.

Fire seared his veins and scorched his skin. He felt his soul splinter and his bones melt. The Eye was angry at his daring affront. He had assaulted it with his bare hands and bare power, and such was not to be borne. Its fury screeched along his bones, vibrating down his spine, slashing at every nerve center in his body until tears spilled from his eyes and blood dripped from his mouth where he bit his lip to stop screaming.

“Nei,” he gasped. “I am the Tairen Soul, and I will have my answer.”

If the Eye wished to cement the extinction of both tairen and Fey, it would claim Rain’s life. He was not afraid of death, rather he longed for it.

He surrendered himself to the Eye and forced his tortured body to relax. Power and pain flowed into him, through him, claiming him without resistance. And when the violent rush of power had invaded his every cell, when the pain filled his entire being, a strange calm settled over him. The agony was there, extreme and nearly overwhelming, but without resistance he was able to distance his mind from his body’s torture, to disassociate the agony of the physical from the determination of the mental. He forced his lips to move, his voice a hoarse cracked whisper of sound that spoke ancient words of power to capture the Eye’s immense magic in flows of Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Spirit.

His eyes opened, glowing bright as twin moons in the dark reflection of the Eye, burning like coals in a face bone white with pain.

With voice and mind combined, Rain Tairen Soul asked his question: “How can I save the tairen and the Fey?”

Relentlessly, absorbing the agony of direct contact with the Eye, he searched its raging depths for answers. Millions of possibilities flashed before his eyes, countless variations on possible futures, countless retellings of past events. Millennia passed in an instant, visions so rapid his physical sight could never have hoped to discern them, yet his mind, steadily commanding the threads of magic, absorbed the images and processed them with brutal clarity. He stood witness to the deaths of millions, the rise and fall of entire civilizations. Angry unfettered magic grew wild in the world and Mages worked their evil deeds. Tairen shrieked in pain, immolating the world in their agony. Fey women wept oceans of tears, and Fey warriors fell helpless to their knees, as weak as infants. Rain’s mind screamed to reject the visions, yet still his hands gripped the Eye of Truth, and still he voiced his question, demanding an answer.

“How can I save the tairen and the Fey?”

He saw himself in tairen form, raining death indiscriminately upon unarmed masses, his own tairen claws impaling Fey warriors.

“How can I save the tairen and the Fey?”

Sariel, his beloved mate, lay bloody and broken at his feet, pierced by hundreds of knives, half her face scorched black by Mage fire. She reached out to him, her burned and bloodied mouth forming his name. He watched in helpless paralysis as the flashing arc of an Elden Mage’s black sel’dor blade sliced down across her neck. Bright red blood fountained.

The unutterable pain of Sariel’s death—tempered by centuries of life without her—surged back to life with soul-shredding rawness. Rage and bloodlust exploded within him, mindless, visceral, unstoppable. It was the Fey Wilding rage, fueled by a tairen’s primal fury, unfettered emotions backed by lethal fangs, incinerating fire, and access to unimaginable power.

They would die! They had slain his mate, and they would all die for their crime! His shrieking soul grasped eagerly for the madness, the power to kill without remorse, to scorch the earth and leave nothing but smoldering ruins and death.

“Nei!” Rain yanked his hands from the Eye and flung up his arms to cover his face. His breath came in harsh pants as he battled to control his fury. Once before, in a moment of madness and unendurable pain, he had unleashed the beast in his soul and rained death upon the world. He had slain thousands in mere moments, laid waste to half a continent within a few days. It had taken the combined will of every still-living tairen and Fey to cage his madness.

“Nei! Please,” he begged, clawing for self-possession. He released the weaves connecting him to the Eye in a frantic hope that shearing the tie would stop the rage fighting to claim him.

Instead, it was as if he had called Fire in an oil vault.

The world was suddenly bathed in blood as his vision turned red. The tairen in him shrieked for release. To his horror, he felt his body begin to dissolve, saw the black fur form, the lethal curve of tairen claws spear the air.

For the first time in twelve hundred years of life, Rainier vel’En Daris knew absolute terror.

The magic he’d woven throughout the Hall would never hold a Tairen Soul caught up in a Fey Wilding Rage. All would die. The world would die.

The Tairen-Change moved over him in horrible slow motion, creeping up his limbs, taunting him with his inability to stop it. The small sane part of his mind watched like a stunned, helpless spectator, seeing his own death hurtling towards him and realizing with detached horror that he was going to die and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

He had overestimated his own power and utterly underestimated that of the Eye of Truth.

“Stop,” he shouted. “I beg you. Stop! Don’t do this.” Without pride or shame, he fell to his knees before the ancient oracle.

The Rage left him as suddenly as it had come.

In a flash of light, his tairen-form disappeared. Flesh, sinew, and bone reformed into the lean, muscular lines of his Fey body. He collapsed face down on the floor, gasping for breath, the sweat of terror streaming from his pores, his muscles shaking uncontrollably.

Faint laughter whispered across the stone floor and danced on the intricately carved columns that lined either side of the Hall of Tairen.

The Eye mocked him for his arrogance.

“Aiyah,” he whispered, his eyes closed. “I deserve it. But I am desperate. Our people—mine and yours both—face extinction. And now dark magic is rising again in Eld. Would you not have dared any wrath to save our people?”

The laughter faded, and silence fell over the Hall, broken only by the wordless noises coming from Rain himself, the sobbing gasp of his breath, the quiet groans of pain he didn’t have the strength to stifle. In the silence, power gathered. The fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. He became aware of light, a kaleidoscope of color bathing the Hall, flickering through the thin veil of his eyelids.

His eyes opened – then went wide with wonder.

There, from its perch atop the wings of three golden tairen, the Eye of Truth shone with resplendent clarity, a crystalline globe blazing with light. Prisms of radiant color beamed out in undulating waves.

Stunned, he struggled to his knees and reached out instinctively towards the Eye. It wasn’t until his fingers were close enough to draw tiny stinging arcs of power from the stone that he came to his senses and snatched his hands back without touching the oracle’s polished surface.

There had been something in the Eye’s radiant depths—an image of what looked like a woman’s face—but all he could make out were fading sparkles of lush green surrounded by orange flame. A fine mist formed in the center of the Eye, then slowly cleared as another vision formed. This image he saw clearly as it came into focus, and he recognized it instantly. It was a city he knew well, a city he despised. The second image faded and the Eye dimmed, but it was enough. Rain Tairen Soul had his answer. He knew his path.

With a groan, he rose slowly to his feet. His knees trembled, and he staggered back against the throne to collapse on the cushioned seat.

Rain gazed at the Eye of Truth with newfound respect. He was the Tairen Soul, the most powerful Fey alive, and yet the Eye had reduced him to a weeping infant in a mere moments. If it had not decided to release him, it could have used him to destroy the world. Instead after beating the arrogance out of him, it had given up at least one of the secrets it was hiding.

He reached out to the Eye with a lightly woven stream of Air, Fire and Water and whisked away the faint smudges left behind by the fingers he had dared to place upon it.

**Sieks’ta. Thank you.** He filled his mental tone with genuine respect and was rewarded by the instant muting of his body’s pain. With a bow to the Eye of Truth, he strode towards the massive carved wooden doors at the end of the Hall of Tairen and tore down his weaves.

** Marissya.** He sent the mental call to the Fey’s strongest living shei’dalin even as he reached out with Air to swing open the Hall’s heavy doors before him. The Fey warriors guarding the door to the Hall of Tairen nodded in response to the orders he issued with swift, flashing motions of his hands as he strode by, and the flurry of movement behind him assured him his orders were being carried out.

**Rain?** Marissya’s mental voice was as soothing as her physical one, her curiosity mild and patient.

**A change of plans. I’m for Celieria in the morning and I’m doubling your guard. Let your kindred know the Feyreisen is coming with you.**

Even across the city, he could feel her shocked surprise, and it almost made him smile.

* * *

Half a continent away, in the mortal city of Celieria, Ellysetta Baristani huddled in the corner of her tiny bedroom room, tears running freely down her face, her body trembling.

The nightmare had been so real, the agony so intense. Dozens of angry, stinging welts scored her skin…self-inflicted claw marks that might have been worse had her fingernails been longer. But worse than the pain of the nightmare had been the helpless rage and the soul-shredding sense of loss, the raw animal fury of a mortally wounded heart. Her own soul had cried out in empathetic sorrow, feeling the tortured emotions as if they had been her own.

And then she’d sensed something else. Something dark and eager and evil. A crouching malevolent presence that had ripped her out of dreams and sleep, bringing her bolt upright in her bed, a cry of familiar terror on her lips.

She covered her eyes with shaking hands. Please, gods, not again.

Chapter One

“Ellie, don’t be such a soggy dorn.” Nine-year-old Lorelle Baristani pouted at her older sister.

It was, in Ellysetta’s opinion, an adorable pout. Lorelle’s out-thrust lower lip was plump and pink, her round cheeks soft as satin, and her big brown eyes heart-tuggingly soulful. The whole enchanting picture was complimented by masses of mink brown ringlets, and more than one seasoned adult had been known to abandon common sense in the face of such considerable infant artillery. Unfortunately for Lorelle, Ellie was made of sterner stuff.

She smiled and bent to kiss her sister’s cheek. “A soggy dorn, am I? Just because I don’t want to spend the whole day caught up in what’s sure to be the worst crush in the past year? And for what? To catch a brief glimpse of a Fey warrior as he walks past?” Ellie shook her head and punched down the bread dough she was making for tonight’s dinner rolls.

Tomorrow was the much-anticipated annual visit of the shei’dalin Marissya v’En Solande. Her arrival was always a spectacle as she and her guard of one hundred fierce leather- and steel-bedecked Fey warriors entered the city and marched down the main thoroughfare to the palace.

A week ago, Ellysetta would have gone, no matter how long the wait, just for the chance of glimpsing the glint off a Fey blade. But that was before that disturbing nightmare and before the dark dreams that had continued to haunt her ever since. When she woke each morning, her skin felt tight, her muscles inexplicably sore and weary, as if each night she fought a battle in her sleep. As if she were fighting to keep something out…or worse, to keep something in.

Memories flashed—horrifying convulsions racking her body, Mama’s fear, the Church of Light exorcists with their fervent, shining eyes and merciless determination to drive the demons from her soul.

She shuddered from the awful memories and quickly sketched the sign of the Lord of Light. No, all things considered, now was a bad time for Ellie to go anywhere near the Fey and their powerful magic.

“Besides, I’m busy tomorrow,” she told Lorelle, grateful for the genuine excuse. “Lady Zillina ordered an entire new suite for her receiving room, and Mama wants me to get started on the embroidery for the pillows.”

“But, Ellie, the Feyreisen is coming!”

Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. The Feyreisen? Despite her well-founded fear of magic, she’d dreamed all her life of seeing Rain Tairen Soul in the flesh.

Then common sense returned, and Ellie cast a stern sidelong glance at her sister. “Who told you that bit of silliness? Everyone knows the Feyreisen hasn’t stepped foot outside the Fading Lands in a thousand years.” Not since the end of the horrendous magical holocaust known as the Mage Wars.

“It’s not silliness!” Lorelle protested indignantly. “I heard it straight from Tomy Sorris.” Tomy Sorris, son of the printer, was the local town crier and usually well on top of the latest news and gossip.

Ellie was unimpressed. “Then Tomy’s been smelling too much printer’s ink.” She transferred the dough back into its rising bowl and covered it with a damp cloth.

“He has not!” A stamp of one small foot expressed the child’s outrage.

“Well, perhaps he’s just misinformed then,” Ellie replied. If Rain Tairen Soul were coming, they’d have heard about it long before now. The Fey who’d once nearly destroyed the world in a rage of tairen flame wouldn’t simply end his thousand-year exile without someone knowing about it in advance.

With a few quick swipes of a clean cloth, she swept the light dusting of flour off the tabletop into her palm and disposed of it in the waste bin beneath the kitchen sink. She cranked the sink pump twice and rinsed her floury fingers beneath the resulting cold spurt of water, and cast a glance back over her shoulder at Lorelle.

“Besides, why would the Feyreisen come here? He never had much use for mortals even before the Wars.”

She recalled a story in the yesterday’s paper about a small caravan of travelers attacked near the Borders by dahl’reisen, the frightening mercenaries who’d once been Fey warriors before being banished from the Fading Lands for the darkness in their souls. Would Rain Tairen Soul come to Celieria because of that?

She dismissed the idea instantly. All her life she’d heard tales of dahl’reisen raids—such tales were so common they were used to frighten small children into behaving—but none of those stories had ever lured the King of the Fey beyond the Faering Mists that circled the Fading Lands. No, Lorelle must be wrong.

Ellie untied her apron and hung it on a wooden peg in the corner of the modest, cozy Baristani family kitchen and smoothed slender hands over her serviceable tan muslin skirts. Her shirtsleeves were bunched up around her elbows, and she tugged the plain cuffs back down to her wrists, unable to stifle a wistful sigh as she imagined a fall of ivory lace draped over her hands. It was, of course, a foolish daydream. Lace would only get dirty and torn as she went about her chores.

She smiled at Lorelle, whose pout had now become an outright scowl. “Come now, kitling, don’t be cross. I’ll take you to the park instead. It won’t take up the whole day, it’s bound to be less crowded, and we can still have a fine time.”

Lorelle crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to go to the park. I want to see the Feyreisen.”

Before Ellie could reply, Lorelle’s twin Lillis came skipping into the kitchen, all atwitter. A mirror image of her twin, Lillis would have been indistinguishable from Lorelle except for the radiant excitement stamped on her face, which contrasted vividly with Lorelle’s dark scowl. “Ellie! Ellie! Guess what!”

Ellie made a show of widening her eyes with exaggerated interest. “What?”

“The Feyreisen is coming, and Mama says you can take us to see him enter the city tomorrow!”

“Ha!” Lorelle exclaimed. “I told you so!”

This time the breath that caught in Ellie’s throat stayed there. Tomy Soris might have sniffed too much printer’s ink, but Mama was never wrong. Seeking confirmation, Ellie glanced towards the door.

“Mama? Is it true? Is the Feyreisen really coming to Celieria?”

Lauriana Baristani nodded, her fingers deftly untying the bow of her large brimmed sun hat as she crossed the threshold and entered the kitchen. There was a light of excitement in her eyes that Ellie had never seen before. “It’s true,” she confirmed.

Ellie watched in astonishment as her mother tossed her hat and woven shawl over the back of a nearby chair rather than hanging them neatly on the wooden pegs provided for that purpose. Her mother was a firm believer in a place for everything and everything in its place. Something was going on, something that had nothing to do with the unexpected ambassadorial visit from a twelve-hundred year old Fey who could turn himself into a tairen.

“Mama?” She picked up the hat and shawl and hung them in their place. “What is it?” She gave her mother a searching look. Lauriana was a handsome woman in her mid fifties, with a solid build and strong arms that could help her husband move heavy pieces of handcrafted furniture or hug her children close. She had the same rich brown hair as the twins, though her soft ringlets were threaded liberally with silver, and her eyes were a pleasant hazel. Her brown dress was neatly made of sturdy, sensible cloth, and her shoes were sturdy, sensible brown leather to match. But at the moment, she did not look sensible at all. She looked…giddy.

“Oh, Ellie, you won’t believe it!” Lauriana reached out to grasp Ellie’s hands. “Queen Annoura,” she said, squeezing Ellie’s fingers tight, “sent Lady Zillina to commission your father to produce a special carving in the Feyreisen’s honor. He’s to have it finished and ready to present to the Feyreisen at the Prince’s betrothal ball!” When Ellie gasped again and the twins squealed, Lauriana beamed and nodded. “Commissioned by the queen. At last!”

“Oh, Mama,” Ellie breathed. “Papa must be singing with pride!” After ten years as a master woodcarver, Sol Baristani had finally received a coveted royal commission. When word got out, nobles and rich merchants would be banging down his door to commission his work. Money, always rather scarce in the Baristani household, was sure to flow into the family coffers.

Lauriana flashed her eldest daughter a devilish grin. “And won’t that just put Madam Rich and Snooty Minset’s knickers in a twist?”

“Mama!” Ellie gasped, giving her mother a shocked look.

Her mother – definitely not her staid and sensible self – laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, that was evil. Just evil.”

Ellie couldn’t help but laugh herself. It was so unlike her calm unflappable mother to say something nasty, even about the social climbing Madam Minset, the banker’s wife. Though if ever a woman deserved something nasty said about her, Madam Minset did – and that went double for her daughter Kellisande.

“But Mama, why is the Feyreisen coming to Celieria?”

Lauriana shrugged. “No one knows, but it’s sure to be a spectacle. And I promised Lillis you would take her and Lorelle to see the Feyreisen.” Ellie stared in surprise, and her mother blushed a little. “I know what you’re thinking, and this doesn’t mean I approve of Fey sorcerers. I don’t. Not in the least. But, the Bright Lord did select Rain Tairen Soul as the vehicle through which He has delivered this latest blessing upon our family. I wouldn’t want Him to think us ungrateful. You will take the girls, won’t you?”

Ellie glanced at Lorelle, who was now sporting a grin as large as a dairy cow, and had to laugh. “Of course I will,” she agreed. The twins shrieked with happiness and danced about the kitchen.

No matter how dreadful her nightmares, Ellie would never have missed this once in a lifetime opportunity to see the one and only Rain Tairen Soul. He was living history, the Fey who’d once in a fit of grief-induced madness almost destroyed the world.

How many ballads had been written about that terrible day? How many plays? Celieria’s Museum of Arts held no less than twenty enormous oil paintings that commemorated the entire series of events, masterpieces painted by Celieria’s greatest artists over the past thousand years. Ellie couldn’t count the number of times she’d stood in front of Fabrizio Chelan’s immortal, “Death of The Beloved”, and wept at the unspeakable anguish the great master had depicted on the face of Rain Tairen Soul as he held Lady Sariel in her death swoon and cried out to the heavens.

To see Rain Tairen Soul in the flesh. It was more than she’d ever dreamed possible.

She wagged a finger at the twins. “You two had best plan to go to bed early. We leave at the break of dawn, so we can be sure to find a place with a good view.”

Her mother shook her head. “You and your love of the Fey.” But for once, she didn’t add her usual lecture about the evils of magic and the danger of temptations that wore a pretty face.

Though Ellie shared her mother’s fear of magic, all things Fey had still fascinated her since she was a small child. “That doesn’t mean I’m any less excited about your news, Mama.” She reached out to grasp her mother’s hands. “Indeed, I want you to tell me everything. What, exactly, did Lady Zillina say? Don’t leave out a single detail.”

Lauriana pulled up a stool and related the whole exciting event, including the ultimate pleasure of having Stella Morin, the neighborhood’s biggest gossip, witness the whole event. She’d come into the shop to tell Lauriana that Donatella Brodson, the butcher’s youngest daughter, was officially contracted to wed the third son of a wealthy silk merchant.

