Val’Kieran ben Trouja dea Xeannairceoch la Rei’va, the Warrior Prince, was dreaming again. He knew he was dreaming. With that same instinct that had saved his unworthy skin more times than he cared to count over the past four centuries, he knew. And he could not stop it any more than he had been able to stop his enemies from coming at him in swarms over those same endless centuries. He wasn't even sure, in truth, that he wanted it to stop.

She was in his dreams. She was always in his dreams, shining in her fierce beauty. Her long auburn hair blew out before her as she stood her ground, surrounded by his kin, facing him with all the furious anger of the ages burning in her eyes. That righteous fury had her aura shimmering and pulsing in time to the blood that raged in her veins. That anger was as beautiful as it was frightening.

He knew, even in his dreams, that she was the one he had been searching for. Four hundred years of loss, four hundred years of bitter acceptance, and four hundred ungodly years of desire stared out at him from those ocean emerald eyes. He felt those same encompassing emotions. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that those same emotions danced upon his own aura, singing to her even as hers sang to him. Feeding hers, as hers did his.

It was as it was meant to be. He reveled in that thought. In truth, he wanted to wrap it around him and luxuriate in the silky feel of it on his naked skin just as much as he wanted to revel in the feel of her. Skin to skin. As they were meant to be. As they had always been meant to be.

"Elesiayah," he whispered her name, savoring the taste of it upon his tongue. Elesiayah. So right. So perfect. And so, amazingly, his to keep. The joy that welled with that knowledge brought tears to his eyes.

"Where?" she demanded as she always did, her voice no longer the soft caress it normally was, but more a clap of thunder ignoring the desire he knew lapped at her as it did him. She was furious. Not at him, but with him. As was her right. What had been done to her was deserving of every ounce of anger she could muster. Desire could wait a little longer.

Four hundred endless years ago she had been taken from him to only the Gods knew what kind of hell as they tore her soul from her. He had no more found her and she was gone, her thoughts cut off from his as quickly as they had been born. How she- her soul- had escaped, he did not know, but she had. The fierceness of the Fey, the heart of the Riyhna and the essence that was all Elesiayah was screaming for vengeance for herself, for him and for the life that had been torn from her. Even in his sleep, he could feel her anger. His own rose to match hers.

They would pay. He would find her and they would pay. Every last bleeding one of the dirty bastards would fall beneath his sword and her magick in repayment for what they had done to her, to him, and to their people. The darkness was rising but the battle was not lost. She was alive. That much was certain.

He just had to find her.

He knew he was close. He could feel her in his veins. So close and yet, so far. Four hundred years of searching and he was nearly mad with the desire to be near her. Just to be near her would be enough, just to drink in her presence and know that she was real, not a dream but flesh and blood. His rei’na in reality, not just in those dreams that tortured him even as they sustained him.

"I will find you," he promised, reaching out to stroke her cheek as he did in every one of those dichotomous dreams.

That misty dream world began to swirl around him even as his hand rose and he jolted awake, swearing savagely at the realization that he had once again been unable to reach her fully. He knew, just knew, that given a mere second more, he would have been able to touch her, not only in that dream world in which she existed, but in reality where she was still lost to him.

Reality was that world that had once again claimed him before he could touch her… his mate, his life. She was the only presence in the world that kept him fighting the madness that demanded he cut down every man that stood in his way before unmaking the very world. The madness whispered at him that he did want to unmake the world, that he wanted too unleash his fury upon the peoples of the world and tear it asunder.

He'd be damned if he would. Not while she drew breath in that world. Elesiayah would never be harmed by his hand or by any other hand wielded by the Feyahni. Ever.

"The dream again, Kieran?" Maddox, his longtime friend and his battle brother, crouched beside him, staring at him intently with those fierce blue eyes that marked his entire race.

Kieran swore again and nodded as he struggled to a sitting position. "Aye, the dream again, always the dream again, my brother." He looked around at the other Fey in the misty morning camp, his own fierce blue Fey eyes picking out the shadowed shapes of each and every one of his blood brothers. He was the only one still in his blankets. The others were all on their feet, their gazes looking anywhere but at him.

