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Though she’s not looking at me, I shake my head. “To kill one of the Star Children is a tremendous act of power. It’s a task ascribed to theluinaralone and requires an expense of magical energy.” I look at her from under my brows. “I . . . was apart from you too long. I have not the energy I need for such an act. I must spend a little time in your presence and recover.” She turns to me slowly, eyes narrowing. “Don’t think anything of it,” I hasten to add. “It’s just thisvelrabond. It doesn’t mean anything.” Who am I trying to reassure? Her or me?

“You need . . . sleep?” she says after a too-long silence.

I nod.

Without a word she rises from the bed and stands with her arms folded tight over her chest. “Go on then,” she says. “Take the bed.”

I glance around the sparce room. “There is nowhere else for you to sit.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

But it does. “I will take the floor. I’m used to sleeping rough. In my current state, I doubt I’ll notice it.”

She looks down her nose at me. “You really are a stubborn brute, aren’t you?”

There’s a bite in her words, and yet, somehow, they bring a smile to my lips.

Without a word I lay down on my side, turn my back to her, and face the wall. I don’t close my eyes right away but listen to the sounds of her pacing back and forth. At one point her footsteps draw near to me, and she whispers softly, “Warlord?”

I don’t answer. But my skin prickles with awareness of her—with memory of two nights ago when her cold hands first touched my back. Some foolish part of me hopes she will kneel now and run her hands along my exposed skin again. What Iwouldn’t give for another chance to experience her flesh against mine!

But she merely returns to her side of the room. I hear the creak of the pallet as she lies down once more. Soon after I close my eyes and let exhaustion claim me.

27

ILSEVEL

I watch Taar through slitted eyes.

He would not fall asleep while I remained standing, so I finally forced myself to lie down and feign sleep so that he would relax. He breathes heavily now, and the lines of his body release some of their tension, though I cannot imagine he’s comfortable on that hard, stone floor.

I wait until I’m quite certain he’s unconscious before I begin to rise. Every shift of my weight makes the rushes in the pallet mattress whisper and crackle like little explosions. I expect my warlord husband to spring awake at any moment; by the time I’m on my feet, my heart is ramming in my throat. But Taar doesn’t stir. Perhaps I underestimated how great a toll our separation of the last few hours took on him. What was discomfort for me was true pain for him. There may be advantages to my human blood after all.

Creeping across the room, I pull back the doorway curtain and cast a last glance over my shoulder at my sleeping husband. Will thevelrawake him with my departure? Quite possibly. I won’t have long before he hunts me down. Whatever I intend to do, I must be quick.

Setting my jaw, I turn and duck out into the dark passage, only to stop short.

Elydark stands before me.

The unicorn is so large, so luminous in that dark space, it would almost be comical were he not so absolutely terrifying. His horn pulses with a low gleam, and while he does not angleit at me, I’m suddenly and painfully aware of just how sharp it is. His eyes, like two fire-limned moons, gaze into mine, far too knowing for comfort.

My throat thickens. I can scarcely draw breath. I stand there, the doorway curtain wafting shut behind me, and stare at that great and terrible being. There’s no running, no hiding, and certainly no lying to a creature like this.

So I whisper: “I can’t let her die.”

Elydark is silent. But I feel again that ripple of song-force which I’ve heard from him once before, when he came to find me, to save Taar from the virulium poison. It vibrates from inside him, not with words but with meaning far deeper than any language I possess. And I think I understand it.

“You care about her,” I say.

He inclines his head slightly, his long forelock falling over one eye. That song-force rumbles a little deeper, until the very stones under our feet seem to vibrate.

“You . . .loveher.”

The word doesn’t feel right somehow. Not large or full enough. Whatever Elydark’s feelings for Nyathri may be, it’s not romantic affection, at least not in the way I’ve always understood it. These beings of spirit and flame, loosely contained in frames of flesh, are too great and old and other to be bound by such meager ideas. But no other word in my tongue comes close. Onlylove.

“Will you . . .” I lick my painfully dry lips only to feel them chap again immediately. “Will you take me to Nyathri?”

He stands there, so big, so silent, so immoveable. I will not get past him if he does not allow it; there’s no point even in trying. Taar rests peacefully inside because he knows his soul-bonded unicorn is on watch.