“Oh,” Lauriana snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. Den is coming for dinner tonight.”

“Den?” Ellie repeated with dismay. Den Brodson, the butcher’s son, was a stuffed pork roast of a young man. And ever since his first wife had died in childbirth six months ago, he’d been following her around like a starving hound on the trail of a juicy steak. He’d made a habit of catching her in dark corners, standing so close she could smell the reek of onions and bacon on him, and looking too intently down the neckline of her dresses as if he could see straight through the fabric to the soft curves beneath. His thick fingers were ever clutching at her arm, as if he had some right to her. She shuddered with revulsion. She’d never liked him much, even as a child. Now he made her skin crawl.

Beside her the twins rolled their eyes, and clutched at their throats, making gagging noises. They didn’t like Den either.

“Mmm.” Lauriana paid no notice to the rolling eyes and gagging faces, but she did shoo the twins out of the kitchen. “Go play in your room, girls.” Then, to Ellie, “Wear your green dress, kit. It makes you look rather pretty.”

“Why would I want to look pretty for Den?”

A stern hazel gaze pinned her in place. The laughing, flighty Mama was gone. Practical, no-nonsense Mama was back. “You’re twenty-four, Ellysetta. That’s long past time to be making a good match and starting your own family. Look at your friends. All of them long since married, with at least one child walking and another on the way.”

“Kellisande’s not wed,” she reminded her mother.

“Yes, but Kellisande’s not lacking for offers.” The stern look in Lauriana’s eyes remained the same, but her voice softened. “She’s got beauty, girl, and wealth. You don’t.”

Ellie ducked her head to hide the glimmer of tears that sprang to her eyes. She knew she was no beauty. She’d seen her own reflection often enough to know that. And Kellisande Minset had always been happy to point out her shortcomings in case she missed them.

“Even though you’ve got a fine kind heart,” Lauriana continued, “and a strong back to make any man a treasured helpmate, young lads and their parents don’t look for those blessings first. The lads want beauty. The parents want wealth. The queen’s commission will probably be enough to bring Den’s family up to scratch, but you don’t have the time to wait for Papa to make a fortune so you can take your pick of men.” Unspoken was the common knowledge that if a girl was not wed by twenty-five, she was obviously defective in some way. Spinsters were to be pitied – and watched carefully lest the hand of evil that had blackened their futures laid its shadow over those around them.

Ellie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was obvious her mother had already decided whom Ellie would marry. “But I don’t love Den, Mama.” To her horror, her voice wobbled.

“Ellysetta.” There was a rustle of skirts and then the unexpected warmth of her mother’s arms wrapping around her thin shoulders and drawing her close. “Ah, girl. This is my fault.” Lauriana sighed. “I should have done my duty by you long ago. But you were such an…awkward…creature, and we were poor. I thought you’d never be wed, so where was the harm in letting you keep your dreams?”

Awkward. Such a mild euphemism for the fearful truth Mama never voiced. Ellie knew her parents loved her, as did Lillis and Lorelle. But that had not stopped her from hearing the talk of others—or seeing the fear that Mama could never quite hide whenever…things… happened around Ellie.

“But you’ve changed Ellie, and so have our circumstances. You’ve grown rather pretty in your own way, and this royal commission puts a few coins in our coffers with the promise of more to come. Look at me child.” Obedient to the command and the accompanying hand raising her chin, Ellie met her mother’s solemn gaze. “Life is never certain, Ellie. This is your chance to wed, and you must take it.”

“But, Mama –”

Lauriana held up a silencing finger. “Despite everything that happened when you were young, I’ve never curbed your love of Feytales or your dreams of truemates and happy endings, but that’s for Fey, not mortal folk like us. We don’t have centuries to wait for true love.”

“I know that, Mama.”

“Love will come in time, Ellie.”

“But not with Den, Mama!” How could it, when the very thought of his touch revolted her?

“Hush! You’ve not even given him a chance, Ellysetta. Den’s not a bad sort, and he’s certainly shown interest in you these last few months. His family’s well-enough, both in manner and position, and your children would never lack for food. Believe me when I tell you there’s nothing worse for parents than hearing a child cry for food they cannot provide. Even if that child is not of their own blood.”

Ellie dropped her gaze as the reminder that she was not their natural child knifed through her. Almost twenty-four years ago, on a journey from Kreppes to Hartslea in the north, Sol and Lauriana Baristani had found an abandoned baby in the woods near Norban. A girl baby with a shock of orange hair and startling green eyes.

Despite the fact that they were grindingly poor—Sol’s hands stiff and nearly crippled by an accident that had left him unable to work as a journeyman woodcarver—they had taken in the baby rather than leaving it to die. And they had kept her, even while Sol barely eked out a living on pennies a week as an apprentice carpenter, his broken hands managing to hold hammer, nail, rasp, and lathe though they could no longer do the intricate detail work he loved.

They kept her even when mysterious, violent seizures afflicted her and the priests declared her demon-cursed. They’d even left their home in Hartslea rather than cast her out or give her into the Church’s keeping as the exorcists and the parish priest advised them to do.

After that, thankfully, the family fortunes changed. Sol’s hands had miraculously healed, and he’d been able to return to his first love, woodcarving. Ellie’s ghastly seizures had dwindled, then stopped almost completely—a fact that Mama attributed to Ellie swearing her soul into service of the Light at her first Concordia in the Church of Light.

Still, Ellie had never forgotten all they’d sacrificed on her behalf. Now there was a chance for her to wed, if not well at least well-enough. It would ensure that Lillis and Lorelle would have the opportunity to make a truly fine match.

“You must trust your parents to do what’s best, Ellysetta. For you and the family.”

“Yes, Mama,” she whispered. She owed them that much and more.

“I know he’s not the man you’ve dreamed of, but give Den a chance. And if another young man of good family asks to court you, we will consider his suit as well.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And wear your green dress tonight.”

Ellie’s shoulders drooped. “Yes, Mama.”

* * *

That evening, Ellie donned her green dress and tried not to feel like a lamb being led to slaughter. At her mother’s insistence, she wore Lauriana’s bridal chemise beneath the green gown, and aged ivory lace fell over the backs of her hands, looking beautiful and feminine and delicate. Ellie wished she were wearing her own plain cuffs instead.

She stared hard at her reflection in the mirror. Startling green eyes stared back at her, looking too big in a too wan face, accentuated by prominent cheekbones and a slender nose. In the last year or so, her eyebrows and eyelashes had darkened to a deep auburn shade. The slashing wings of her brows were now exotic rather than pale and washed out, and once her eyelashes had darkened, their thickness and length had become quite apparent. She had been grateful for that, though at this moment she could have cheerfully wished them back to the transparent pale orange shade of her childhood. Her mouth was too wide, she acknowledged critically, her lips too full and too red. Her teeth, however, were white and straight, one of her best features.

She decided not to smile tonight—at least not so she showed any teeth.

She had ruthlessly subdued her wild tangle of hair into a knot on the top of her head, and for once was glad of its bright, unfashionable color and the rather severe style. She stepped back from the mirror. Unfortunately, Mama had been right about the dress making her look nice. The green color was flattering, and the bodice, laced tight to push up her breasts, made her look slender rather than skinny. She was still too tall to be considered feminine by Celierian standards. Flat-footed, she could look Den straight in the eye. Ellie thrust her feet into her highest heels and immediately grew three inches.

Satisfied that she’d done exactly as her mother asked, and as much as possible to mitigate any hint of prettiness, Ellie made her way downstairs to the family parlor.

Den was already there, sitting across from her father on one of Sol Baristani’s finely carved settees and chewing a chocolate caramel with relish. His stocky body was clothed in what looked to be a new dark blue plaid suit, cut just the tiniest bit too tight, with a yellow neckcloth tied in folds about his thick neck. A gold pin, shaped like a rather ungainly bear, glinted from the folds of the neckcloth. His brown hair, greased with a strongly scented pomade, was slicked back from his face, with a puff of curls carefully formed at the top of his broad forehead. His skin was ruddy, his nose partly flattened from a series of childhood scuffles, and his eyes were pale blue rimmed with stubby black lashes.

He was attractive enough, in a rough, butcher’s son sort of way. That wasn’t what bothered Ellie.

He looked up, caught sight of her, and jumped to his feet and crossed the room to stand uncomfortably close to her. His gaze swept over her, then homed in on the swell of bosom thrust up against the delicate fabric of her mother’s best chemise. A bosom that was three inches closer to his face thanks to her decision—poorly considered she now realized—to wear high heels. His tongue came out to lick his full lips.

That was what bothered Ellie.

Fighting the urge to cross her arms over her chest, she forced a stiff little smile—no teeth—and said, “Good evening, Den. How nice that you could join us tonight.”

“You look very pretty, Ellysetta.” That came from Papa, of course. Den was still salivating over her bosom.

“Thank you, Papa.” She was grateful for the warm love shining from Sol Baristani’s eyes. And for his presence in the parlor. The gods only knew what Den would have tried had they been alone. Judging from the look on his face, she wouldn’t have liked it much.

“Mmm. Yes,” Den agreed, licking his lips again. “Very pretty.” His pale blue gaze traveled up her neck and paused for several seconds on her mouth. When finally he met her own gaze head on, there were spots of color in his cheeks.

For a moment she imagined she felt a disturbing hunger. His hunger, she realized, and it wasn’t for food. Sudden panic roiled inside her, tying her stomach in knots, and making her break out in a clammy sweat. If he touched her, she knew she would be sick.

“Ah, Ellysetta. Good.” Mama’s voice snapped through the strange emotions that had captured Ellie, and she dragged in a gasp of air. No wonder she felt ill. She’d held her breath until she was dizzy!

“—to ask you to help me in the kitchen,” Lauriana was saying, “but I’ve changed my mind. You look far too pretty to risk soiling your gown in the kitchen. Don’t you agree, Den?” It was an embarrassing maternal attempt to draw a compliment from Den, but the young man didn’t hesitate to oblige her.

“Indeed, Madam Baristani.” Den bowed at the waist as if he were a Lord’s son rather than a butcher’s. “Ellysetta looks lovelier than I have ever seen her.” The smug smile was back.

“Sol, perhaps you would give me a hand instead?” Lauriana suggested with a pointed look.

Ellie’s eyes went wide with panic. “I don’t mind helping you, Mama!” She heard the shrill desperation in her voice. “Really, I don’t.”

“Nonsense. You stay here and entertain your young man. Your father is happy to help me.” As they exited the room, her mother flashed an indulgent smile at Den and said in a coy entirely un-Mama-like voice, “We won’t be but a few chimes, children.”

There was no mistaking her humiliating obvious scheme, and Den was quick to take up the unspoken invitation. As soon as Lauriana’s skirts disappeared down the hall, he stepped closer to Ellie, his square hands reaching for her. She stumbled backwards to escape his pursuit, only to find herself backed into a corner, trapped between his arms, staring in horrified revulsion as his thick, wet lips tried to attach themselves to hers.

Ellie escaped the kiss with a quick twist of her body, and tried to duck under his arm. She wasn’t quite quick enough, and her slender muscles were no match for his solid bulk. After a brief, undignified tussle, she found herself back in the corner, pulled tight against his body.

“Come on, Ellie.” His breath was starting to come a little faster. “We both know why your parents left us alone. There’s no need to play the coy maiden. I don’t want anything more than a kiss or two.” He grinned, showing two rows of sharp and slightly crooked teeth. “For now.”

“Den, we hardly know each other.”

He laughed. “We’ve known each other since childhood, Ellie.”

“But not like this…we’ve just been…er…friends.” They’d never been friends. He’d been a taunting bully who liked to make her cry.

“I want to be more than friends now.” His hands roved over her waist, and his lips descended, glancing off her cheek as she jerked her head away. Den drew back his head and chuckled. “I’ve been watching you for some time now, Ellie,” he murmured, his voice thick and possessive. “Granted, you weren’t much to look at as a kid, all orange hair, freckles, and knobby knees. But lately, you’ve started to show a little promise.” That smug, secret smile flashed again, and one thick-fingered hand came up to cup her chin. “I’ve decided to make you my wife, Ellie Baristani.”

He didn’t ask. He just said it, as if she had no choice in the matter. She stared at him, aghast, wondering how in the names of all the gods she was going to get out of this with any measure of grace. “Den, you…er…honor me, but—”

“Ssh.” The hand on her chin moved to cover her mouth. “There’s no need to say anything.” Her eyes widened in outrage and sudden fear as the hand on her mouth clamped down harder, and Den lowered his head to her neck.

Her stomach lurched as something warm and wet touched her skin. Was that his tongue? A stinging pain at the base of her throat made her yelp against his silencing hand. The little bloat toad had bitten her! He sucked at the spot he’d just bitten, and once more that warm, wet tongue licked at her. Oh, gods, she was going to be sick!

Outraged and repulsed, she grabbed two handfuls of his hair and yanked. Hard. She kicked his shins, too. He just grunted and shoved her against the wall, pinning her with the heavy, unmovable weight of his stocky body. Before she could draw breath enough to scream, his mouth was on hers. His lips were wet and slippery, and that horrid tongue was on the loose again, this time trying to get inside her mouth.

Without warning, one hand closed around her breast. Instinctively, she opened her mouth to scream. It was exactly the wrong reaction, and one he’d obviously been counting on. His hand shot up to hold her jaw open, and his tongue thrust deep into her mouth. Her screams, muffled by his mouth, came out as frantic little squeals that seemed only to excite him further.

Never in her life had Ellie been assaulted this way. Where were her parents? How could they have abandoned her to this…this…mauling?

Beneath the revulsion and feeling of helplessness, a darker emotion burst into smoldering life. A wild, fierce anger. Her skin flashed hot and tingling, drawing tight as if something inside her flesh were struggling to get out.

Terror grabbed her by the throat as the room began to tremble.

* * *

Two hundred miles away, beside a campfire burning in the chilly night, Rain Tairen Soul felt a woman’s emotions stab into him. Fear. Outrage. Desperation. He leapt to his feet, his nostrils flaring as if he could scent the emotions on the wind. His mind raced to find their path, to identify their source.

Another wave of feelings arrowed into him. Revulsion. Rage. Then stark terror. A wordless cry screamed in his mind. She was calling out to him. She was afraid and he was not there to protect her.

He flung himself from the ground into the sky, flashing instantly into tairen-form. Flames scorched the night sky and his roar of fury rent the air as he followed the path of the mind that called out to him in fear.

But then, as suddenly and the call had come, it fell silent. Confused by the abrupt termination of the connection, Rain faltered in mid flight. His fury was still there. Licks of flame still curled from his muzzle and venom pooled in the reservoirs in his fangs, but his rage had lost its focus. The woman’s fear and desperation were gone, no longer fueling his wrath. Banking right, he circled the sky and reached out with his mind, trying to find the one who had called. He found nothing but silence and the worried calls of the Fey warriors he’d left behind. Then the even more worried call of Marissya.

The warriors, he might have ignored, but not Marissya. All Fey men were bound to protect the females of their race, even from worry.

**Rain?** Marissya didn’t try to hide the concern in her mental voice. She was a mere century older than Rain, had known him all his life. She was his friend. **What happened?**

**She called out to me. She was afraid.**

**Who?**

He hesitated. **I don’t know.** Keen tairen eyes pierced the night. Far away in the distance, he saw the glow of Celieria. **But I’m going to find out.** He dipped one wing and banked again, heading towards the city in the distance.

* * *

Ellie sat at the dinner table and couldn’t stomach the thought of putting food in her mouth. The terrifying anger and the disturbing sensation in her skin had passed almost as quickly as they’d come, with none but Ellie the wiser. Though she could have sworn the parlor had actually trembled, no one else appeared to have sensed it. Was she going mad now? Had the demons that had haunted her youth found a different, more subtle way to work their evil on her?

Ellie knew not to let herself get upset. All her life, she’d worked to keep her emotions in check lest she accidentally trigger another seizure. She forced herself to take deep, even breaths, and filled her mind with calming thoughts.

Still, as she glanced at her mother from beneath her lashes, she couldn’t quell a spurt of anger and resentment as Lauriana made pleasant small talk – small talk! – with Den Brodson. How could Mama even contemplate wedding Ellie to that odious rultshart?

Did Mama know what Den had been doing in the parlor? She had to have known. She’d made a series of intentionally loud noises before coming back in. What had that been all about except to let Den know he should stop his assault on Ellie? He had, thankfully. With a final wet kiss and a last painful squeeze of her breast, Den had released her and said, “You’ll do, Ellie.” As if she were a haunch of beef he was approving from the slaughterhouse.

Ellie’s relief at being freed had rapidly turned into a sense of betrayal. How could Mama know what Den had been doing and not be outraged? Surely Mama didn’t know about that awful pink slug of a tongue.

Outrage and resentment clashed inside her. She was not going to marry Den Brodson. Not now. Not ever. Anger flared, quick and hot.

Suddenly, there was a feeling in her mind. A probing touch, as if someone or something was trying to reach inside her head. She had a distant sense of scarcely banked fury and a stronger a sense of something powerful rushing towards her with grim purpose.

Ellie’s spoon clattered to the table. Everyone looked at her in surprise.

“Ellie?” Papa’s brown eyes radiated concern. “Are you alright, kit?”

She put a shaking hand to her head. “I – I think so, Papa.” The feeling was gone. Had it been her imagination? Another sign of impending madness? She forced a wan smile and tugged at the neck of her chemise. “I mean, yes. I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“What’s that on your neck?” Lorelle was staring at the spot where Den had bitten Ellie’s neck, the spot that Ellie had unwittingly just uncovered.

In an instant, everyone was staring at Ellie’s neck. Embarrassed, she clapped a hand over the spot. She hadn’t looked in a mirror. Had Den left a mark on her?

Apparently so, because her father was now staring hard at Den. That shameless klat just smiled his smug smile and met her Papa’s gaze straight on. Mama’s eyes darted from her husband to her daughter’s suitor. There was a look in Mama’s eyes that made Ellie’s heart stutter. Embarrassment faded—even fear of what was happening to her faded—as worry slithered up Ellie’s spine.

“Girls,” Papa said. Ellie had never heard his voice sound so emotionless, so hard. “Go to your rooms.” The twins jumped to their feet and scurried out. “You, too, Ellysetta.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t take his unblinking gaze from Den’s.

Ellie did not immediately obey. Did her parents not know what Den had done to her after all? Was it possible that they hadn’t left her alone with him in the parlor for that very reason?

“Papa?”

“Go!” he barked, and Ellie all but fell over herself rushing from the room. Snatching up fistfuls of heavy green skirts, she raced for the stairs and took them two at a time, not slowing down until she was ensconced in the safety of her small bedroom.