Sympathy and the prickle of nervous energy oozed along the bonds that linked him to every Fey alive. "Was I screaming again?" He eyed Maddox sharply; running his hand through is ebony dark hair in frustration.

"Aye," Maddox nodded honestly and unfurled his long frame from his crouch, adjusting the long sword at his back as he stood, "you were."

"Flaming hells," Kieran muttered and sprang to his feet. "Bloody flaming hells. What hour is it?"

He always screamed during those dreams. They were not, Maddox had told him when the screams first started so long ago, screams of pain but of an ungodly fury. Kieran himself never remembered them, but they unnerved the Fey. They lived in accord with his own emotions, what he felt awake or asleep washed over them all. He was their Rei’va, their leader. His pain was their pain and theirs was his. That fury terrified them as much as the madness they all felt creeping along their spines did. And that madness was terrifying indeed to leave the Feyahni quaking where they stood.

"It's only come four, Kieran. There is time." Maddox looked up at the shadowy tent of leaves over their heads, one hand lovingly caressing the throwing knives that crisscrossed his broad chest. "Not much, but enough."

"Not much," Kieran agreed, strapping his own arsenal back into place. Daggers, two long swords, a baytani, and the throwing knives went with him everywhere. They were his by right, by responsibility. They were an extension of himself, sworn into his care before he had completely crowned from the womb. He would cross all ten rings of demon infested hell to the very steps of Chaos with those weapons in hand if need be. He was Fey. The Warrior Prince. It was his right.

As was it his right to speak to Al'Kiaan, the all-seeing eye. That eye would awake in mere hours. He had to be there or he would miss his one and only chance. The eye only deigned to wake once every five years and Kieran didn't have another five years. The madness licking at his heels would claim him and his kin long before then. He could not let that happen, not when he was so close to beating it off forever and saving his kin from that fate. "Come, brothers, we fly," he shouted to his kin and surged forward to the place his drakon, Suyari, waited patiently to soar the skies with him.

With a roar, the Fey followed on his heels, racing to their own glittering drakon and taking to the still darkened skies with whoops and shouts of devotion and purpose. They were as eager to get to the Eye as was Kieran. And why wouldn’t they be? His madness would drive them all into madness. They were Fey. They would unmake the world together if it came to that. It’s what they were born too.

Kieran would not let that happen, not with Elesiayah walking that world. She could stop it. Together, they could stop it. He just had to find her first. The Eye was his last option to end that descent into madness that would kill them all. The Eye would reveal her to him. It had too.

Everything depended on it. The life of his ceathanna voi -his battle brothers- the life of the mysterious drakon that served him and only him, and his very soul depended on him finding Elesiayah and claiming her as he had been unable to do all those long centuries ago. The Dark Ones had taken her from him before he had been able to complete their bond. Every fiber of his being demanded the completion of that bond now. It beat at him in waves of desperation that he held in check by sheer force of will alone. In truth, he held that desperation in truth with desperation of another kind; the desperate wielded that tool and bent it to their own purposes when they needed too.

For the first time, he was frightened. It was not so much that he feared failure even though failure was not an option, not any longer. If he failed, the world would tremble and die at his feet and by his hand. It was more… he feared rejection. He had lived and breathed for Elesiayah for four hundred long years. What if she did not feel the same for him? What if she could not feel the same for him?

That, more than the madness, would kill him. She was his every thought, his very life. If she turned from him, he would die. The heavens would weep, the earth would groan in protest, throwing up the contentious fires beneath and it would mean nothing. He would already be lost. He needed her. Not to keep him sane or to save his people or any other people, but because she was meant for him.

She had been crafted by the hands of the Gods to be his own personal Goddess, to be his beacon, his salvation, his love, his everything. Four centuries without her had driven him to tottering on the brink. Another year and he would be lost forever. His desires would consume him and his very soul would die. As would the souls of all of his people. She was the Ahn’ohm Feyahni, the Soul Fey. They needed her guidance and direction into the da'mhasha ceathanna or the Darkness would win and by so winning, claim their souls for Its own purposes. Mother and Father would never reunite without the Feyahni souls, leaving their very purpose in living unfulfilled.

