Sharon Shinn - Reader And Raelynx

Senneth was on her feet.

He felt her presence in his mind first as a gentle glow, the faint gleam of candlelight in a room at dusk. But quickly the fire gained strength, gained brightness, began to consume everything in its vicinity. Soon it was a blaze, then a bonfire, then a roaring inferno of uncontainable rage. From ten feet away, Cammon felt the heat radiating off her body, intense enough to make him perspire. He turned his head just enough to glimpse her from the corner of his eye. Her eyes were closed, her arms were raised above her head. As he watched, her whole figure erupted into fire.

As if he were connected to her by a powdered fuse, Cammon saw a spark race toward him across the grass, and he was enveloped in flame. He was a coruscating wick, a walking conflagration. He cried out, more in wonder than in pain, and lifted his hands to watch himself gesture with fire. His breath rasped in and out of his seared lungs; his skin burned like kindling. Cinders stung his eyes and skittered across his skin. He thrust his hand through the air and sent the blaze straight for Amalie.

She did not burst into fire but she seemed to bloom with light. She was suddenly wrapped in so much radiance that she appeared to be twice her size, and she was too bright to look at. Within that fierce halo, he saw her arms move-he almost thought he heard her speak. She pointed her right hand toward Coralinda Gisseltess, and a white fireball exploded across the valley and incinerated the Lestra where she stood.

Cammon was deafened by the noises that followed.

Surely everyone heard that cannonball crack of thunder. Surely the others should have been knocked off their feet by those percussive repeating booms. Cammon covered his ears and went rolling to the ground, trying to drown out the elemental cacophony of a deity falling to her knees, but no one else seemed to hear a thing. Amalie was beside him, her face worried, her lips moving, but it was as if she whispered, as if she made no noise at all. Ellynor had knelt beside Amalie, and her cool hands tugged at his hot ones, pulling them away from his ears. She said something to Amalie, but he had no idea what. The world was empty, erased of all sound.

Something jerked Amalie’s head around, and he saw her staring out at the field, with her hand pressed against her mouth. He struggled to sit up, for if he could not hear, he could still see. He experienced a moment’s horror at the sight of Coralinda’s black-and-silver soldiers tearing across the valley straight for their small party. But then he became aware of a contingent of their own soldiers sweeping out to meet the enemy, and he realized that reinforcements had arrived while the mystics were battling. There-that was Wen, that was Coeval. A dozen other Riders raced out shoulder to shoulder with Justin to meet the Lumanen soldiers in the middle of the field and plunge into furious combat.

Tayse was not among them.

Scrabbling on his hands and knees, Cammon swung around to locate the other Rider. Tayse was sitting in the grass, Senneth across his lap, rocking her gently against his chest. Cammon felt a spasm of fear so intense he might almost have been facing the Lestra again. He had been burned so clean by magic that he could not even tell if his own talents were still intact. He could not, at this moment, sense Senneth-sense Amalie-sense any of them at all.

It was not possible that Senneth could be dead.

Kirra was on her knees beside Tayse, and she had wrapped both of her hands around one of Senneth’s. Kirra’s face was white and exhausted; her lips moved as if she was praying. Tayse didn’t even look at her. He didn’t glance at the battlefield. All his attention was on the woman in his arms.

Terrified, Cammon grabbed Amalie’s hand. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t hear her if she answered. Is she alive? Is Senneth alive ? he demanded silently.

Amalie put her hand to his cheek and brought all his attention back to her. Her pale skin was flushed; her dark eyes seemed, in a day, to have acquired some impossibly ancient knowledge. She looked unutterably weary, as if she had not slept for days, and peaceful, as if that didn’t matter.

Senneth is unconscious, but alive , she replied, and her voice reached him as clearly as if she had spoken and he could hear. And Coralinda Gisseltess is dead .

He stared up at her, consumed by too many emotions to sort them out-relief, hope, wonder, exhaustion, and bewilderment. I saw them, Amalie-I saw the goddesses sparring, he told her. The Bright Mother and the Pale Mother, using our power to battle each other. But if-but if-if the Lestra fell, is the Pale Mother gone, too? Destroyed on this field before our eyes?

Amalie took his hand and spread it against her heart. Her smile was utterly tranquil. The world changes and the world stays the same , she told him, still in those utterly clear syllables that sounded only in his head. The old moon sets. New moon rises .

SENNETHmissed the immediate aftermath of war.

When she regained consciousness, everything had been settled, everything had been tidied up. Romar Brendyn and her brother Kiernan had accepted the surrender of the rebel army. The Arberharst forces had fled to the various ports where their ships lay waiting, chased halfway across Gillengaria by royal soldiers. Troops had been sent to secure the major cities of Fortunalt, Storian, Gisseltess, and Tilt. The mystic Lara had healed every last wounded soldier-from both armies-then walked the length and breadth of the battlefield, repairing the damaged earth and coaxing shy blades of new grass to poke through the churned and bloodied soil.

It seemed Senneth had slept for almost three days.

It had not exactly been sleeping. It had not been a peaceful, restorative sort of slumber. She had been lost in chaotic darkness, falling through tunnels of emptiness, buffeted by exotic and sourceless winds. And she had been so cold. Shivering and frightened and falling and lost.

But not alone. Always, throughout that whole strange, terrifying journey, she had been conscious of a shadow at her back, a protector at her side. When she cried out, he comforted her. When she shivered, he warmed her body with his own. When her lungs seized up, he put his mouth against hers and breathed.

When she clawed her way back to sentience, he was there. Lying beside her on some bed she did not remember, gazing at her, guarding her sleep.

“Tayse,” she whispered.

The expression on his face-hope, relief, joy, and love-was so raw it was almost painful to see. “Senneth,” he answered. “Are you with me again?”

Strangely, a smile came to her face. She wouldn’t have said she remembered how to smile, hadn’t remembered what a smile was. She lifted a shaky hand and touched his stubbled cheek. “My love, I am always with you,” she said.

He leaned in and kissed her gently on the mouth. “And now I am returned to the world,” he said.

They lay there a moment in silence, his arms around her, her head against his chest, content for the moment just to exist. But she couldn’t escape the consciousness of time passed and important events going forward without her.

And she felt like red and silver and black and opal hell.

After a moment, she stirred in his arms. “Feed me something,” she said. “Bring me water. Tell me what’s happened.”

Carefully he helped her sit up, though the movement made her dizzy. She seemed to be in a sizable tent, maybe Amalie’s; she couldn’t bring herself to care enough to try to identify the furnishings. Tayse held water to her mouth and, sweet gods, nothing had ever tasted so good. After that, he offered her juice, and then broth, but only a little. She was ravenous and hollow with the certainty that no amount of food would fill her up.