Needing to know exactly what sort of mark Den had left on her, she went to the small dressing table tucked in the corner of her room. Her fingers shook as she struck a match and lit the oil lamp on the table. Soft golden light filled the room. Ellie leaned close to the mirror, tugging the neck of her chemise to one side to reveal a small, dark, oval mark at the base of her throat. In the golden glow of lamplight, the mark looked like a smudge of soot. She rubbed at it, but it didn’t come off. She felt invaded somehow, violated, and suddenly very afraid of what was going on downstairs.

She sat on the edge of her bed, and waited. She didn’t know how long she sat there. It seemed like bells before she heard the creak of the stairs and the slow clomp, clomp of her father’s boots. She rushed to her bedroom door and pulled it open.

“Papa?”

There was disappointment and sadness in his eyes when he looked at her. “Go to bed, Ellysetta. It’s getting late.” He looked tired and worn. Old.

“But, Papa…about Den.” What could she say? She couldn’t very well tell her father about the embarrassing things he’d done to her. “I…I know Mama thinks he’s a good match, but Papa…I don’t like him. Please, I don’t want to marry him.”

Her father stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and turned away. “Go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“But Papa – ”

He just continued walking down the hall and into his room, closing his bedroom door behind him.

Ellie returned to her own room and undressed in shadowy darkness, hanging the green gown and her mother’s chemise in the small wardrobe resting against the wall. She didn’t want to wear either of them again as long as she lived.

After donning a cotton nightdress, she sat down beside the window and unpinned her hair. It spilled down her back in long, springy coils. Brushing it with steady strokes, she stared out at the night sky. Both the large moon called the Mother and the small moon called the Daughter were three-quarters full. It was a bright night.

Please, she prayed silently, fervently, hoping the Celierian gods would hear her. Please send me someone else. Anyone else but Den. She laid the brush in its place on her dressing table and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and closing her eyes.

She didn’t see the shadow fall across her room as the light from the Mother was blotted out by a large black tairen winging through the night. She didn’t see the lavender eyes, glowing like beacons, turn their light upon the rooftops of Celieria. Searching. Seeking.

Chapter Two

Beautifully and fearfully wrought, by dread magic splendored,

With passion’s fire his soul does burn, in sorrow his name be whispered

from the epic poem Rainier’s Song by Avian of Celieria

Celieria’s main thoroughfare was already lined four deep when Ellie and the twins arrived at seven the next morning. News that the Tairen Soul himself would be coming had raced like wildfire throughout the city, and Ellie was convinced that before ten bells every man, woman, and child in the city would be lining the streets to ogle the legendary Feyreisen, Rain Tairen Soul, the man-beast who had once almost destroyed the world.

She sighed and began searching for a place from which to watch the forthcoming spectacle. About halfway between the city gates and the royal palace, she found a grassy knoll bordering one of the city’s many small parks. From atop the knoll, the children would have an unimpeded view of the Fey procession and still be close enough to see everything.

Sending the twins off to play while they waited for the procession to begin, Ellie spread her brown skirts and sat down without a care for grass stains or the morning dew that dampened her dress. Her mind was still chasing itself in circles worrying over what had passed between Den and her parents last night. She still didn’t know. Papa had already been gone when she came downstairs for breakfast, and Mama had told her they would talk after she returned from the Fey procession. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad was about to happen.

Her sleep had been tormented by more dreams. Not the familiar, violent dreams of blood and death or the dark, malevolent nightmares that had haunted her most of her life, but new, frightening dreams of fiery anger and pale purple eyes, of a soundless voice that called to her, demanding that she reply. She remembered tossing and turning, remembered trying to block out those eyes and that insistent voice. Not until close to dawn had she finally found peace.

Now, staring up at the bright blue morning sky, with the Great Sun glowing like a huge golden ball, she could almost pretend that the dreams were nothing more than her imagination running wild. That worry about the situation with Den was to blame. That everything would be all right and life would return to its pleasant, comfortable routine.

She didn’t believe it for a moment.

* * *

Twenty miles outside the city, two hundred Fey warriors and one Fey Lord traveled at a fast lope down the broad road that cut a swath though the Celierian landscape of lush fields dotted by small villages. Farmers and villagers bordered the road in small groups, having come with their families as they always did to see the immortal Fey run past. This year, however, their attention was directed not at the road, but overhead where Marissya v’En Solande rode the wind on the back of a massive black tairen–the infamous Rain Tairen Soul himself.

The Fey had broken camp three bells before dawn and resumed their trek to Celieria at a fast clip. Marissya ran with them until Rain returned just as the Great Sun began to light the sky, then she continued the journey on tairen-back, allowing the warriors to resume their normal, easily sustainable run. They had traversed the next seventy miles in just under three bells.

All knew that something had disturbed Rain the night before and that he had gone in search of the source of the disturbance. But he had not spoken of it since his return, and not even Marissya could get him to talk.

When they neared the city, Rain landed, lowered Marissya to the ground, and shifted back into Fey-form. He paced restlessly as Marissya and the Fey prepared themselves for their ceremonial entrance into the city.

Marissya shed her brown traveling leathers for a red gown that covered her from chin to toe and a stiff brimmed hat draped with a thick red veil that covered her face. Her waist length dark hair was braided and tucked out of sight. The garb would have been hot and stifling had her truemate, Dax, not woven a cool web of Air around her. She was a shei’dalin, a powerful Fey healer and Truthspeaker, and none who were not Fey or kin were permitted to look upon her outside of council.

All around her, two hundred Fey warriors donned gleaming black leathers and spent at least half a bell polishing and re-sheathing the scores of blades each warrior wore when he left the Fading Lands. Her mate Dax, clad in the dark red leathers of a truemated Fey Lord, tended his own weapons with similar care. Though he was no longer of the warrior class—no Fey Lord was permitted to put his mate at risk by continuing to dance with knives—his blades would always stand between her and danger.

Marissya finished her physical preparations long before the men, and she went to join Rain. It has been many years since she’d seen him in such a state. He was restless, edgy, pacing back and forth with short, rapid steps. There was so much power in him, so scarcely contained that a shining aura surrounded him, flashing continuously with tiny sparks. His eyes glowed fever-bright. His nostrils quivered as if he were an animal scenting something in the air that set him on edge. If he’d been in tairen form, he would have been spouting flame. He was still in control of himself – she and all the Fey would have known if he were not – but he was in a high state of agitation and that did not bode well for the long day ahead.

She knew better than to touch him. One didn’t touch raw power without receiving a shock. Instead, she reached out to him on their private mental path, the one they had forged centuries ago in friendship. **Rain, be calm.** She sent a soothing wave of reassurance along with the words, not surprised when he shrugged it off and continued pacing.

**She is there. For a moment last night I was in her mind, then I lost her again.** Frustration boiled through the link.

**Who, Rain? Who is there?**

He snapped around, eyes flashing. His long, elegant hands clenched and unclenched. His chest heaved. He was angry and frustrated, yes, but now Marissya realized it was more than that.

**She is.** he snapped. **She! The one!** And then, the one word she was sure to understand. The one word that explained everything. He shouted it out loud: “Shei’tani!”

There was a sudden clattering whoosh of sound followed by absolute silence as two hundred Fey warriors jerked around to stare at their king in stunned disbelief.

Marissya’s breath left her in an astonished gasp. **But that cannot be.**

**It can be nothing else.**

The tumult of Rain’s emotions blasted over their mental link, and she stumbled back in shock, recognizing those feelings for exactly what they were. Her mind reached instinctively for her truemate, sharing the shocking truth of Rain’s emotions with him.

Their gazes met across the distance, and as one they turned to look at their king.

He was pacing restlessly once more. Every few moments his head turned towards Celieria and the power in him burned a little brighter. They both knew the instincts driving him, knew that because he was the Tairen Soul those instincts would be far more intense and far harder to control, fueled by both Fey and tairen passions combined. If they weren’t very careful, the coming days could end in disaster.

* * *

As she caught sight of the Feyreisen riding the wind in tairen-form, Ellie acknowledged that just a glimpse of him was well worth the interminable wait and jostling crowds. Long before the actual Fey warriors drew near, Ellie and the twins saw Rain Tairen Soul soaring through the sky. He was all that legend claimed, and more. A gigantic, ferocious black feline with glowing purple eyes, frightening and beautiful all at the same time. He winged like a raptor over the city, circling again and again, emitting warning bursts of fire when the thronging crowd moved too close to the approaching Fey. Even from a distance, she could see the glistening danger of his sharp, venom-filled fangs. His ears were laid back on his head, his claws extended.

When the Fey warriors themselves came into view, the sight of them was almost equally as awe inspiring as the Tairen Soul. There were at least twice as many warriors as had ever come before. Row after impeccably formed row marched into view, and for the first time in Ellie’s memory, magic surrounded them in a visible glowing aura of light.

A murmur of wonderment rose up from the crowd.

The Fey warriors presented a stunning display, clad in black leather from neck to toe and bristling with silvery swords and knives that gleamed in the sunlight. Every Fey warrior clutched two long, curving blades called meicha, and what seemed like hundreds of razor sharp throwing knives called Fey’cha were tucked into leather belts that crisscrossed their chests. If that weren’t enough, each warrior wore two massive seyani long swords strapped to their backs.

It was said that one Fey warrior was as lethal as ten champions. Looking at their fierceness, their precision, and the tangible glow of magic enveloping them, Ellie believed it.

In the center of the formation, surrounded by an even brighter glow, walked a single unarmed figure draped in voluminous folds of blood red. It was the shei’dalin, the Truthspeaker, Marissya v’En Solande, and the handsome, dangerous-looking man in red leathers by her side was her truemate, the Fey Lord Daxian v’En Solande.

As the procession moved closer, the crowd surged forward, everyone straining for a better look. Rain Tairen Soul roared and spouted a warning flare of fire. Accompanied by many screams and uplifted heads, the crowd wisely jumped back.

In the sudden shifting of massed bodies, Lillis lost her footing and fell to the ground. She howled in pain when Lorelle, trying to avoid being knocked over herself, trod on her hand.

Ellie was there in an instant, hauling Lillis to her feet and inspecting the injury. The child’s little fingers were red, the skin slightly torn over one knuckle. “Oh, kitling. I’m so sorry. Would you like me to kiss it better?”

Lillis sniffled and nodded. “Yes, Ellie. You kiss the pain away better than anyone.”

Giving her a fond smile, Ellie raised the girl’s injured finger to her mouth. “Gods bless and keep you, kitling,” she murmured and kissed the little finger. A tiny electric current leapt from Ellie to her sister, making them both jump. Ellie laughed a little. “Sorry, Lilli-pet . I didn’t mean to shock you.”

Rain Tairen Soul whooshed overhead, roaring, the sound like a clap of thunder in the air.

Ellie straightened in time for her to see the Fey come to an abrupt halt, their curved meicha blades raised. The warriors immediately surrounding the Truthspeaker drew their long swords with a hiss of metal leaving scabbard.

The shei’dalin turned her head from side to side as if scanning the crowd. Beside her, her mate had razor-edged swords in hand and was ablaze with power.

The crowd went silent. From her vantage point on the knoll, Ellie watched with bated breath and clutched the twins to her side. She didn’t have any idea what was happening, but it was something unusual. Something important and frightening. The crowd around Ellie began shoving, everyone trying to get a better glimpse of what was going on.

“Lillis! Lorelle! Stay close to me!” She grabbed the twins and hugged them tight, afraid they were about to be pushed off the knoll into the trampling feet below.

Rain Tairen Soul roared again, clawing the air, now obviously agitated about something. Flame seared the air, followed by another roar of tairen fury. From the street, the shei’dalin raised her arms and shouted, “Rain! Nei!”

The crowd began to panic, and so did Ellie. Someone stumbled heavily into her back. She staggered and tried to keep her balance, but her leather shoes slipped on the grass. With a cry of alarm, Ellie toppled off the knoll. She fell forward, pushing the children to safety with one hand and reaching out with the other to break her fall. She landed hard and screamed in pain as a man’s boot heel stamped on her fingers, crushing the slender bones with a snap.

Pain and terror swamped her senses. People rushed madly around her, and another boot ground into her broken hand. She shrieked again. Barely able to think, certain she was about to die, she curled her body into a tight ball and brought her broken hand up over her head.

She was dimly aware that people were screaming around her. She didn’t see Rain Tairen Soul fold his wings and drop like a hurtling black meteor towards the ground. But something touched her senses, something made her realize that suddenly the sun was gone, and so were the people hurting her.

She glanced up and let loose another shrill cry of horror as the huge, terrifying black-winged tairen swooped down upon her, metamorphosing at the last minute into Rainier vel’En Daris Feyreisen, the infamous Rain Tairen Soul, who lightly stepped from sky to ground, one black booted foot at a time.

He towered over her huddled form. Death black hair hung in long, straight strands that blew about his face in the windy remnants of the tairen’s downdraft. His skin was pale and faintly luminescent, his face terrible in the perfection of its stunning masculine beauty, and his lavender eyes glowed with a brilliant, icy fire. With a wave of one hand, he threw up a towering cone of Air and Fire magic that surrounded the two of them in a whirling haze of white and red.

Ellie cowered in fear, and instinctively held up her broken hand to ward him away. With a sobbing gasp, she rolled to her feet and staggered back.

“Stay away!” she ordered hoarsely. Her heart was racing, her breath coming in fast, shallow gasps but she couldn’t seem to get any air. Had he used his magic to steal the breath from her lungs? She knew the Fey could do that sort of thing.

“Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.” He spoke to her in a lyrical foreign tongue—Feyan, she realized, though she didn’t understand the words—and stepped towards her.

“No!” she cried out. For all she knew, he’d just told her to prepare for her impending death. “Stay back! Don’t come any closer!”

He paused for a moment, frowning. “Ve ta dor. Ve ku’jian vallar.” Then Rain Tairen Soul came towards her again, his steps slow and resolute. He reached for her, ignoring the way she sobbed and flinched away from him. His fingers, strong and surprisingly warm, curled around her forearms and trapped her with effortless strength. She had the overwhelming sensation of immense power, deep sorrow, and a terrible longing. But underlying all of those was another emotion, a violent swirl of rage. She cried out and struggled to free herself, succeeding only in grinding the bones of her hand together. Agony knifed up her arm.

A scream ripped from her throat. She fell to her knees. Unexpectedly, she found herself free. She blinked and risked a glance up at the Feyreisen.

His eyes were squeezed shut, his hands clenched in white knuckled fists at his side. He was shaking as if he were in pain. His eyes flashed open again. The ice was still in them, and confusion, and more than a hint of madness.

She watched him fearfully, her body poised to flee if he came towards her again.

With the flick of his finger, he fashioned a door in the whirling cone of magic. His voice, deep, ancient, commanding, called out in Feyan.

A moment later, the Truthspeaker stepped through the doorway, followed closely by her mate. The Fey Lord had sheathed his swords and as he stepped inside the cone of magic the Feyreisen had erected, his own glow of power winked out. He followed a few feet behind his mate as she approached Ellie.

Though the shei’dalin’s face was hidden behind folds of red, she radiated waves of compassion and reassurance. Despite everything—including her own mind whispering that this was a Fey trick—Ellie felt her terror begin to abate. She needed to trust this woman. The Truthspeaker would never cause her harm. There was no need to be afraid. She could be calm. All would be well.

The soothing compassion, the compulsion to release her fear, was impossible to resist. Dazed, lulled by the powerful hypnotic spell of a Fey shei’dalin, Ellie didn’t protest when Marissya reached for her broken hand.

The Fey’s own long, pale fingers, slender and elegant, passed over Ellie’s. Warmth sank through Ellie’s skin and into the flesh and bone below. Her pain evaporated. A strange ticklish tingling spread across her hand, and she watched in astonishment as her bones straightened and knit. Within moments, her hand was whole and unhurt.

She flexed her fingers experimentally. There wasn’t the faintest twinge of pain.

Ellie swallowed the lump in her throat and raised awestruck eyes to the Fey woman. “How did you do that?”

“Eva Telah, cor la v’ali, Feyreisa.” The voice behind the veils sounded so peaceful, so soothing, so compassionate. Ellie wanted to sink into the comfort of that voice and absorb its tranquility. She fought off the lethargy with a brisk shake of her head.

“I don’t understand you.”

The Truthspeaker’s head jerked up. Though Ellie couldn’t see her eyes, she had a feeling the shei’dalin was staring at her in surprise. “You don’t speak the Fey tongue?”

“Only a word or two.” Ellie couldn’t understand why that would be so unusual. Had she offended them somehow? “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I read it fairly well, but very few Celierians still actually speak your language.”

“You are Celierian?”

Ellie blinked. “Of course.”

The Truthspeaker cast a glance over her shoulder. The Feyreisen was still staring at Ellie, and he was frowning. She began to inch backwards. Immediately, the shei’dalin turned back to her, lifting her heavy veil as she did so. Huge blue eyes, so full of compassion Ellie could drown in them, were smiling at her from a face so beautiful it would put a Lightmaiden to shame.

“Be at peace, little sister,” the shei’dalin murmured, and her hand came out to rest on Ellie’s. “Of all people, you need never fear Rainier.” As the Fey woman spoke, Ellie felt a faint pressure in her head, so slight she might not have noticed it had she not already been on edge. Her eyes widened as she realized the Truthspeaker was probing her mind. It was said a shei’dalin could strip a soul naked, leave even the strongest of men sobbing like infants. Truthspeakers could bend anyone to their will.

“No!” Ellie yanked her hand out of the Fey’s grip and imagined a gate of brick and steel slamming shut around her mind, thrusting out the invading consciousness.

The shei’dalin gave a muffled cry and staggered back. The Tairen Soul’s eyes flared bright, and a bubble of lavender light burst into glowing life around Ellie. A feral snarl rumbled from the Tairen Soul’s chest, and he bared his teeth like a wild animal on the verge of attack. In a blur, he leapt between Ellie and the shei’dalin. In the same instant, the shei’dalin’s mate also leapt forward.

**Get back!** The voice was in Ellie’s head, sharp, commanding. Somehow, she knew it had come from the Feyreisen.

Scared out of her wits, Ellie pushed against the purple light enveloping her, trying to escape before the two Fey warriors decided to slaughter her where she stood.

Instead, to her utter amazement, the Tairen Soul whirled on the shei’dalin and her mate. His hands rose, power arcing from his fingers in blinding flashes just as the other Fey Lord’s power snapped into blazing light and he sent a bright bubble of energy surging forth to wrap around his mate. Like his king, Daxian v’En Solande’s teeth were bared in naked menace, but that menace was directed solely at the Feyreisen.

The two men faced each other, faces drawn in fury, power bursting around them, scorching the air with the scent of ozone.

“Nei, Rain!” the Truthspeaker protested. Her voice wasn’t calm now. It was afraid. “Nei, shei’tan!” Then in Celierian, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Please, forgive me! Calm yourself. Guard your feelings.”

It took a startled moment for Ellie to realize the Truthspeaker was addressing her. “Me?”