“Nay,” he muttered with a shake of his head as Suyari leapt into the sky, her massive wings spread and flame shooting in a joyous spurt from her nostrils as the wind swept beneath those wings and lifted them, “I will not let that happen. She needs me, Suyari, as much as I need her.”

“Aye, Curialta Trouja , she does. Her heart weeps for your touch, her soul for your embrace. Take heart, Fey Prince, she will not turn from you,” Suyari rumbled in the somehow dulcet tones of the drakon.

Kieran released his grip on the saddle and patted her long, emerald scale covered neck in appreciation. “My thanks, Suyari.” He paused. “Why do you call me Curialta Trouja, Little Warrior?” She was the only of the drakon that addressed him so. The others called him Fey Prince when they spoke at all.

Never in the history of the world had the drakon been tamed by any hand. But for Kieran they answered. He had only to think the thought and Suyari and her brethren swept from the skies to alight before him, heads bowed in a show of deference. Not even Suyari, their leader, could tell him why the answered to his call so willingly. “It is as it is meant to be, Little Warrior,” she would rumble at him with a decidedly Fey shake of her head and that was that.

“You do not wish to be called so, Fey Prince?” Suyari turned her massive head slowly to pin him with one great, gleaming eye.

“No,” Kieran clarified, “it does not bother me. It’s just curious.”

“Why?”

“No one else would dare address me so, Suyari. I am the Warrior Prince, leader of the Feyahni, consort to Ahn’ohm Feyahni and an enemy to shudder at,” he explained quietly. It was naught but the truth. His enemies were as terrified of his as they were determined to see him fall. The Warrior Prince was more than a title. It was… the truth. He had slain thousands and would slay thousands more. He protected innocence and slew those corrupted by power, by greed, by the Darkness and Its servants. He had honed that craft to perfection over the centuries and had become, for all intents and purpose, exactly what the Fey Priestesses had said he would become; the Warrior Prince. Salvation or doom, delivered in one fell swoop.

“And still,” Suyari responded gravely, winging them into the glowing clouds of sunrise, “you are a little warrior. I could eat you for breakfast and still feel hunger.”

“So you could, I would thank you not too, however.”

“No, Little Warrior,” Suyari rumbled, as they flew with all the speed she could give over the forest stretched as far as the eye could see below them “you would make a decidedly unsavory breakfast. Too spicy.” She shuddered, her massive body roiling, as she spoke.

Kieran threw back his head and laughed his first in days. “So I am,” he agreed once again patting her neck affectionately and sobering. “Fly free, sister and get us there quickly. I can feel her.”

“Aye, I will. The Eye stirs.”

A chill shot through Kieran at Suyari’s ominous words, sending little shards of ice to nest deep in his chest. He shivered and drew a deep breath. The Eye was early. It was not supposed to stir for another five hours. “Fly sister, we must not miss the eye or all will be lost.”

“It will be as it must, Little Warrior, but we will fly.” She looked at him for a long moment and then turned her head, fire erupting from her in a shriek. All around him, the other drakon answered that call with shrieks and spouts of their own and plummeted as one into the surialta skia da'mhasha, the big sky dance of the drakon that moved them more swiftly than Kieran would have thought possible had he not seen it for himself many times over the centuries.

He relaxed in the saddle, knowing instinctively that Suyari would get him there on time, whether the Eye awoke early or not. Suyari was tied to him by bonds stronger than could ever be broken. She knew his desperation and would help him fight it however she could. It was, for whatever reason, her duty to the world that had breathed life into her massive body. And the drakon took their duties as seriously as the Feyahni.

“Ceangas pleaskan dieya... Ve dieya danacht aes, Curialta Trouja.” Suyari and the drakon roared as one as if they had read his mind.

“Ceangas pleaskan dieya... Ve dieya danacht aes,” Kieran shouted back with a grim smile. Duty until death… and death is not near. It was a fitting battle cry. For the Fey, for the drakon, and, he began to suspect, for the day.