“Yes! Can you not see he is protecting you?” Even as she spoke to the girl, Marissya sent a silent plea to Rain. **I’m sorry, Rain. I didn’t mean to frighten her. Please. She is unhurt. See for yourself. Be calm. You must be calm. It is you who frighten her now.** And to her truemate, whose thoughts and feelings she sensed as her own, **Dax, shei’tan, I am not hurt. She only surprised me. It is my fault. I should not have probed her. She felt it and was frightened. Rain responds to her fear, to protect her, as you protect me. Please, let go before someone gets hurt.**

Neither Rain nor Dax relaxed their grip on their power or their rage. It wasn’t surprising. A Fey Lord reacted violently to even the smallest perceived threat to his mate.

**Please, Rain. She needs you strong for her, in control of yourself. You must control the tairen in you. She was hurt, and you came. You protected her. She is safe.**

**She fears you.** Blazing half-mad lavender eyes pinned her. **I will not permit it.**

**I’m sorry. I – ** The weave of Fire and Air appeared without warning. With incredible speed and dexterity, Rain had rewoven the protective cone of magic, shutting Marissya and Dax out, closing himself and the Celierian girl within.

* * *

It took Rain several minutes to beat back the tairen’s fury, to shove it into a small corner of his mind and keep it there. Only then did he turn to face the woman whose emotions ripped at his sanity, her fear – of him, he knew, despite wanting to blame Marissya – tearing him in ways he’d never known. The web of Spirit he’d woven around her winked out as he released his power back to the elements. Still, she cowered from him. Rain would have torn out the heart of any other man who dared to frighten her this badly, yet he would not – could not – leave her.

“Come.” His tone was imperious, yet the hand he held out trembled. “I could never harm you, shei’tani.” His Celierian was rusty, deeply accented with Fey tones, and his attempt to appear non-threatening was equally out of practice. The tairen in him still clawed at the edges of his control, all fiery passion, possessiveness, and primitive instinct. “I am called Rainier.”

“I know.” Her eyes were huge in the too-thin oval of her face. Twin pools of verdant green, they stared at him as if he were a monster. “You scorched the world once. It’s in all the history books.”

“That was a very long time ago.” He tried to summon a smile, but the muscles in his face couldn’t seem to remember how to form one. “I promise you are safe with me.” His fingers gestured, beckoning her. “Come. Give me your hand.”

The exotic flares of her brows drew together in a suspicious frown. “Why? So you can try to invade my thoughts like the Truthspeaker?” Rain could see she was still afraid, very afraid, yet she was working hard to master it.

“I…apologize for Marissya. She had no right.”

“Then why did she do it?”

“She was…curious about you.” She had done it to find answers, of course. Answers to the questions of how a Celierian child-woman could wield the power he had felt, and more importantly how she could possibly be Rain’s shei’tani.

“Did she never think to just ask?” The asperity in her voice was unmistakable. Delicate, frightened shei’tani had steel in her spine after all.

“She will now. Believe me.” The tairen in him was slowly subsiding. It had ceased pounding the door of its cage and was now pacing restlessly within, edgy but contained. For the moment. But it, like him, had a great need to touch this woman. Once more he held out his hand. “Come. Give me your hand. Please.” The last was more a genuine plea than an afterthought. “I would give my life before allowing harm to come to you.”

Ellie stared at the outstretched hand in stunned silence. Was Rainier vel’En Daris, King of the Fey, truly standing before her, vowing to sacrifice his immortal life to protect her? Her, Ellie Baristani, the woodcarver’s odd, unattractive and embarrassingly unwed adoptive daughter? Surely, she was dreaming.

But this all seemed so real. And he was so beautiful. Beautifully and fearfully wrought. Her dazed mind supplied the quote from Avian’s classic epic poem, “Song of Rainier”. Avian, she now knew, had barely got the half of it. She had dreamed of Rain Tairen Soul all her life, and here he was. She felt herself moving towards him, her hand reaching out. He had asked, and she had to touch him. If only to be sure he was real.

Her fingers trembled as they slid into his. She trembled as his hand closed about hers. Warmth, like the spring heat of the Great Sun, spread through her body, and a sense of peace unlike anything she’d ever felt came over her. She heard him inhale deeply, watched his eyes flutter closed. A nameless expression, an unsettling mix of joy and pain, crossed his face.

He drew her closer, and she went without protest, dazed with wonder as his arms, so lean and strong, wrapped her in a close embrace. Her ear pressed against his chest. She felt the unyielding bristle of the countless sheathed knives strapped over his chest, heard the beat of his heart, and was oddly reassured. There was safety here, as there was no other place on earth.

She felt him bow his head to rest his jaw on her hair, the touch feather light. Tears beaded in her lashes at the simple beauty of it.

“Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.” He whispered the words against her hair.

“You said that before,” she murmured. “What does it mean?” It sounded so familiar, like something she had heard or read somewhere before. She felt the stillness in him, the hesitation, and she pulled back to look up into his eyes.

His gaze moved slowly over her face as if he were committing her likeness to memory for all time. “I don’t even know your name.”

She blinked in surprise. Since the moment she had put her hand in his and he had pulled her into his arms, she felt like he knew everything there was to know about her. It was surprising and disconcerting to realize that, in fact, they knew each other not at all. “Ellie,” she told him solemnly. “My name is Ellysetta Baristani.”

“Ellie.” Liquid Fey accents savored the syllables of her simple name, making it something beautiful and exotic. “Ellysetta.” His pale, supple hand brushed the mass of her hair. His gaze followed the path of his fingers as they delved deeply into the untamable coils. “Ellysetta with hair like tairen flame and eyes the green color of spring. I’ve seen the mist of your reflection in The Eye of Truth.” His gaze returned to hers, filled with wonder and regret. “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani. Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved.”

At last Ellie remembered why the Fey words seemed so familiar. She’d read them before in a slim volume of translated Fey poetry. It was the greeting a Fey man spoke to a woman when recognizing and claiming her as his truemate.

The strange buzzing in her ears was all the warning Ellie received before her knees buckled.

Sandy M’s review of Crown of Crystal Flame (Tairen Soul, Book 5) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy Romance published by Avon 26 Oct 10

When I think back to 2007 when I received an ARC for review of the first book in this series, Lord of the Fading Lands, and I kept looking at the cover, telling myself “That’s fantasy, you’re not big on fantasy, you probably won’t like that book,” I’d put it aside to read something else, I can’t believe I might have missed the best books and best series to come along in a very long time. C.L. Wilson has written the book of her heart and readers have taken her story and her characters into theirs. This last book of the series is a perfect ending to the perfect series. I hate to see it end, but Ms. Wilson is now well into her journey as a best-selling author, so I know more good things — no, great things — will be forthcoming from her.

We go into this last book with Ellie still not completing her truemate bond with Rain. He is slowly dying, suffering madness without their bond. Of course, like any fan of this series, I’ve had my own ideas of what I’d like to see happen between this awesome couple, what Ellie’s Tairen looks like, her first flight in that form, and a number of other things. Ms. Wilson gave me what I wanted in spades — and then some.

War has been waged against the Fey by the Mages of Eld and the fighting becomes much more intense and personal in this book. The action is nearly nonstop once battling begins. We lose a few good friends, inevitable in the face of war, but sad to say that final farewell. The High Mage has huge plans, thought out over millennia, and while he succeeds on some level, Ms. Wilson masterfully spans the reader’s tension and anxiety over Rain and Ellie’s plight chapter after chapter until the last possible moment. She had me tied up in knots when it seemed capture was finally imminent and I just couldn’t stand to read any further, not wanting to know what happens to them. I literally would let book in hand fall to my lap and my head drop back to the top of the couch, insides twisting with despair. This book is filled with those types of moments. I, of course, kept reading, letting that despair then be overwhelmed by curiosity, only to plunge headlong back into that former state. Back and forth it went over and over again.

And all of that is nothing compared to the moment Ellie and the High Mage do come face to face. Her parents, who have been in his evil, torturous hands for centuries, are used against her. Her twin sisters, who are recently his prisoners, are used against her. Ellie’d seen all of this in her dreams and she’s able to hold out as the mage taunts her. It’s not until she discovers what has befallen Rain that her Tairen bursts free. And what happens next is astonishing. More than I could have imagined. More than I could ever put into words, so I won’t try. It’s the author who does it to perfection. Ms. Wilson’s superb job with the bonding completion and the resulting events, one of my fervent hopes that comes true, is entrancing and spellbinding. Ellie is beautiful indeed.

I knew there would be times during my reading that tears would threaten. What amazed me is those tears came at points I didn’t expect, nowhere close to those moments I did. The most poignant and surprising came with Annoura, Queen of Celieria, who is a character many have come to dislike somewhat in the last couple of books. I find my heart softening. my sympathizing toward her unexpected but in hindsight not surprising when in such talented author hands. There are other very emotional scenes in the book, some with those characters we’ve come to love and some with new characters who we can’t but love instantly.

Having been on the edge in 2007 of nearly missing this entire series is a moment of disbelief for me now that I’ve read the entire series. I know what I would have been missing, a terrific story with awesome characters in a world worth fighting to the death against evil for, and I’m now glad to have been a part of it. But not having read the words of the talented C.L. Wilson is such a shame for any reader. Trust me on that one.

If I could add another ten, fifty, a hundred, or even more pluses after my review grade for this book, I certainly would. It deserves that and so much more.

Grade: A+

Summary:

A Song of Love won her heart.
A Song of Darkness haunted her soul.
A Song in the Dance would seal her fate.

Seers had long foreseen an extraordinary destiny for Ellysetta Baristani. Already she had won the heart of the Fey King?the magnificent Rain, ever her ally, eternally her love. She had saved the offspring of the magical tairen and fought beside her legendary mate against the armies of Eld.

But the most powerful–and dangerous–Verse of her Song had yet to be sung.

As the final battle draws nigh and evil tightens its grip upon her soul–will Ellysetta secure the world for Light or plunge it into Darkness for all eternity? As she and Rain fight for each other, side by side, will they find a way to complete their truemate bond and defeat the evil High Mage of Eld before it’s too late, or must they make the ultimate sacrifice to save their world?

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series:

Gwen’s review of Archangel’s Kiss (Guild Hunters, Book 2) by Nalini Singh
Paranormal/fantasy romance released by Berkley 2 Feb 10

This is the second book in the Guild Hunters saga and the third story.  (Singh released a standalone novella in the Must Love Hellhounds anthology.) This entry deals with Elena’s new condition, her relationship with the archangel, Raphael, and the politics of his (now her) world.  It’s a ripsnorting story that is passionate and action-packed, and a helluva good tale.

There are spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t read the first book and care about that sort of thing, you don’t want to read further.

If you read the first book, you know that to save Elena’s life Raphael Made her an angel near the end.  In Kiss, Elena begins learning what that means – how to fly, what can still kill her, how to fit into her new society, and what her role is as Raphael’s mate.  This is all pretty fascinating stuff and, like Singh’s Psy-Changeling novels, is an incredibly well thought out world.  You are actually living it with the characters.  Singh is second to none in her complex and believable world building.

Kiss has a very nice pace to it.  You’re never left yawning, wondering when something was going to happen.  We’re given a mystery, some romance and passion, friendships, and loads of very cool action.  We’re carried along the story like a kayaker down a Class 5 rapids.

I just adore Singh’s characters.  Her heroines are terrific – strong, smart, and vulnerable.  I never have an eye-rolling “OMG she’s too stupid to live” moment.   Elena is all woman and all warrior.  She’s still a Guild Hunter at heart and it shows – I love the descriptions of the clothes and weapons she wears in Beijing.

Singh’s heroes are in a class of their own – masculine, alpha, and tender to their loved ones.  they’re always men I sigh over.  In this book, Raphael is enough “other” to be a fascinating character.  I think the first book showcased his personality better than this entry, but we get excellent insight into Elena in Kiss.

The villains in Kiss are suitably villain-like.  There is also some ambiguity in some of the evil.  In Singh’s world, as an angel ages, they develop more powers and the abilities they have become stronger.  Since some of the angel’s are thousands of years old, this leads to interesting ethical questions – how much power is too much, what can be done with power without morality, and how do you control amoral beings so powerful they can destroy whole cities or even planets?  All of this comes up in this book and we’re led to the conclusion that relationships like what is between Elena and Raphael are one of the very few things that can help such powerful beings retain some of their humanity – which is normally a good thing.

If you’re a fan of Singh, or simply of “angel books” you do not want to miss this one.   If you’re not sure about whether you’ll like this series, don’t start with this one.  The first book, Angel’s Blood, will take you by surprise and bring you to love the series as much as I do.  This book just takes the story to the next level.

I can’t wait for the next entry.

Grade: A

Read other reviews and information on this series here.

Summary:

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux wakes from a year-long coma to find herself changed—an angel with wings the colors of midnight and dawn—but her fragile body needs time to heal before she can take flight. Her lover, the stunningly dangerous archangel Raphael, is used to being in control—even when it comes to the woman he considers his own. But Elena has never done well with authority…

They’ve barely begun to understand each other when Raphael receives an invitation to a ball from the archangel Lijuan. To refuse would be a sign of fatal weakness, so Raphael must ready Elena for the flight to Beijing—and to the nightmare that awaits them there. Ancient and without conscience, Lijuan holds a power that lies with the dead. And she has organized the most perfect and most vicious of welcomes for Elena…

Read an excerpt here.

Other books in this series:

Sandy M’s review of Queen of Song and Souls (Tairen Soul, Book 4) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy Romance published by Leisure Books 27 Oct 09

This is one of those books you can’t wait to get your hands on. Anticipation courses through you as you open it up and finally get a taste of the wonderful writing, get reacquainted with old friends, and get caught up in the new joys and tragedies they face. But then when you reach the halfway mark in the story, it becomes one of those books that you don’t want to ever end. You want to slow down in your reading and make it last so much longer than the day you’ve already spent with it, but you simply can’t. Everything about this book hooks your emotions and puts you through the wringer over and over again, leaving you both overjoyed and saddened at the same time and also leaving you wanting more.

Right off the bat in this latest installment in her Tairen Soul series, C.L. Wilson not only puts her fans through the emotional wringer, but she also squeezes their heart until it either has to burst with happiness or break with heartache. And all of that is done with that richness of writing that Ms. Wilson is now known for. That alone is worth picking up the books in this series.

Rain and Ellie are still on their course toward their bond of truemates. Ellie has still yet to complete her bond, thus the madness that is inflicted on the mate who has bonded has begun for Rain, the knowledge of which he’s trying to keep from her as they make their way across the land to gather allies in the Mage war that has already taken too many lives. The scenes in which Rain loses control, full of bloodlust, are terrific but heart-rending scenes.

Ellie has inner turmoil of her own, once she realizes how and why she was born, what others have lost because of her birth, what she must do now to make sure those tragedies and losses finally mean something. She has also yet to fully discover her Tairen Soul. In this book shes comes very, very close, the Tairen just beneath the surface in certain circumstances but her ability to shift and breathe fire is still eluding her.

We once again live through the love, heartache, and pain of Ellie’s parents, Shan and Elfeya, who are being held captive and constantly, horribly, brutally tortured by the High Mage in hopes that brutality will aid in his catpure of Ellie and he will finally complete his diabolical plans. This villain is one sick puppy. What he’ll do, what he’ll go through for power and all that goes with it is beyond believable. What he’s already done to Shan and Elfeya is even beyond that, and you only hope Ms. Wilson will give them a happily ever after at the end of this series after all they’ve borne so far.

The conclusion of Adrial and Talisa’s mistimed truemating is also part of this book. I was looking forward to their story after waiting through King of Sword and Sky where it did not fit and had to be bumped to the QoSaS. I was more than happy to do so because that meant one extra book in the series in the long run. But my heart will never be the same after reading their fate, even though they will be together.

And there is so, so much more in between all of this. This book is jam packed with action, betrayal, and, of course, love and romance. If you have not read this series, you are definitely missing out on some of the best books to come along in a very long time. Pick up Lord of the Fading Lands, and I guarantee you you will be entranced and hooked in no time at all.

We now know there will be a fifth book, Tairen Soul, of the series, which is wonderful news for die-hard fans. Alas, it’s the waiting that kills us first. Then it’s the knowledge that when we read too fast, the end of such a good thing is that much closer.

Grade: A+

Summary:

The first deadly battles of the new Mage Wars have been fought, and victory has been won at a terrible price. As the toll of an unfulfilled matebond and the torment of war begins tips Rain towards madness, Ellysetta knows if she cannot find a way to defeat the darkness growing inside her and complete the truemate bond, Rain will die and she will become the prophesied monster Vadim Maur uses to destroy the Fey and enslave the World.

Read an excerpt. (scroll down and click link)

Other books in this series:

Shannon C.’s review of Bound by Steel (Emissaries of Belthalas, Book 2) by Kirsten Saell
Erotic fantasy romance eBook released by Samhain Publishing 14 Oct 08

I’ve long been a fan of Kirsten Saell, both as a person and as a writer. I love her take on fantasy romance, which is both sexy and believably fantastic. This third book set in the same universe as Crossing Swords and Healer’s Touch is no exception. It’s not as strong an entry in the series as some of her other books, but a weak entry in this series is still better than some other fantasy romance I’ve read.

This book picks up where Crossing Swords ended, with Lianon and Gil living with their servant, the young, skittish Kaela. Kaela’s slowly healing from her brutal rape, and she still sees herself as completely unlovable. Lianon wants to give her all the love she can, but Gil isn’t so sure, being afraid that his wife will love Kaela more than him. But when danger threatens Lianon, Gil and Kaela are drawn closer together.

I really liked what Ms. Saell has to say about gender overall throughout this book. There are lots of characters here with different sexual preferences. There’s Lianon, who still prefers to identify as male to strangers, there’s the more feminine Kaela, there’s straight male Gil and then there is the gay couple that is introduced later in the story. All of these people have complex relationships, and for the most part I really liked seeing them come together.

I thought the romantic dynamic between Gil, Lianon and Kaela was especially well-done. I liked that none of them were entirely sure what they were doing, but made it up as they went along. And though much of Kaela’s healing happens through sex, I liked the definite tenderness between her and her partners.

I also liked where Ms. Saell is taking the plot. I’m not sure there’s much more to happen for Gil and Lianon and Kaela, but the idea of Gil going into politics was an interesting one. Also, I liked that the villain gets exactly what they deserve, simply because it needs to be done, and that Lianon is the one to do it. I also liked that another character, who might have been pegged as a villain in another book was simply portrayed as a misguided man doing what he thought was best.

I do have a few nitpicks, though. Every time Lianon called Kaela “my lamb” or “my *insert other animal name*” I kept getting thrown out of the story, especially since the animal name changed several times. It seemed kind of out of character for Lianon in the first place, and was just a bit cheesy for me. I also question the need for the introduction of a couple of M/M scenes, which didn’t actually seem to serve any actual purpose in the story other than to announce possible sequel-baiting. I also felt the book dragged just a bit, without that sense of tight plotting that I got from the first two books.

Those all being said, this was a good entry in the series and provided some much needed closure for Gil and Lianon and Kaela. I can’t wait for Ms. Saell’s next entry in this series, and if you like well-written fantasy romance, you should give this a go.

Grade: B

Read more reviews for this series by following its tag.

Summary:
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A night of brutality destroyed her innocence…can the love of two people heal her wounded spirit?
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“I’ve been thinking about Kaela…”
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There they are—the words that lead Gil to suspect his wife Lianon is falling in love with Kaela, the beautiful, traumatized young woman they rescued from certain death six months ago. Gil has no idea how to compete with a woman for his wife’s affections, and part of him ceases to care as Kaela begins to work her way under his skin.
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Kaela’s sweet innocence fills a chasm in Lianon’s soul she hadn’t even realized was there. As she gently helps Kaela rebuild her shattered confidence, Lianon begins to believe healing the young woman’s wounded spirit could be the key to wholeness for all three of them. If Gil agrees to follow her lead and help Kaela discover her own feminine power.
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But even as they all succumb to their growing desire, Gil and Lianon are drawn against their will back into the intrigues and vendettas of Belthalas’ elite. With Lianon’s life at stake, Gil must weave a dangerous path between one adversary’s ambition and another’s lust for vengeance.
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Success will save Lianon…but could cost them Kaela.
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Warning: This title includes explicit sex, including f/f, m/m, m/f/f, anal sex; bad language; questionable politics; violence; stringy, overcooked lamb; a dog with a major drool problem; and one seriously well-deserved comeuppance.
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Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

Gwen’s review of The Vampire’s Bride (Atlantis, Book 4) by Gena Showalter
Paranormal fantasy romance released by HQN 1 Mar 09

This is a varied and interesting series.  Its premise is that several paranormal species were created by the gods in their quest to create man.  The ones who were considered failures were sequestered in Atlantis and sunk to the bottom of the sea.  This means nymphs, vampires (really?), centaurs, dragons, etc., are all living, loving, and fighting together in their own little world.  It’s an interesting premise with some “out there” concepts”. 

I have enjoyed these books, but have found them to be consistently “slow starters.” It takes me about 50 or more pages to really get into their groove.  Once I’m there, I really enjoy the story.  But I almost have to be dragged to the altar, so to speak.

This entry is “Survivor-meets-paranormal-romance-story”.  In classic Greek mythos fashion, the gods and goddesses get bored and decide to fu… err… screw around with the denizens of Atlantis by testing them to see which species is the best.  The god/goddess who backs the winner gets Atlantis all to themselves to play with.  A tried and true godlike device (Heracles, Jason, Odysseus, etc.) and always makes for an interesting read.

This book has two or three storylines converging at the end.  Well, two at least, and one for another book, no doubt. There’s our hero and heroine, Layel (king of the vampires) and Delilah (an amazon warrior), plus a large cadre of secondary characters – some add to the plot, some are there simply for color.

I love how utterly ruthless Layel is thru most of the book.  Until he falls in lurve, of course, when he turns into this big puddle of mush.  The same happens to Delilah – merciless until she has to show how she feels, upon which time she turns into a babbling idiot.  This was the only bone I had to pick with the book – the way the lead characters change their stripes completely simply because they fall in lurve with each other (can’t name it “love” when it’s this purple).  I wanted them to love each other, but remain the ruthless, merciless people they were only to other people.  Instead, they soften to everything.

This change in characterizations very nearly ruined the book for me.  It was a very fun read until that point, afterwards becoming a lesson in patience broken up with a few very fun moments that did keep me flipping pages until the end.  Well, an end that was a bit too convenient and easy (literally a deus ex machina ending).  But I read it all.  I wanted to see how Layel and Delilah were going to make it all work in their two worlds but we’re not given that continuing view.

This was a good book, but not great.  I can recommend it to anyone following the series or who is a fan of the author’s writing.

By the by – HQN is re-releasing the first two books in the series in Jan and Feb 2009 with not-so-attractive bottom-lit images of some hunky men (see below). I hope they don’t do that to The Nymph King – I think it has the best cover of ANY book in 2007.

Grade:C+

Summary:

He is Layel, king of the vampires, a master seducer no woman can deny. But since a rogue horde of dragons killed his beloved over two centuries ago, Layel has existed only for vengeance…until he meets Delilah.

Wary of love, the beautiful Amazon wants nothing to do with the tormented vampire. Yet there’s no denying their consuming desire every time he nears her.

Neither trusts the other-nor can they survive alone. For in an impossible game of the gods’ devising, they’ve been trapped on an island, about to face the ultimate challenge: surrender to the passion that will bind them forever…or be doomed to an eternity apart.

Excerpt not available at the time this review was written.

Other books in this series.

Shannon C.’s review of The Flame (Sons of Destiny, Book 7) by Jean Johnson
Fantasy romance released by Berkley Trade/Sensation 2 Dec 08

As I’ve said in my last few reviews of the books in this series, I’ve been a slavish follower of Ms. Johnson ever since I discovered her books. They have a combination of fantasy and romance that’s maybe a bit lighter on the romance than some romance readers prefer, but which is interesting to me nonetheless. This seventh book is no exception, as it brings the seventh of the Nightfall brothers his destined mate and moves the plots begun earlier in the series toward their conclusion in the eighth and final book.

Koranen, the seventh of the brothers stranded on the island of Nightfall, is that rarest of all creatures, the virgin hero. His affinity with fire has a tendency to flair up out of control and he’s left a few burns on tender female flesh to prove it. So he’s got a huge case of sexual frustration going for him. But he’ll finally get a chance to exercise some of that frustration after an agreement brokered by his brother Morganen sends several Aquamancers to Nightfall. Now Kor has to figure out which of them he can touch without burning.

Danau, one of the chosen Aquamancers, is the kind of heroine I love to distraction when she’s written well, which, like all of Johnson’s heroines, she is. Her problem is pretty much the opposite of Kor’s, in that when her passions run high, she gets cold. Let’s just say, her last lover had frostbite in an unpleasant place. Oops. Danau’s culture views this as a failing on her part as a woman, and so she’s determined to figure out the secrets of Nightfall’s famed desalinator, which processes salt water and makes it fresh. She’ll let her fellow Aquamancers play courting games with Kor, because obviously he wouldn’t want someone like her. Sure, she’s attracted to him, but all she can have are frustrating nightly dreams. That combination of prickly exterior concealing a woman who really just needs a hug–or a lot more, come to that–is something I find irresistible. I find that quality in Eve Dallas, and I find it in Danau, and I want more heroines like them.

Unlike Gwen, I really liked the romance. It did take a while, but I thought the reasons were good ones. I mean, Danau is obsessed with her work, and doesn’t send off friendly vibes, while her fellow Aquamancers are all over Kor like white on rice. It’s no wonder he doesn’t see the very, very obvious until he gets smacked upside the head with it. I think that’s a fairly realistic reaction, and provided a conflict that didn’t feel forced or artificial. I also loved that Danau and Kor have to figure out the whole sex thing. It never feels awkward or uncomfortable to me as a reader, but it did feel very true to the characters.

I can’t speak more about the fantasy plot without going into spoilers, but I expect great things from the next book in the series where that plot is concerned. It was also nice to see all the secondary characters, and I devoured this book quickly. It’s not a good book to start if you haven’t been reading the series, but if you’re following it, you definitely want to read it.

Grade: B+

Read other reviews and information about this series by following its tag.

Summary:
Seventh in the hot series from the national bestselling author that Jayne Anne Krentz hails as “fabulously fresh.” Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day–they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. Though no longer trapped in exile, their growing family faces new problems. Now that it’s his turn to look for a bride, Koranen, the seventh-born brother, cursed with a flame that courses beneath his flesh, must find a woman able to endure the literal heat of his passion. Then Danau the Aquamancer arrives, and as everyone knows, fire and water create steam.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

I liked C2′s idea of a Best of 2008 list.  Then Liv got into the action, so thought I’d give it a try too.  (Of course, mine are the best of the bunch.)  I was never one to keep track of my reads, and 2008 was the first time I’ve done that; therefore, this list, though difficult to choose just a few in the long run, was easy for me since I didn’t have to rely on a twelve-month memory.

So here’s my Best of 2008, in no particular order.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas
Contemporary Romance Audiobook released by Brilliance Audio 25 Mar 08

Actually, I drooled over Hardy Cates while listening to him with the audiobook of Blue-Eyed Devil. My first foray (including Sugar Daddy) into Kleypas books and I loved every darned minute of it!

Weddings Can Be Murder by Christie Craig
Contemporary Romance released by Love Spell 27 May 08

I never thought I would fall in love with a hero who’s a sympathy puker.  Don’t wrinkle your nose!  Read the book, it’s hilarious! Christie Craig is making a huge name for herself and her wonderful humor.
Double Enchantment by Kathryne Kennedy
Historical Paranormal Romance released by Love Spell 26 Aug 08

A breath of fresh air with a new take on the English social castes.  Fun, intriguing, and very romantic. And loads of magic along with shapeshifting, both of which give readers a different look at old favorites.

Superb and Sexy by Jill Shalvis
Contemporary Romance released by Brava 1 Jun 08

Really, you can interchange any one of the three Sexy books in here. Just love those Sky High Men! Ms. Shalvis has a way with humor, romance, mystery, and fun.

Killer Charms by Marianne Stillings
Contemporary Romance released by Avon 26 Aug 08

I enjoyed all three books about the Darling family, but it’s the hero of this one that gave it top honors for me in 2008. I’ll definitely be reading more of Ms. Stillings.

King of Sword and Sky (Tairen Soul, Book 3) by C.L. Wilson
Paranormal Fantasy Romance released by Leisure Books 30 Sep 08

With just one more book to go, this series is now my favorite of all time. Ms. Wilson has created a world that is just absolutely fantastic and she’s giving us a love story like no other.

Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh
Release by Berkley 2 Sep 08

I’ve loved every book in this series.  They’re all incredible.  But Dorian has always been my favorite from the very first book and I’d anticipated his story for so long.  Ms. Singh did not disappoint!

Scandalous by Night by Barbara Pierce
Historical Romance released by St. Martin’s Paperbacks 29 Jul 08

Barbara Pierce has become an all-time favorite historical author for me.  This book she gave readers a darker side of her writing and Everod is her best hero yet.

With Every Breath by Lynn Kurland
Time Travel Romance released by Jove 27 May 08

Beautiful writing, sweeping Scottish vistas, love and romance that crosses time boundaries, and characters you’ll love forever. What’s not to love?

The Missing by Shiloh Walker
Contemporary Paranormal Romance released by Berkley Trade 4 Nov 08

As I said in my review of this book, Ms. Walker has outdone herself with this one.  Absolutely mesmerizing.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  You’re missing out, big time.

Honorable mentions:

Ask Adam by Jess Dee
Contemporary Romance released by Samhain 29 Jul 08

Ms. Dee is a first-time author for me and I enjoyed her writing and storytelling immensely.  I have a feeling she’s really going to go places!

The Hot Line by Cathryn Fox
Contemporary Romance released by NAL 4 Mar 08

Another first-time author for me. Had to love the idea of the Hot Line, firefighters just waiting to help a lady out. And those boys know what they’re doing!

Shannon C.’s review of Seduced by Magic (Magical Seduction, Book 1) by Stephanie Julian
Fantasy erotic romance eBook released by Ellora’s Cave 5 Mar 08

When Stephanie Julian e-mailed us requesting that someone review something of hers, I gladly agreed to do so, since her premise looked interesting. Unfortunately, while there were quite a lot of things I liked about the book I read, I’m not sure I can recommend it with the heartiness that Ms. Julian would no doubt prefer. 

Scarletta has reasons to be suspicious of Justin. She thinks he intends to capture fairies and study them scientifically, and she’s determined to kill him before he gets the chance. But when she sneaks into his home, she realizes he’s hot, and random sexoring commences. But there are some people far more dangerous to Scarletta and her people than Justin, so the two end up running from them and Justin learns far more than he bargained for about his own life.

One of the things I really liked about this story was that aside from the random sexoring that Scarletta indulges in, I found her a competent heroine. She knew exactly what she was doing most of the time, and I could believe that she was usually good at her job. She’s not excessively TSTL, which is nicely refreshing. I also loved that Justin was allowed to be something of a geek, because, well, I think that’s hot. I even liked the romance, though I think I would have liked it better if it hadn’t been so rushed.

What I didn’t like very much, and what brings the grade down considerably, was the world-building. There’s something to be said for having the fairies have their own unique names for each other and for humans, as it lends a certain verisimilitude to the story, but it was something I actually grew rather annoyed by. I never did figure all the Italian words out, and every time I encountered one, I was thrown out of the book.

The plot suffers quite a bit, too, as the characters easily circumvent any conflict that is thrown their way. I didn’t feel any tension from the plot, and when Justin has his big reveal of magical powers, I actually rolled my eyes, because of course it turns out he is way more powerful than Scarletta. I mean, he is the man after all.

I did like the hero and heroine, and the secondary characters were interesting enough that I could see some of them carrying their own stories quite well, but I’m not sure this is a series I’m going to follow. There isn’t enough here to let me recommend it particularly highly.

Grade: C-

Summary:
Justin Johannson knows there are mythical creatures living among us. After all, he has been trying to prove their existence for ten years. Research gets a whole lot more interesting when he finds a winged woman in his bed and his sexual fantasies come to life.

Etruscan folletta Scarlata is convinced Justin is in league with an evil businessman bent on capturing her for scientific study, which is so not going to happen. She decides that Justin needs to be taught a lesson to leave her and the rest of the mythical creatures in peace — but before, she might just have a little fun of her own.

The beautiful folletta never expected to fall for a human and Justin is about to discover that true magic really does exist in the world. And in him.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

I’ve been covered over with large quantities of visiting extended family, baking, cleaning, cooking (can you say Christmas Tamales?  I knew you could), and general holiday madness – not to mention trying to find time to meet Sybil to shift some books from her car to my car.  As a result I haven’t had time to write full blown reviews of a few books.  So here’s a quick run down of what I’ve been reading.  I promise I’ll try to get to full reviews of all three books shortly… 

Highland Sinner by Hannah Howell
Historical paranormal romantic suspense released by Zebra 1 Dec 08

Another of those “reformed rake” stories that I love so well.  Also a good murder mystery.  An historical with more paranormal elements than usually present in her books.  Good Hannah Howell, even with all the “dinnae” and “och” to wade thru.  Nice romance and a very excellent heroine.

Grade: B+

The Flame (The Sons of Destiny, Book 7) by Jean Johnson
Fantasy romance released by Berkley Trade/Sensation 2 Dec 08

Good story but so-so romance.  It took too long to start the actual relationship.  This was much more a “fantasy” than a “romance”.  Here’s hoping the 8th and final book in the series, The Mage, gives us more meat on the romantic bones.

Grade: C+

Murder Game (GhostWalkers, Book 7) by Christine Feehan
Contemporary paranormal romantic suspense released by Jove 30 Dec 08

Oh my goodness.  Terrific Ghostwalker novel.  Really hot romance, good heroine, hot alpha hero, hot sensuality (had to look at the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading Lora Leigh), excellent romantic suspense elements, excellent action.  All around good book.  I don’t think you’d even have to read the previous GW books to like it; it stands well on its own. Pacing was excellent and never a dull moment.  Loved it.

Grade: A

Shannon C.’s review of Wings of Change by Bianca D’Arc
Fantasy erotic romance eBook released by Samhain 11 Sep 07

I recently glommed the first four books in Bianca D’Arc’s Dragon Knights series. You can read my thoughts on that set of books here. Originally, I’d started the fifth book during that initial glom, but reader fatigue set in so I didn’t pick it up until later. While it was not as compelling as the original four books in the series, I will definitely keep going.

This entry features Reynar, a dragon who has been wounded in battle. His rider, Kaden, thinks this is his fault, and both he and the dragon are carrying around some heavy guilt. Rey goes to hang out at a tavern where Lucia, former princess turned wandering nomad, is working as a servant. Lucy is drawn to Rey, and then to his rider, as well as his rider’s best friend, Marcus, whose dragon is mated to Rey. But can she give up the life she has lived in order to be with the dragons?

In more cynical moments, I have a tendency to turn up my nose at this sort of book. Lucy is a pretty flagrant Mary Sue. She can hear dragons, she commands powerful magics, and of course she has a tragic past. But then, I do have a soft spot for this sort of fantasy, and I remember that I always wanted to fly on a dragon, and who can fault a girl for wanting two hot men to fall at her feet? So this story was a great comfort read, with all the soppy dramatics and wish fulfillment I could want.

I liked the slightly longer word count of this book as compared to some of the other books I’ve read by Ms. D’Arc. I felt the characters were a bit more fleshed out because of it, and I thought the conflict was interesting and emotional, at least between Kaden, who I adored, and Reynar. Where I thought the book faltered somewhat was the romantic tension between the three protagonists. I felt that their coming together was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and Lucy was mostly being stubborn about the whole thing for no good reason. I do still find menage stories where the two men willingly share one woman hard to swallow most of the time. And this is the rare series I’ve read that convinces me that a M/F/M menage would not only be possible, but fun and exactly what everyone wanted.

I liked the glimpses of past happy couples, and was pleased that their presence only enhanced the action of the story. And the overarching plot about the dangers to the land of Draconia keeps developing in interesting ways that compel me to keep reading.

Overall, I found this story quite satisfying. It’s light and fluffy, but sometimes a bit of brain candy is a good thing.

Grade: B

Summary:

One young woman could be the miracle that heals a dying dragon—and unites a family with her love.

I Dream of Dragons I

Lucia, born a lady in a foreign land, now waits tables for her keep. When she sees Sir Reynor wasting away, she storms the Castle Lair seeking help for the dying dragon. What she finds is a dashing rogue, a mighty dragoness, and a contrite knight who blames himself for his dragon partner’s injury.

Marcus is enchanted by the foreign beauty and intrigued by her mission. Few women will go near dragons and fewer still can communicate with them. Marcus recognizes Lucia for the treasure she is and knows she is meant for him…and for Kaden.

Kaden is wracked with guilt over the injury that has grounded the dragon—possibly forever. He knows Lucia is special, and he wants her. Lucia just might be the missing piece they all need to form a family. But with Reynor unable to fly, how can any of them be happy?

To make this family whole, they need a miracle. And love—the greatest miracle of all.

Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex and ménage a trois.

Read an excerpt.

Shannon C.’s review of The Storm (Sons of Destiny, Book 6) by Jean Johnson
Fantasy romance released by Berkley 1 Sep 08

I’ll be sad to see the last of the Sons of Destiny. I feel like I’ve spent the last year getting to know all of them, and there are only two more books to go. I really do hope Ms. Johnson has other stuff in store for us, because I for one will definitely be on board when she brings it out. That being said, this sixth entry in the series isn’t my favorite, largely for personal, highly subjective reasons. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it, because I did, quite a bit. Read on for my thoughts. 

Rydan is the sixth-born brother in the Sons of Destiny, eight brothers who were exiled to the island of Nightfall in accordance with a prophecy, and who have, with the help of the mates that they end up meeting, begun to form an insipid kingdom. Rydan shuns the day, preferring the nighttime. He has many secrets, and he prefers his solitude, finding his family’s imposition largely annoying. Of course, all of that is about to be disrupted with the arrival of Rora, a woman with secrets of her own, and power that could potentially start a war brewing.

I know that fangirls have been awaiting Rydan’s book for a long time. This is probably where the breakdown between me and most fangirls occurs, because the brooding loner type doesn’t appeal to me at all. I didn’t really understand why Rydan couldn’t explain what his deal was, which I figured out about four books ago, to the rest of his family, who are all genuinely nice people and would have undoubtedly done something to help him. The fact that this wasn’t addressed in a way that worked for me kept Rydan well into petulant adolescent territory most of the time. Rydan, you see, is an empath, a fact that is not spoilery at all since it is revealed fairly early on. He even describes his empathy as feeling as if he’s got an inner beast, which was one of those tropes that was jarring in its completely unnecessary application.

As for Rora, I liked her. She’s not one of Johnson’s best heroines — Serena is still my favorite — but she’s definitely a far cry from the bland and uninteresting heroines I’ve encountered from other authors. I love that she was pretty methodical about finding a way to be with Rydan and to help him. She is fairly powerful in her own right, but she does know her strengths and weaknesses, and was quite useful. The tension between Rora and Rydan was also well-played, and I felt their chemistry, although the one complete sex scene they got at the end went on a tad too long.

The secondary characters are also done well. It’s always nice to revisit the past happy couples in this series, and I was relieved to note that Kelly, the heroine in the first book, didn’t steal the show in every scene she was in. Further, I liked seeing that Morganen, the youngest brother and the matchmaker in the series, is capable of making missteps. It will make his own book much more interesting to read.

I think this is one of the most unique fantasy romance series out there. I love Ms. Johnson’s voice. I love the grand scope of her series, and as I said above, I will be sad when the end of the series comes. I eagerly await the next book, The Flame, which features a virgin hero — always a favorite of mine — and after that, Morganen’s story!

Grade: B

Read other reviews of books in this series by clicking on the Sons of Destiny series tag.

Summary:
Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day-they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. Though no longer trapped in exile, their growing family faces new problems. The sixthborn son must find a way to trust his Destined bride…

First, his most heavily guarded refuge is breached. And now, the worst of all crimes against Rydan of Nightfall: Rora, a pesky, privacy-invading foreigner, likes him and won’t leave him alone! Rydan knows he’s as appealing as a rosebush stripped of its blooms, so why does she persist? Any normal maiden should be seeking less thorny company than his.

But Rora isn’t normal. She alone sees the secret of what torments Rydan. And only she can persuade him to put it right before it destroys him. But Rora has her own secret as well-one of such vast power that other mages have killed in order to possess it. It once drove Rora and her sisters into exile, and, in the wrong hands, its power could annihilate their world. In the right hands, it could change her and Rydan’s fate forever.

read an excerpt

Other books in the series:

Shannon C.’s review of Healer’s Touch by Kirsten Saell
Fantasy erotic romance released by Samhain 19 Aug 08

When I read Crossing Swords, I knew that Kirsten Saell was going to become one of my favorite authors. It also helps that she’s good people, too. And yet, I didn’t pick up this book from my TBR for a while, because I like to savor my favorite authors in small doses. Which is why, despite the fact that Ms. Saell has another book out, I’m only now getting to this one. Read on for my thoughts.

Healer’s Touch is set in the same universe as Crossing Swords. It features Aru and Viera, a healer and whore who played major roles in the first book. Aru, who is this world’s equivalent of a fallen angel, has kept eight centuries of celibacy, clinging to devotion to his former wife. Yet, he finds Viera hard to resist. And it doesn’t help that Viera wants him, and is willing to seduce him at any cost.

Viera is a very different sort of character from Lianon of Crossing Swords. I think this is one of the reasons this one didn’t quite become a keeper for me. I like Viera well enough, and I think it’s awesome that Ms. Saell used a whore as the heroine in her book. But Lianon she wasn’t, and I did have a few moments where I was nearly drawn out of the book because I thought Viera was a little too mercenary. Then again, I suspect she is the sort of character that would manage to charm me out of my misgivings if I met her in real life, and for every mercenary moment, she’d do something that proved what a sweet person with a big heart she was.

Aru is one of those stiff-necked heroes who is all buttoned-up and proper. He is one of those quietly tortured heroes that I like a lot, and he was very definitely a beta, which is my favorite type. I loved that basically, there was no way he was going to win this little contest of wills. That being said, he did have a few martyr tendencies that made me shake my head a couple of times.

As Ms. Saell said in an e-mail to me, this book is essentially one long seduction. I’m not sure I would have believed anyone could actually wring that much of a story out of a prolonged seduction, Ms. Saell does so wonderfully. I loved watching Aru gradually begin to succumb to the many and varied ways Viera used to seduce him. This was one of those books where none of the sex felt gratuitous. And since Viera and Aru were already friends at the start of the story, I believed in their romance.

In addition to Aru and Viera, we get a great secondary romance between one of Aru’s patients and an apothecary. Karal, said apothecary, absolutely stole the show in whatever scenes he was in, and I hope that Ms. Saell does more with him.

I do have Bound by Steel, which is the third book in this series, on my TBR, and I will definitely be revisiting this world again soon. Fans of fantasy romance should pick up this series. The characters are great, the world-building is subtle but well-done, and the plots are interesting!

Grade: B+

Summary:
She’s determined to break his eight centuries of celibacy—at any cost!

Darjhian healer Aru has been in exile for eight hundred years, barred from the Deathless Land and parted from his wife. Now fallen from grace and no longer immortal, he can never return to her.

Yet he cleaves to his marriage vow and holds himself apart from everyone—especially Viera, the former prostitute whose sexual energy provides the power needed for his healing work. She presents a temptation he must constantly hold at bay if he’s to keep to his vow.

Viera isn’t interested in fighting temptation. She wants Aru. He wants her. What could be simpler? After three frustrating months working with him, her need for him has reached the breaking point. He claims he can never touch a woman again, but Viera isn’t the type to take no for an answer.

Over four glorious nights, she shows Aru everything he’s denied himself for eight centuries. But a shadow hangs over their passion. Aru is keeping secrets about the nature of his mortality. And now he faces a terrible choice…

Break Viera’s heart, or risk destroying her with the knowledge of what he truly is.

Warning: This title contains: graphic sex, including anal sex, f/f and m/f/f; bad language; inappropriate use of a kitchen work surface; flagrant tickling of ivory; and a wagon-load of good, old-fashioned voyeurism.

Read an excerpt.

Gwen’s review of The Master (The Sons of Destiny, Book 3) by Jean Johnson
Fantasy romance released by Berkley Trade 4 Sep 07

It should be no surprise that I like a little fantasy with my romance.  I know it doesn’t come as a surprise that a book titled “The Master” was something I liked.  What is surprising me is how compelling I’m finding this series.  It’s very fun fantasy romance with lots of interesting characters and a unique world where paranormal is normal and normal is not. 

So far I’ve only read The Master and The Storm.  I have The Cat and, I think, The Sword in my TBR pile and I’ll be happy to read them one of these days.  All of the books so far read fine on their own – I wasn’t too at sea when I first read The Storm (the first I’ve read).

The Master begins with our hero being held captive and eventually sold in a slave market to our heroine.  She wants to use him for some tantric magic to correct a long ago cast spell that went awry.  Through practicing for the “tantric” part of the spell, our hero and heroine fall in lust and then love.  It’s a nice romance and both characters grow thru it and become more mature people as a result.

I enjoyed this book, though I wasn’t in raptures over it.  Johnson has crafted an interesting world filled with interesting twists and fascinating details.  However, this book lacks some of the tension and drama I see evident in The Storm and I think it lacks “content” as a result.  It is a lighter version of the story/world.

As with The Storm, this book has a large cast of interesting secondary characters.  Included are the other brothers, their mates (so far), and various other peoples.  All secondary roles are there to promote the main relationship, so there’s no distractions from the key reason we’re here – the romance between the hero and heroine.

I did NOT like how stupid the heroine remained about the key misunderstanding in the book.  One of my pet peeves is the “Big Misunderstanding” plot device authors use.  I find it very frustrating when characters don’t just talk (one of my personal pet peeves, for that matter).

I recommend this book for fans of the series and Johnson’s writing.

Grade: B-

Summary:

Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day-they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. To avoid tempting their destiny, the brothers are exiled to the Isle of Nightfall, where women are forbidden. But when the abducted third-born brother is taken by a powerful and beautiful mage, he wonders if she is his own Prophesied Disaster, his foretold wife-to-be

Kidnapped from the Isle of Nightfall, taken captive by slavers, Dominor is sold to a lovely mage, who promises freedom. But Lady Serina has plans for him; she needs another powerful mage to re-enact a mating ritual, to help reverse a Tantric spell cast centuries ago. Agreeing to help her, Dominor doesn’t suspect the secret she holds back from him: there is more to this magical mating than the Arithmancer has revealed.

Once the ritual is complete, he will be returned to Nightfall. But when that secret finally shatters, baring the truth behind the misunderstandings now separating them, Dominor is determined to retake possession of the woman who is his Destiny.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

Gwen’s review of King of Sword and Sky (Tairen Soul Series, Book 3) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy (romance) released by Leisure Books 30 Sep 08

Well, damn.  You know that feeling when you’ve read a book that just blows you completely away, and you don’t want to read another one for a little while so you don’t ruin the buzz?  Well I had that feeling for about a week after I read this book.  I. Was. THAT. Blown. Away. 

I don’t gush often.  Very few books (or movies or anything really) strike me as worthy of a gush.  But let me gush for a little bit on this book.  The first two books were good, but this one was GREAT. With the first two, I bemoaned the lack of forward momentum.  It seemed like we were reading about every little detail of these peoples’ lives for a LOT of pages (they’ve all been long books).  This book definitely didn’t lack forward momentum.  In fact, I couldn’t put it down for almost two days straight.  The tot wanted to know what I was reading that had me breathless, I was that engrossed.

I won’t give any spoilers except to say that in the beginning of the book we are still waiting for Ellysetta to complete the soul bond with Rain.  This bond will make Rain and Elly strong and nearly impervious to the dark influences in both their lives.  This inability to complete the bond lent a heartbreaking note to this couple’s relationship.  It kept me grounded in what little bit of reality was possible with a series set in an alternate world full of magic and supernatural beings.

Elly matures and evolves in King.  Her character begins as the rather small, former mortal and, by the end of the book, becomes so much more.  I am sincerely in awe of how she grows thru the book.  I can’t wait to see what she does in the fourth entry.  It should just blow our socks off.

There are many twists and turns in King.  I never quite knew how sub-arcs were going to turn out.  I love it when an author is able to surprise me.  I love it even more when I want to read ahead but I don’t dare because I might miss something.  My eyes were literally glued to the page, one after another, consuming this book in large chunks.

If you aren’t following this series, I don’t recommend starting with this one.  The story is involved, full of detail past and present, and because it’s so much fun to read, why would you NOT read the earlier books.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy – it’s a terrific fantasy novel, even without the romantic elements, which are present but in a perfectly delightful way, are not the key driver of the book.  It’s a fresh, new twist of these genres.  I loved it.

Grade: A+

Read all the TGTBTU reviews and info of this series by following the Tairen Soul Series tag.

Summary:

Returning to the Fading Lands with his Celierian truemate, Rain discovers a dissension among the most powerful members of his own council. As the Eld plot their next deadly strike, Ellysetta struggles to master her powerful magic and discover how to save the tairen, while Rain confronts open challenge to his rule and prepares to lead the Fey army to war.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

Gwen’s review of Destiny Kills (Myth and Magic, Book 1) by Keri Arthur
Contemporary fantasy romance released by Dell Spectra 28 Oct 08

I’ve wrestled with this review several days now, and I’m no closer to knowing how to approach it.  Sometimes there are books that, no matter how long you think about it, your thoughts are no closer than when you finished reading.  This can happen with good and bad books.  Sometimes you just have to dive in and get the words down on paper and hope it all makes sense to someone.  So here goes… 

Destiny Kills is the start of a new series for Arthur.  So far it’s based on dragon-shifters.  Based on what I read, I presume other mythical figures will make an entrance in later books.  Anyone familiar with Arthur knows she writes the Riley Jenson urban fantasy novels – a series with vampires and shapeshifters that is chockablock with action, romance, sex, and angst, all told from the heroine’s first person perspective.  I love the Jenson novels like a fat kid loves cake (TM Karen Scott).

Destiny Kills is also told from the heroine’s first person POV, and thus begins my bone-picking with this book.  Perhaps my love of the Jenson novels has colored my opinion of this one.  What seems so fresh with Riley’s POV seems stale in Destiny Kills.  I’m familiar with Riley’s world, so the first person POV isn’t horribly limiting.  With this new world, however, I think the heroine’s POV has restricted the view of the world and its inhabitants too much.  I very much wanted to know what was in the hero’s head and know what flying was like for him.  I also very much wanted to get into the villain’s head.  I wanted to know more about the heroine’s parents’ thoughts.  None of this is really possible with the POV and that makes me sad and unable to properly connect with the story.

Because of the lack of connection, I didn’t identify or sympathize with anyone or with the predicament.  I can’t really tell you why that was, except I didn’t – it all seemed so impassionate.  I didn’t care that the hero and heroine finally had sex (although their first time WAS OFF THE PAPER and not described – irritated me).  I didn’t care that they had been held hostage for 10-years and experimented on.  I think it was the first person POV, but it may also be because this story just didn’t draw me in.

I can recommend this book to fans of the author or if you’re a dyed in the wool dragon-shifter reader.  I don’t recommend it to anyone trying to get a feel for Arthur’s writing for the first time – you definitely need to read the Riley Jenson novels for that.  This was a readable, but average story with some slightly irritating elements.

Grade: C

Summary:

DESIRE CALLS. DANGER LURKS.

BUT…

DESTINY KILLS

When Destiny McCree wakes up beside a dead man on an Oregon beach, she knows only this: she has to keep moving, keep searching, and keep one step ahead of the forces that have been pursuing her from the heart of Scotland to this isolated spot. Why? The death of her lover has left her alone, with little memory of her past. A glimmering serpent-shaped ring is the one clue she has-and a bargaining chip in a most dangerous game…

Enter Trae Wilson, a master thief with a sexy, knowing grin and a secret agenda of his own. Destiny and Trae both have powers far beyond the human-and both are running for their lives. Together they’re riding a tide of danger, magic and lust…but with killers stalking their every move, they must use any means necessary, even each other, to survive-until the shocking secret of one woman’s destiny finally unravels…

Read an excerpt. (The excerpt was not posted as of the review date, but should be live at this site by release date.)  It’s live.

Sandy M’s review of King of Sword and Sky (Tairen Soul Series, Book 3) by C.L. Wilson
Fantasy Paranormal Romance published by Leisure 30 Sep 08

If you have not read this series of C.W. Wilson’s, you are missing out on some so spectacularly special.  Ms. Wilson weaves her brand of magic in the pages of this beautiful fantasy world of the Fading Lands where the Fey and the tairen live. Her characters of full of honor and dignity, heart and passion, and, of course, love.  The villainy she etches into her evil characters only causes you to root for the good of her hero and heroine to triumph.  And her imagination is simply amazing.  You just have to read this series!

In this book we finally get to the Fading Lands.  We’ve been reading about them and waiting for them since the first book.  But even before that we have to endure the Faering Mist with Rain, King of the Fey and the Tairen Soul, and Ellysetta, his truemate, daughter of a wood carver.  The Mist is a barrier around the Fading Lands to keep all within its borders safe from evil, especially the Mages of Eld, who are on the rise once again after being vanquished in the Mage Wars a thousand years ago.

Their entourage makes it through the Mist relatively unscathed — it’s Rain and Ellie who are delayed by their past that the Mist throws in their path, doubling their fears and vulnerabilities.  Coming together, however, they fight their way through so that Rain can ready his men for the war that is sure to break out with Eld and Ellie can begin her search for answers to save the tairen.

From the mists of Ms. Wilson’s imagination, the tairen are large, very large, cats with wings and are able to breath fire.  My favorite scenes are Ellysetta flying through the air toward the sky on Rain’s back.  They’re breathtaking.  Ellie arrives too late to save the most recent truemated pair and one of their kitlings from the mysterious deaths that have plagued the tairen for so long.  It become’s Ellie mission to save the remaining kitlings, which forces her to do something she never thought she would do, even knowing Rain would be disappointed in her.

In the meantime, Rain must make opitmal use of his men in order to defeat the High Mage who is out for more and more power, and he knows that’s related in some way to his truemate.  This Mage is one mean and ugly villain.  He uses torture to keep a truemated pair in captivity to do his bidding, healing him when he comes face to face with Ellie’s magic or he uses too much of his own for his twisted purposes.

Rain even goes so far as to train his men in the ways of forbidden magic, asking Gaelen, a newly restored Fey who was banished from the Fading Lands when he turned to forbidden magic.  He also has to fight the Massan, the council of the Fading Lands, those who governed when Rain spent years in his madness following the death of his heart mate during the wars.  Danger and evil come at him and Ellie from every corner and it’s only together they will find all the answers they need to save their world and those they love.

You will be amazed and mesmerized by Ms. Wilson’s writing.  You will be under her characters’ spell completely after just a few pages.  You will not be able to put these books down once you start reading.  And you must start reading at the beginning.  Don’t think you will be able to figure out what’s going by picking up this third book.  Pick them all up at once and start at the beginning.  You will not be disappointed.  Even the secondary characters are so well written that several of them will become your favorites before you know it.

Even if you’re aren’t a fantasy reader, do not let that stop you.  I made that mistake myself early on, and once I finally began reading Lord of the Fading Lands, I was hooked in no time at all.  And you will be too.  I can pretty much guarantee it.

Grade: A+

Read more reviews of this and other books by clicking on the Tairen Soul Series tag.

Summary:

Returning to the Fading Lands with his Celierian truemate, Rain discovers a dissension among the most powerful members of his own council. As the Eld plot their next deadly strike, Ellysetta struggles to master her powerful magic and discover how to save the tairen, while Rain confronts open challenge to his rule and prepares to lead the Fey army to war.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series:

Shannon C.’s review of Crossing Swords (Emissaries of Belthalas Series) by Kirsten Saell
Erotic fantasy romance eBook released by Samhain Publishing 11 Mar 08

I’m still enough of a baby reviewer that I can count on both hands the number of authors I actually would call friends. So I’m still anxious about reviewing them when their books come out. I haven’t known Kirsten Saell very long, but our emails have been wide-ranging and sometimes epic-length. I was fairly sure I’d love her debut, Crossing Swords, but I put off reading it because I didn’t want to hate it. I’m glad to say that I did, in fact, love the book, so I needn’t have worried. 

Saell’s debut is set in a fantasy world that, while it’s not developed just yet, seems like an interesting place. Lianon, our heroine, approaches the hero, Gil, an assassin, dressed in drag and takes a contract out on… herself. They fight a duel, whereupon Gil realizes that this comely young man is, in fact, a woman. Needless to say, this irritates him. But he’s even more dismayed to learn that Lianon still has powerful enemies that want her dead.

Why did I love this story? One word: Lianon. I love a strong, kick-ass yet vulnerable woman, and Lianon is all that. Her angst felt very real, and at no time did I want to tell her to get a Kleenex and get over it the way I usually do. Plus, I loved that Gil recognized Lianon’s strengths. This isn’t one of those stories where the butch girl gets a makeover, becomes feminine, and suddenly her life is easier and everyone wuvs her. Gil even mentions that, the one time he sees Lianon in a dress, she is aluring but a bit diminished. I really liked that.

As for Gil, he’s cool in his own right. Like Lianon, he has his baggage, but he complements her well. I especially appreciated that Gil has friends and interests outside of Lianon, which made him seem to be a well-rounded character. And the chemistry between himself and Lianon? Definitely hot.

the secondary characters, particularly Viera, a local whore, and Aru, the local healer, are well-drawn and not simply thrown in because Yay sequel-bait! Aru in particular should be an interesting break from cliches because he’s not portrayed as an especially masculine man. And Viera seems to revel in being a whore, which I also find refreshing.

Ms. Saell manages to subvert a lot of the romance tropes that irritate me. Lianon is definitely not a placeholder to show how great a guy Gil is. Gil is alpha without being an asshole or totally emasculated. And the F/F interactions, (which I personally think there need to be more of in romance) weren’t simply foreplay so that Lianon would be ready for a real sexual experience.

In short, Ms. Saell writes exactly the kind of book there needs to be more of, one that is both empowering and sexy. And she accomplishes more in a short novel than others can manage in an epic doorstopper. Yes, I’ll be following this series, and I recommend it to anyone who likes well-written fantasy romance or romance with subversive elements.

Grade: A

Summary:
One duel. Easy money. Then Gil fell for his opponent.

A straight duel to the death. A professional opponent who’s paying him to win. This was going to be the easiest money Gil had ever earned. Except he never counted on his opponent being a woman. And he never counted on falling for her.

After avenging the brutal murder of her lover, all Lianon wants is to die a clean death. Too bad the man she hired doesn’t do women, and he’s furious over her deception. Not only does he renege on their contract, he has the gall to lock her up in his apartment—naked, no less!—to punish her for her ruse.

If she could just get her mind out of the gutter, she’d cut him a new smile. But ever since he saw through her boy’s clothes, all she can think about is getting him naked, too.

But just when she’s found something to live for, the father of her lover’s murderer surfaces. He wants Lianon to die screaming—and he’s all too happy to take Gil down with her.

Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex, including f/f; bad language; violence; bland, rubbery veal; a little sexual healing; and one killer blowjob.

Read an excerpt.

Lawson’s review of Tempted by the Night (The Marlowe Series, Book 2) by Elizabeth Boyle
Historical fantasy romance released by Avon 26 Aug 08

Elizabeth Boyle is embarking on a different sort of paranormal path with her Marlowe Family series. A mysterious ring gives its wearer a wish and so far the outcome of those wishes is rather interesting. In His Mistress by Morning, the first book, there’s an alternate reality where the heroine, Charlotte Wilmont, is not a chaste debutante, but a much sought after courtesan. In Tempted, Charlotte’s friend Hermione Marlowe comes across the magic ring and makes her wish. Of course panic ensues, and things are not always what they seem.

From Mistress, we see that Hermione is desperately in love with the Earl of Rockhurst. She dresses in obscure colors to gain his attention, practices the perfect pose to gain his attention, and goes to parties she thinks he will be at to gain his attention. She knows though that Rockhurst doesn’t really notice that she even exists, except as the sister of his good friend Sebastian Marlowe, Viscount Trent (hero of Mistress). Hermione discovers a nondescript ring while at the wedding breakfast of her brother and Charlotte, but she doesn’t make her wish until she’s in Almack’s.

What Hermione wishes is very interesting, as she wants to trail Rockhurst around so she can prove he’s not the debaucher that everyone believes him to be. Of course her wish has a twist though, that would be bad of me to spoil the details of the wish. Hermione, due to her wish, follows Rockhurst out of Almack’s and discovers the true nature of his nightly activities on the town, which his dangerous reputation does a pretty good job of hiding.

Rockhurst is rather smart as well as perceptive and discovers he’s being followed, but doesn’t know who the person is. Thus by day he tries to discover the identity of the girl that trailed him and at night he uses her help in his nocturnal adventures. The deception can’t last too long and Rockhurst is determined to know the woman who could be the one woman in the world that could be a partner as well as lover in his mysterious lifestyle.

Though Hermione is a bit melodramatic at times, she’s generally a likable character. She’s pretty honest with herself about her actions, especially her tendency for being dramatic. Hermione knows who she wants and does her best to go after him, much like Felicity Langly, but Hermione isn’t as mercenary about it. There’s no desperation in her actions, and when she discovers the truth of Rockhursts life, she acts in a way that’s pretty normal. A bit scared at first, on a mission to discover the source of his life and then when she sees the dangers, she does her best to stay away, though because of her wish she keeps getting sucked in.

Rockhurst is a good hero in that he fits his part in the world well. What and who he has to deal with from time to time can be rather fantastical, but then this is a world where wishes come true, so there better be other things out there that go bump in the night. He is alternately fascinated by and frustrated by his “Shadow” as he calls her, for she refuses to tell her his name. And boy does it get steamy between the two. What could be kind of discomfiting, is rather sweet, caring and very hot.

The secondary characters of Quince and Milton, who are trying to get the ring out of the hands of humanity, are kinda cute. Both beings of the otherworld, they have an interesting cat and mouse dynamic in the quest for the return of the ring. Hermione has a very interesting, and flighty family, which in turns helps and hurts her. The Marlowe family, aside from Sebastian, have a reputation among society of being on the odd side. Hermione’s mother and her grandiose ideas show the reason that the majority of the family is not seen in a good light by society.

What doesn’t work so well is the fantastical world, for if it has been around for so long, wouldn’t more people have noticed some of the things going on? It is hinted at that there’s a group that fight the things that go bump in the night, but it wouldn’t be confined to one area of the city and only seen by a small number of people. Also, Hermione’s insecurity about revealing her identity to Rockhurst is understood, it gets a bit annoying as Hermione becomes brave enough to face Rockhurst so many times, but she can’t tell him who she really is.

The next book in the Marlowe series should follow Hermione’s brother Griffin, who so far has been obsessed with time travel, so that should prove interesting. Overall, Tempted is an interesting book, with the twists on Hermione’s wish and what Rockhurst has to deal with in his life, and the Marlowes are showing there’s more to them than their reputation.

Grade: B

A Secret Admirer . . .

They say he’s a shameless rake who cares for nothing but pleasure, a rogue who spends his nights in London’s lustiest locales, gambling and carousing until dawn. But Lady Hermione Marlowe refuses to believe that the handsome gentleman she’s loved from afar for so long could be so wicked. If only she had a way to prove to the ton that Lord Rockhurst is as proper as the rest. If only she knew what he really did under cover of the night . . .

A Clandestine Encounter . . .

Lord Rockhurst knows what they say about him, and he doesn’t care. Let them think his nights are filled with craven debauchery. Only he knows his true purpose, his dangerous goal. But when a mysterious woman falls into his arms—and thereby saves his life—Rockhurst will struggle to save his secret. Who is this creature with such tempting curves and an enticing touch? Rockhurst can only wonder how he can trust her . . . for he knows he cannot resist her.

Read an excerpt (scroll down).

Other Books in this series:

Shannon C‘s Duckies Do Series reviews of Dragon Knights (Books 1-4) by Bianca D’Arc
Erotic fantasy romance eBooks released by Samhain Feb 2006 – Feb 2007

A friend of mine actually recommended this series to me quite some time ago. She says it was at least a year ago, but I think she’s lying. In any event, I loved Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, and figured that the adult version, where everyone’s grown-up and there’s lots of consensual sex would be fun. And these books really are amazingly fun. 

Maiden Flight (Book 1)
Released 14 Feb 06

I didn’t really expect to be so charmed by this start of the series. One of the heroes and the heroine pretty much fall into instant lust, and the rest of the story is basically about integrating Belora, the heroine, into life as the mate of a bonded Dragon Knight. In this opening installment of the series, Ms. D’Arc gives us just enough of the world of her books to explain what’s going on. It never felt infodumpy, and it all made sense. And while this book does spend a lot of time setting up the sequel, I thought it did so in a way that added to, rather than detracted from, the main story at hand. Plus, I was really impressed that Ms. D’Arc could sell me on the kind of triad where the two guys in question aren’t actually interested in each other. All I ask is a little bit of an explanation, even if it is “just call it dragon magic, honey.”

I didn’t entirely buy the romance in this book, because while it was hot, it seemed to have come about through author fiat rather than any true feelings from the characters involved. Normally, this would bother me a lot, but I liked the other aspects to the story, and if the characters weren’t as realized as I’d like, it still didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the story.

Grade: B

Summary:

First in the Dragon Knights series.

War is coming for the knights, dragons, and a damsel who is not quite in distress, but finds her heart’s desire in the strong men of the Border Lair.

A chance meeting with a young male dragon seals the fate of one adventurous female poacher. The dragon’s partner, a ruggedly handsome knight named Gareth, takes one look at the shapely woman and decides to do a little poaching of his own.

Sir Gareth not only seduces her, but falls deeply in love with the girl who is not only unafraid of dragons but also possesses the rare gift to hear their silent speech. He wants her for his mate, but mating with a knight is no simple thing. To accept a knight, a woman must also accept the dragon, the dragon’s mate … and her knight too.

She is at first shocked, then enticed by the lusty life in the Lair. War is in the making and only the knights and dragons have a chance at ending it before it destroys their land and their lives. But there’s nothing a knight enjoys more than a noble quest and winning the heart and trust of a maiden is the noblest quest of all.

Warning, this title contains explicit sex and ménage a trois.

Read an excerpt.

Border Lair (Book 2)
Released 23 May 06

This story picks up directly after where Maiden Flight left off. It features Adora, the mother of the heroine in the first book. Adora is kind of a cheesy name, but if that’s really all I have to complain about, we’re doing pretty good.

In this installment, Adora finds love with Jared, the knight bonded to Kelzy, a dragon she has always thought of as a mother figure. Jared wants Adora. Adora wants Jared. But Jared has been carrying lots of guilt over the loss of his first wife and his young son. It will take the presence of a handsome ambassador from a neighboring kingdom with whom the dragons are at war to convince them both to act on their feelings.

I really loved this book. All three of our human protagonists go through a lot in their own rights. I loved the little dance Adora and Jared did around each other, both wanting and afraid to ask. It made the sexual tension positively sizzle. And the third member of their triad is an awesome hero in his own right, not as scarred emotionally as the other two, but a generally good-hearted person.

In fact, I have to say that Ms. D’Arc writes some amazing beta heroes. In all of the books, someone says that they would rather die than hurt their heroine, and in the case of all these men, I absolutely believe it.

The plot is just as interesting, and the book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, as it is discovered that the twin daughters Adora had taken away from her are still alive.

Grade: A-

Summary:

War has come to the Border Lair, but as enemies become allies — and lovers — hope springs anew for the dragons and their knights.

A young widow, Adora raised her daughter by herself, but her girl is married now. Can Adora find a love of her own in the crowded Border Lair? Dare she even try?

Lord Darian Vordekrais is about to turn traitor, giving up his title, his lands, and his home in order to warn the dragons and knights of his treacherous king’s evil plan. Will his life be forfeit or is there some way he can make a new life in a foreign land?

Sir Jared lost his wife and child to treachery, but he knows Lord Darian and trusts him. Both men admire the lovely Adora, but Jared’s broken heart is frozen in solid ice. Or is it?

As war comes to the border, the knights and dragons of the Border Lair rise to the occasion. New allies rally to their side. Love blossoms and grows even as evil invades the land. The knights and dragons must stand fast against the onslaught, the beautiful woman of royal blood bringing them hope, healing and love.

Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex, ménage a trois.

Read an excerpt.

The Ice Dragon (Book 3)
Released 29 Aug 06

One of the things I love most about these books is that they each lead seamlessly into the next, and are so compulsively readable that I kept going from one book to the next. This is something I almost never do.

Alania, one of Adora’s missing twins, has been a slave of the evil king Salomar in the north. Salomar at one point stole a dragon egg and made Lana tend it, hoping to watch the always fun sport of baby dragon dining on human flesh. Unfortunately for Salomar, Lana finds that she can talk to the dragonet, who calls himself Tor, and the two develop an immediate rapport. Eventually, they escape, and, a couple of years later, end up rescuing a black dragon as it falls from the sky. The black dragon is badly wounded, but Lana uses her innate dragon healing abilities. Of course, the rare black dragon is Roland, whom we learn in the first books in the series is the king of Draconia, and he wants Lana.

It was the dragons that made this book for me. I loved Tor, who is so obviously a precocious child. I imagine if he’d been human he would have irritated me because he is just too cute for words, but he wasn’t and he didn’t. And yet again, we have an absolutely awesome hero in the form of Roland, who is fiercely devoted to Lana and wants the best for her. I totally bought their romance, and loved watching Lana come into her own. Other revelations are made at the end of this book that move the overall story arc further, and the epilogue ends on the right note to segue into the fourth book.

Grade: B+

Summary:

A wild Northern Ice Dragon and the girl who raised him save the life of a fierce, shapeshifting royal black dragon, only to have him save them in return…with his love.

Third book in the Dragon Knights series.

When a royal black dragon falls under enemy fire, only the wild Northern Ice Dragon and his unlikely female rider can save him. Half wild, like the baby Ice Dragon she calls friend, Lana is a rare and powerful dragon healer. She saves the life of the royal black, only to learn this most sacred of dragons is half-man, able to shift from one form to the other at will.

Roland is king of all dragons and humans in his land but he’s far from home, mortally wounded, and his only refuge is the incredible woman who has saved his life and her young wild dragon friend. Lana is the purest form of magic to him, heaven to his senses in both dragon and human form. He knows almost from the first moment that he wants her for his very own.

But a warlord plots in the north, seeking to kill the dragons, who protect the northern border, and overrun Roland’s peaceful kingdom. Lana and her incredibly skilled Ice Dragon friend are the only ray of hope for the knights and fighting dragons of the Northern Lair. Just as Lana is the only love Roland will ever know. He can reunite her with her lost family, but can he win her heart and make her his queen?

Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex explained in graphic terms.

Read an excerpt.

Prince of Spies (Book 4)
Released 6 Feb 07

There was a lot going on in this fourth book. We meet up again with Nico, known in his kingdom as the Prince of Spies, as he lets himself be captured by the evil king of Skithdron. He is intrigued by the poor starving waif of a healer that the king has tied to his bed. It turns out she is Arikia, Adora’s other lost daughter. They make their escape and begin a long journey home.

I loved these two characters. Riki is a pretty damaged woman, and I loved Nico’s devotion to her. Nico is just an awesome hero, and I really could buy that he was a spy. Unfortunately, at one point the plot takes center stage and veers into “Oh, for Pete’s sake” territory as Nico and Riki find themselves embroiled in a mysterious prophecy. But while I was reading, I very much enjoyed the book, so I’ll forgive the author for taking the plot in a direction I didn’t personally like.

Grade: B

Summary:

Prince Nico is a cunning master of stealth, but can he master a maiden’s fragile heart?

Fourth book in the Dragon Knights series, but can be read on its own.

Prince Nico is known as the Prince of Spies for a reason. Not only is he the Spymaster of Draconia, but he’s a cunning shapeshifter able to take the form of a dragon at will. The gift of his royal heritage comes in handy as Spymaster for the king, but it’s a great secret known only to a few.

Riki lives in misery, chained up to serve a mad king’s perverted magic. Forced to use her draining healing skills to keep King Lucan of Skithdron alive, Riki is a shadow of the woman she should be.

Nico knows Riki is the woman he’s been searching for and wastes no time breaking them both out of the enemy palace. Thus starts an adventure that will take them across two countries, through peril and danger, and the discovery of an undeniable love and mutual respect. Will Nico have the courage to let her fly free, trusting she’ll return to him, or will his love smother the fledgling beauty who is breathing free air for the first time in her tragic life?

Warning, this title contains explicit sex explained in graphic terms and scenes of ménage a trois.

Read an excerpt.

There are two other books in this series, but since the first four revolve around related heroines, I’ll be reviewing the next two individually.

Overall Grade: B

Gwen’s review of The Storm (The Sons of Destiny, Book 6) by Jean Johnson
Paranormal fantasy romance released by Berkley Trade 2 Sep 08

What an interesting little world Johnson has created here! This was the first Sons of Destiny book I’ve read. I know. Lash me with a wet noodle, but it was! I have several of the others and I promise to dig them out of my TBR boxes and read them. I hesitated because I didn’t want to be sucked into another large series, with no hope of finding my way out again. I feared for naught, however. The Storm read fine on its own, sans series, so presumably the others will as well. No emotional baggage no horribly tense cliff hangers to overcome in previous/following books. YAY!

The summary below does an admirable job of capturing the major plot points, so I’ll keep this brief and will skip to what I liked and didn’t like about the book. (I’ve always thought of this series as the “series with the headless abdomen covers” – is that bad?)

Johnson’s writing style is very prose-heavy, and dialog-light. There are very few authors I like that can write well in this fashion. Isabel Allende and Lilith Saintcrow are a couple that do it well; there are many who do not. Johnson does a good job with it. We still get the feeling of the plot moving forward, and of a lot of action happening, even without character dialog to push it along. If you like a lot of dialog, don’t let what I’ve said scare you away. I didn’t really notice the lack of it until I was midway thru and realized what was happening.

Johnson has crafted a very complex world for the Sons of Destiny series. It’s very fantasy-heavy, with mages and magic, politics and war, intrigue and love, destiny and prophecy. There’s a very satisfying mix of broad plot strokes, world details, and personal plot-lines. Again, I haven’t read any of the previous SoD books, yet still had little trouble picking up the threads in The Storm. It all meshes nicely into a very readable, romantic fantasy without a lot of info dumping.

I could have wanted a little more steam between the main characters. However, notwithstanding an early groping scene, it was nice to see the H/H’s friendship develop properly before they started boinking each other. As a result, I ended up really liking the hero, Rydan, and heroine, Rora. The secondary characters are also nicely developed and properly used; there was no feeling that a character was extraneous to this book for purposes of future book use. The villain was a little underdeveloped – such so that by the time he made a showing, I didn’t care about his demise or success.

I like this book and recommend it to any fans of fantasy romance or of Johnson’s writing in general. I was able to lose myself in her world for a short while, and that was nice to do while recovering from a head cold.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day-they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. Though no longer trapped in exile, their growing family faces new problems. The sixthborn son must find a way to trust his Destined bride…

First, his most heavily guarded refuge is breached. And now, the worst of all crimes against Rydan of Nightfall: Rora, a pesky, privacy-invading foreigner, likes him and won’t leave him alone! Rydan knows he’s as appealing as a rosebush stripped of its blooms, so why does she persist? Any normal maiden should be seeking less thorny company than his.

But Rora isn’t normal. She alone sees the secret of what torments Rydan. And only she can persuade him to put it right before it destroys him. But Rora has her own secret as well-one of such vast power that other mages have killed in order to possess it. It once drove Rora and her sisters into exile, and, in the wrong hands, its power could annihilate their world. In the right hands, it could change her and Rydan’s fate forever.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series:

Shannon C.’s review of Jackie and the Beanstalk by Jacqueline Meadows
Fantasy erotic romance eBook released by Ellora’s Cave 8 Aug 08

Given that my last experiences with EC books have left me somewhat less than impressed, I’m really glad I can recommend one with enthusiasm. I love fantasy romance, and fairy tales in particular, and I love the premise of the woman from our world ending up in some other fantasy realm. I got all of that in Jackie and the Beanstalk and think it’s well worth a look, despite the corniness of the title.

One morning, Jackie Foster wakes up to find a beanstalk planted in the front yard, and notices her father climbing it. Thinking her dad’s gone completely bugfuck, she climbs up after him, and arrives in a completely different world, where she meets two intriguing men, one a wanted criminal and one a prince of the realm, who both want her.

What I really liked about this book was that it trounced all my expectations and subverted a lot of cliches nicely. I liked that Jackie was a mechanic, a very un-girlie job for most romance heroines. She’s smart and resourceful, and throws her whole heart into everything she does. She doesn’t have any TSTL moments, and she also fits the archetype of a fairy tale hero very well, as she ventures on her quest to find her father.

Her hero, (there is only one, despite the promise of a love triangle implicit in the blurb) is an awesome character. He’s my favorite kind of hero–very sweet and beta–and totally devoted to Jackie from the moment he meets her. I loved watching him completely fall for her, and I loved watching him get pulled through an emotional wringer of his own.

There are some great secondary characters, too. Tom Foster, Jackie’s dad, totally steals the show in whatever scene he’s in. I absolutely loved his crotchety maunderings. Deeandra, a giant sentient butterfly, is also drawn well and is fairly complex, and then there is the sorceress Katreen, who seems to have a hand in everything that goes on in the kingdom.

The plot is fairly complex, and it takes some surprising twists. There are magical creatures, monsters that need to be fought, and sorcery. I was reminded a little bit of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, which are perennial favorites of mine, and I actually didn’t know how Ms. Meadows was going to pull the whole thing off. She does, however, and does so nicely, leaving me very satisfied with the end result.

All that being said, this isn’t quite a keeper book for me. There were times I felt the author was trying to squeeze too much story into one book. I also thought the epilogue dragged a bit. But I’ve definitely found a new author to watch and can’t wait to see what Ms. Meadows gives us next.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Once upon a time in a strange land called Ohio, there grew a beanstalk. Not believing her eyes, or the fact her elderly dad is climbing the behemoth, Jackie, still in jammies, follows. Only to find a giant…holding her dad as if he were a squeaky toy.

Enter stage right — the wanted criminal. Tarn the Bloody is all that is earthy, pagan, uninhibited. He is called thief and murderer, but is so much more than that. And Jackie has a body he can’t keep his hands off. To have Jackie, to love her, he’ll brave any peril. To help Jackie rescue her father, Tarnn will have to confront a giant spider, gargoyles and the most powerful witch his land has ever seen.

Enter stage left — the prince. Calanah is so decadent, so hot, Jackie has to resist the urge to stop, drop and roll. He is masculine beauty, the essence of seduction, and he wants her, fuzzy slippers and all!

In a kingdom where magic rules and mythical creatures roam, not everything is as it seems. The price of love will be a soul living forever in Darkness.

Read an excerpt

Shannon C.‘s review of Fire Princes’ Bride by Rebecca Airies
Fantasy erotic romance released by Ellora’s Cave 25 Jun 08

Fire Princes’ Bride had a blurb that compelled me, and was a bit of an experiment on my part. It’s obviously part of a series, and I know that I need to get over my compulsive urge to read everything exactly in order, so I picked this book up hoping the conflict would be entertaining and hoping I could follow along without having read prior books. It turns out that I could, although ‘entertaining’ is not precisely the word I would use to describe this book.

The quick and dirty premise is as follows: Callan and Tyral (henceforth referred to as Callantyral for the purposes of this review) are fire elementals. They have many enemies, and they end up magically stranded on a random planet. Along comes Karissa, an ice elemental, who joins them. Lots of fun sexoring is had by all, only Callantyral fail to let her in on the fact that she is their bonded mate. She goes home, but must return to their side, because otherwise her very life is in danger. Not that it’s any safer when she joins her men, because a faction in their realm wants her dead as well.

There was a lot going on in this story, some of which seemed overly convoluted. I didn’t ever really understand what an Aliara was, or why men should bond with their mates when they get to a certain level of power. I don’t know if this was explained in previous volumes of the series, but this was one of those rare times when I really wanted someone to go, “As you know, Bob, when X occurs, that causes Y.” That being said, I was definitely curious about the different kinds of elementals and how they worked, much less what it would be like to have a spirit of your chosen element living inside you. I also never really got why the princes had fangs, which was a detail that kept popping up but didn’t really seem to need to be there.

As for the characters, I had trouble with them. For one thing, Callan and Tyral were pretty much indistinguishable, hence my jumbling them together as Callantyral. The author does this a lot herself, having the men react of one accord. This took away from the dynamics of the romance for me, because essentially I felt like Karissa was with the same guy, but in two bodies, for convenience. Therefore, I didn’t feel the chemistry, and this book failed the litmus test by which I judge such things, since I did at one point fall asleep while reading a sex scene. Not only that, but Callantyral were the worst sort of alphas. There was a lot of “Now, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.” And whenever Karissa was angry with them, there was a lot of smiling indulgently and metaphorical patting her on the head and patronizing, “Awww, you’re so cute when you’re mad.” If anyone treated me the way those men treated Karissa, there’d be more than just an icy bath in the works for them. There would be two hot alpha men currently… well… not getting any. But that’s just me.

This book pretty much didn’t work for me. I suspect that readers who like M/F/M romances will find this appealing, but there’s no way I can wrap my head around making it plausible, particularly when the men are brothers. There’s enough here that could be interesting, but I can’t recommend a book where the heroes are two halves of the same uber-asshole jerk and the fantasy world-building is too complex for the story it tries to tell.

Grade: D

Summary:
One thing is universal in all the Elemental Realms — women are told when to seek a mate. Because of the power she holds, Karissa knows she will have to embark on that journey far earlier than most women in the Ice Court. But she does not expect to find her betrothed — especially not before her search has even begun. And she certainly does not expect to have two mates — let alone for those mates to be the Princes of the Fire Court.

Twin brothers Tyral and Callan know Karissa is their mate as soon as they see her. They greet her with a carefree playfulness, wanting to give her time, but things quickly heat up between them. The Princes’ biggest challenge, however, proves not to be their opposing Elemental Spirits, but convincing Karissa to submit to their rules.

As Fire and Ice clash in the bedroom, an enemy moves in, plotting to destroy the Fire Princes’ future with their new bride.

Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of The Ballad of Jimothy Redwing by Maia Strong
Fantasy gay erotic romance ebook released by Samhain Publishing 10 Jun 08

There are two things that are guaranteed to make me swoon with delight. One is fantasy. The other is a musician hero. This story features both, which made me exceedingly happy. While I did have my fair share of nits to pick, I thought that the world Maia Strong created was interesting and I would visit it again.

Jimothy Redwing, the title character, is a wandering minstrel. On his way to the city of Couvin, where he needs to deliver some important mail, he meets up with Ricky, and the two of them spend a wonderful night full of great sex together. Upon his arrival into the city, Jimothy realizes that his new lover is not what he seems, and he finds himself drawn into various political conspiracies.

I really liked both Jimothy and Ricky. They were likeable young men, and neither of them fit into any specific role. They were both really nice beta guys, and they were cute together. The actual sexoring didn’t entirely work for me, but the romance itself was very sweet.

Aside from our leads, Ms. Strong introduces us to a variety of interesting characters, all of whom were drawn very well, despite the fact that they were sort of peripheral to the main romance. I got the sense that Maeve and Japheth, the owners of an inn where Jimothy stays, had lives outside of what was happening with Jimothy and Ricky. I was also relieved to see that there wasn’t any sequel-baiting going on.

The non-romance plot takes up far more of the story than does the actual romance, but I was fascinated with it. There was a bit of a mystery which I liked, and in the process of solving that mystery, we learn a great deal about Ms. Strong’s world.

Not everything worked quite so well for me, but most of my nits are pretty subjective. I didn’t find much of Jimothy’s poetry especially compelling, for example, and sometimes the way the characters talked didn’t quite seem real. I don’t expect high-falutin’ language in my fantasy, but I felt a bit like I was reading Americans talking in bad British accents while at a ren fair. And some of the offhand comments during and after sex scenes bothered me. I really didn’t need to know, for example, that one character left a three foot rope of ejaculate on the sheets. I mean, ewww. Did we have to be *that* specific? Also, I wasn’t satisfied with the ending. I imagine that Ms. Strong has left herself some room for writing a sequel with more adventures of Jimothy and Ricky, but I’d have liked a less tenuous HEA at the end of this book.

Those things might not bother other people, and though they did detract from my own enjoyment of the story, I still think fans of m/m romance or fantasy romance might enjoy this. I know I’ll definitely be interested in seeing what else Ms. Strong can do.

Grade: B-

Summary:
New lover. New city. New dangers.

Wand’ring Minstrel Jimothy Redwing is used to life on the road, living by the words and music that are his stock in trade. While he’s comfortable finding his way alone, he’s always amenable to a friendly stranger who knows the lay of the land. Ricky Lennox is smart, funny, handsome, and very amenable.

With a place to stay, a sexy new lover, and some local contacts, Jimothy looks forward to delivering the letters in his care—including a message for the local ruler—and earning a little money with his music before moving on.

Ricky’s declaration he’s interested in more than just a one-night tryst starts Jimothy thinking about settling into a life of perfect harmony. But things hit a sour note when he learns his lover’s true identity—and exactly what’s in the epistle to Kanbec’s ruler.

Jimothy’s journey turns out to be far more complicated than he could have dreamed, and as dangerous as any epic ballad. For himself—and for Ricky.

Warning: This book contains a sexy musician, hot nekkid manlove, violence, and nuns dressed in blue.

You can read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of The Cat: Sons of Destiny, Book 5 by Jean Johnson
Fantasy/paranormal romance released by Berkley 3 Jun 08

As I’ve stated numerous times, I love the Sons of Destiny books. The family dynamic is a lot of fun, the world building just keeps getting better and better, and there’s always a new twist on the romances presented that keep them from becoming too trite.

The premise of these books is that eight brothers are sent to Nightfall Island because of a prophecy foretelling some kind of disaster. Trevan is the fifth of the eight brothers, the reputed ladies man. Living without a woman for the past three and a half years has left him horny and frustrated, and illusions just don’t really cut it for him. He’s all too eager for his verse in the prophecy that exiled the brothers to come true, because then he can get laid.

Enter Amara and Arora. They have their own issues, namely that Arora is pretty much every mage’s wet dream, since she has access to a lot of power. Amara, on the other hand, is a natural shapeshifter, whose job it is to protect her twin. She isn’t always happy about this, and all their fleeing has resulted in her becoming cranky, resentful and paranoid. Naturally, they end up on Nightfall, and naturally, Trevan immediately notices and begins courting the prickly Amara.

While Amara is probably my least favorite heroine to date in this series, just because she’s such a shrew, I really liked her and I couldn’t fault her for being paranoid and resentful. I also thought it made her human to hold on to her resentments as long as she did without apologizing, because it’s something that I think we all do, and honestly, her paranoia and prickliness felt justified. I also liked that she made Trevan work to win her, which is a really nice thing considering that he’s pretty much set on fulfilling his part of the prophecy. Oh, and she calls Kelly on some of her bitchiness. It was *really* nice to see Kelly have some human moments as a result, because my major complaint about her lately is that she’s been sooo perfect and knowledgeable about everything.

As for Trevan, I liked him. He’s one of my favorites out of the brothers, and I liked the progress of his romance, as I said. I definitely felt the chemistry between himself and Amara, and I didn’t realize that makeout scenes could be so hot. I think where I had quibbles was that the actual consumation scene went on just a smidge too long for me, and that was right near the end. But I definitely felt the chemistry and the romance, and I believed in their HEA.

The rest of the characters were fun to visit, although I can’t help but think that the AAR reviewer got it right when she said that sometimes the writing feels sitcom-ish. I definitely got that vibe in places, but it’s something that’s always been present, so I didn’t mind. I also liked the touches of humor, and I have to say that the random gay sailor who makes a minor appearance for about five minutes near the end of the book totally stole the show for me. I wanted to know more about him, and I think if an author can get me wondering about bit characters like that, she’s doing something right.

I still could have wished for a bit less in terms of the building the kingdom from the ground up aspect of the books, because some of those digressions drew the story out unnecessarily. But the world building does keep improving from book to book, and I feel that by the end, I really will understand the whole of the world Ms. Johnson has created.

If you’re just starting out with the sons of Destiny books, I think you could pick this one up without being too lost, but I also highly recommend starting the series in order with The Sword. Though this isn’t my favorite entry in the series, I’m still looking forward to seeing what the next three books bring.

Grade: B

Summary:

New in the national bestselling Sons of Destiny series, hailed by Jayne Ann Krentz as “wildly entertaining.”

Amara is wary of mages––they chased her out of her homeland. Yet there is something about the mage Trevan of Nightfall that Amara can’t resist. But can he be trusted with her most fiercely guarded secret? Courting such a pretty yet prickly outlander won’t be easy, but Trevan is determined to try. She may be fierce, proud, and from a different culture, but after all, he is the Cat, and none but the most fascinating and challenging of women could satisfy him…

Read an excerpt.

You can read my thoughts on other books in this series by clicking on the Sons of Destiny Series tag.

Other books in this series:

Shannon C.’s review of Ceremony of Seduction (Seduction series, Book 1) by Cassie Ryan
Erotic fantasy romance released by Aphrodisia 1 Aug 07

Wow! What a pleasant surprise this book was! I’d been expecting yet another cheesy erotic romance with a lame plot that would lead to much sexoring. I hadn’t been expecting a compelling story full of warmth and emotion, with characters I quickly connected with, and told in such a captivating way. Yet, that’s exactly what I got, and I now have a new author to look out for. I really appreciated the tip from Karen Scott about this book.

Alyssa has always felt she didn’t fit in. Her parents and friends are all thin, blonde and perfect. She is curvy, dark-haired and doesn’t think she’s very smart. Her only solace comes every evening when an erotic stranger enters her dreams and brings her pleasure she can’t imagine. Only when she meets the stranger, a man called Stone, in the flesh, is her birthright as the first princess of Klatch revealed, and she’s set on a quest to heal a dying planet. Along the way, she discovers family, friendship and love, and there’s lots of scorching sex.

There’s a strong girl power theme running through this novel that I found extremely refreshing. I loved that this was Alyssa’s story, and was all about her struggles to come to a place of self-acceptance. She always has Stone’s love, she just has to become comfortable enough in her own skin that she can return it as an equal.

Stone is a great hero, too. There’s not really a strong conflict between them, but there’s enough going on that I never felt bored. I loved that he wanted her from the beginning and was patient with her without being scarily alpha and possessive. I also thought that the two of them had amazing chemistry together. None of the sex scenes felt gratuitous, and they all fed the plot.

The other characters were interesting, too. The author indulges in a bit of sequel-baiting, but I forgave her because she’s definitely got a plan for her series beyond, “And now we should tell Cousin Bob’s story and give him a HEA.” The men who will be heroes in the next books were important to the plot and not just put there to provide extra eye candy.

I also liked that this is one of the few erotic romances I’ve read where there was F/F interaction which was handled in a way that didn’t feel exploitive and belittling. The scenes between Alyssa and Sasha, her maid/companion, were full of chemistry of their own, and I never got the feeling that Sasha was just a substitute for Stone when he couldn’t be there. Sasha gets a nice romance at the end, too, which I appreciated.

The other thing I should mention is something that sold me on this book. Stone explains to Alyssa early on that she was kidnapped from her family home by another tribe of people known as the Cunts. Cunts are apparently all skinny and blonde and shallow, and they even have their own queen. When I read all of that, I laughed. That bit seems like pure total cheesy wish-fulfillment, but it also feels deliberate, and every time I saw mention of the cunts, I had to giggle.

My only real quibble with this book is that Alyssa was treated so horribly by her best friend, who turns out to be a cunt. I never really bought that Alyssa couldn’t just bitchslap her so-called friend and tell her to take a hike. She put up with a lot of abuse in the beginning that seemed a bit out of character.

But I’m so glad that I’ve finally run across such a fun, empowering erotic romance. I definitely recommend it, and am now out to look for anything else Ms. Ryan has published.

Grade: A-

Summary:
When Dreams Of Desire…
Twenty-three-year-old Alyssa Moss has lived her whole life in the shadow of her beautiful family. Voluptuous where they are lean, brunette where they are blonde, Alyssa is convinced she is an ugly duckling who will never become a swan. The only thing that sustains her is a recurring dream in which a seductive stranger named Stone worships and pleasures every inch of her. But maddeningly, Stone always disappears just as Alyssa is on the edge of dizzying ecstasy—with a puzzling promise that one day he will find her. That day has come….

Become Reality…
For years, Stone has searched for the kidnapped first princess of his people—an other-worldly clan whose life-force is sexual energy. Alyssa is that princess, stolen by a rival faction and banished to live on Earth. But now Stone has found her and will return her to her rightful home, one in which she will own the curvaceous body she was born with—and the passionate desire that throbs within it as she learns an endless variety of delicious pleasures and discovers the infinite power she feels when all her cravings are satisfied…

Read an excerpt here.

Other books in the series: