With a rough growl, the wiry man strode past Elohl and out the balcony doors. He curried one hand through his short brown waves, a gesture of frustration that Elohl realized was familiar. The man stepped to the balcony rail, bracing his palms upon it and breathing deeply with eyes closed. A sudden roar spilled from his lips, and the man whirled about and threw a fist into one windowpane of the tower.
With a wrenching shriek, the twenty-foot pane shattered. Instinct tingled his limbs and Elohl leaped forward, yanking the fellow out of the way as shards of glass came ripping down, smashing to pieces and skittering over the balcony. The lean fellow roared again in Elohl's arms, his ribcage heaving like a bellows. For a moment Elohl thought the man had been pierced by glass. But the man balled his fists, smashing them into the turret’s stone, shattering a massive agate block that spiderwebbed in cracks.
“She fucked us, Elohl – dammit!!!”
The sky above the balcony darkened, a maelstrom of clouds gathering from a bright blue sky. Pressure built upon Elohl's eardrums like an impending thunderstorm. He remembered storms like this, flash-furious maelstroms that came quickly in the mountain highpasses, up where the air was thin and seasons changed fast, but this was far more than those monstrosities, unnatural. Clouds thickened to columns above the tower, blue sky snuffed out in moments. Climbing cumulus swirled, darkening to a livid bruise over the palace. A wind picked up, rattling the windowpanes in their brackets. The olive grove whipped far below, a violent wind lashing hard enough now to drive moisture down in chill daggers. Sleet came, and a rattle of hail stung Elohl’s skin.
Electricity triggered every hair on Elohl’s body, lightning soon to strike, and Elohl knew this was no natural storm: this was pure power, the man’s rage made manifest. A rage of such violent character that it could turn a summer's day black in moments. Elohl's heart pounded in his chest. Terrified for the man who struggled in his arms, for himself, for this horrifying ability. He watched the sky turn dark as death, swirling with obliteration as the wiry fellow screamed again and heaved against Elohl’s iron grip. Bolts of lightning lanced from bruise to bruise, slicing the green-tinged dawn with booms of thunder.
A quick flash struck the tower above them. With a deafening crack, the explosion hammered him and the raging man to the balcony, chips of agate-stone littering down around them. As Elohl landed atop the furious man, whorls of crimson and gold blossomed to life through the skin upon the man’s bare back. Curling through his veins, spreading out upon the stark lines of his muscles into an ornate Inking of a wolf and dragon battling inside a ring of flame that seared as bright as the storm was dark.
Staring at the emblem, feeling it burn beneath his fingertips to the rage and crackle of the storm, Elohl suddenly remembered who this was: Fentleith Alodwine, the last Scion of House Alodwine, royal Kings of Khehem and bearer of the Wolf and Dragon wyrria. Elohl’s mind focused with a snap so violent it cracked his head back, clear as the lightning that leaped through the blackened sky. A silver fog tinged with the tinkling of trapper’s bells lingered in his thoughts, but it was distant.
“Fenton!” Elohl yelled against the storm, struggling to hold the raging man down. “Fenton, stop!”
But Fenton only roared like the beasts that fought within him. With a surge of tremendous strength, he bucked, trying to heave Elohl off, his wiry body far stronger than any man Elohl had ever grappled. Elohl's grip on his arms slipped. Fenton heaved a fast elbow back into Elohl’s solar plexus, and Elohl huffed, gasping. Elohl threw his entire weight down to the balcony to pin the smaller man, but Fenton heaved him again. Lightning consumed the sky in endless rivers. Elohl's heart hit his throat and fear slit his veins; Fenton was building a storm that would tear the palace apart – and them along with it.
“Control yourself!”
Elohl’s bellow was drowned out by a crack of thunder and another branch of lightning flashed. Striking the balcony, it exploded in a report that left Elohl's ears ringing and deaf. In that same moment, the golden Inkings upon his skin suddenly blazed to life; not an underwater luminescence, but searing bright as day under the storm's black belly.
“Fentleith Alodwine – I command you to control yourself!”
Elohl roared it, hardly able to hear his own voice. Fenton cried out as if in pain, but suddenly the naked man beneath him stilled. Thunder pummeled the air, but softer, lightning flashing up in the clouds rather than striking the tower. Gradually, the fury of the storm began to pull back. A few more flashes came as the seething mass roiled and the black clouds started to dissipate. Cumulus dispersed in cottony columns from the belly up as wind rattled the panes and died. The hail ceased and then the rain, leaving only a fresh autumnal scent behind.
Fenton breathed like a blown horse, pinned beneath Elohl. Limbs lax, his chest heaved from fury and exhaustion. Elohl gave the Scion of Khehem another moment, until he could see patches of blue sky, before he pushed up and out of Fenton’s way.
“Are you calm?” Elohl stood, gasping for breath, fear still racing his veins.
“Yes.” It was a dark reply, muffled from Fenton's face still pressed into the agate. Fenton lay facedown, unmoving, though his chest still heaved and his limbs trembled. The wyrric inking upon his back was still bright as fire, curling through its traces like lava on the move.
“Are you all right?” Elohl tried to not let on how relieved he was that Fenton’s storm had abated.
“No.” In a fluid movement, Fenton set his palms to the balcony and pushed to standing. Brushing shards of colored glass and chips of agate off his body, he was cut in a dozen places but didn’t seem to care. Flicking rain from his short-shorn waves, he grunted and looked down. A shard of red glass had lodged in the skin of his ribs. With a short growl, he braced the skin around the shard and drew it out, leaving an upwelling of blood to trickle down his abdomen. Looking up, he glared at Elohl with piercing, raw eyes, though they were their usual gold-brown once more. “Why did you do that to me?”
“Do what? Subdue you?” Elohl rubbed his chest from where the searing of his Goldenmarks lingered, and from where Fenton had elbowed him in his solar plexus. “Because you were going batshit!”
“Ordering me, Elohl! Wake up, Aeon-dammit!” Fenton’s gold eyes burned. He gestured angrily at the opulent room behind them, then set his fingertips to the weeping hole in his skin. “We’ve been trapped in this pouffed hell-hole for three weeks since we came through the portal-arch from Bhorlen’s citadel to the Palace of the Vine – all because you keep abusing my Rennkavi’s oath and ordering me to refrain from action!”
“You were out of control, Fenton! I did what I had to.”
But uncertainty grasped Elohl. Memories washed back, as if Fenton’s storm had sluiced the silver smoke of amnesia from his mind. His cheeks burned as he began to recall days of threllis-induced lassitude, and nights of largesse.
Three weeks trapped in the Falconry as willing prisoners of the Valenghian Vhinesse; her special little pets.
Elohl choked. He stepped to the balcony railing, sick. His arms shook as he gripped the stone, furious. Memories of the past three weeks hit him like forge-hammers: the Falconry. The Vhinesse’s boudoir for her kept men. How easily the Vhinesse had snared him; all the times Fenton had tried to slap him out of it. Her luminous beauty, her tinkling laugh like a trapper’s winter bells, her purring alto voice. All the clever ways Fenton had tried to sober Elohl up after the Vhinesse had visited. Her touch, commanding his body to obey with her silver vines and opiate-clouds twisting through his mind.
And after she had touched him... Elohl recalled what they'd done – so many nights, all night long. He recalled how he'd gotten his split lip, when she'd ordered Fenton and Elohl to fight one another bare-knuckled for her pleasure as she drank wine and lit censors before she took them both. Ghrenna’s cerulean eyes rose in Elohl’s vision. Elohl reached out to her with everything he had, screaming her name deep inside with the rising dawn.
“Three weeks.” Elohl star
ed out over the olive groves, choking back wretchedness. It didn’t even sound possible. That he had been duped so badly for so long. His emotions tumbled, and he let them come. Every devastating day after the Kingsmen Summons and his capture in Alrashesh; every night spent freezing and terrified in the highpasses indentured to the High Brigade; every time he'd stepped into battle upon a glacier, not knowing if his body had enough strength to fight one more opponent.
Abandoning his Queen and King. Not keeping Olea safe. Losing Ghrenna.
“Couldn’t you have tried a little harder to get us out of here?” Elohl growled over his shoulder. It felt good to unleash his rage. But besides himself, the only person to rage at was Fenton. “You could have blasted a hole in the wall, Fenton, or snuck us out! There are a thousand ways we could have left this palace by now. Did you try none of them?”
Fenton responded to Elohl's anger with his own fury, fire flashing in his eyes. “You think it’s my fault we’re still here? My blood-sworn oath will kill me if I lift a finger against you, my Rennkavi – which includes making decisions that supersede yours. I can only make a decision to save your life, Elohl! Fuck the Vhinesse and all she is, but she hasn’t done a thing that puts your life at risk! We’re her pets. You’re the one who keeps ordering me to stand down! One touch of the Vhinesse’s hands, and you fucking conveniently forget everything, except my goddamn oath to your service!” Fenton finished with a livid growl.
“She does something to me!” Elohl glared. Hurling the words at Fenton, their tempers were a good match now that they had both been unleashed. “Her touch! Fenton, when she touches me, I can think of nothing else! Believe me, if I'd had my wits, I would have strangled her skinny neck making me fuck her night after night when the only woman I want is—”
Elohl choked. His gut dropped through the stones and his chest clenched, his golden Inkings fading along with his rage. All of it had happened because Elohl was starved for the woman he really wanted. Starved for seasons, years, for a decade. Her cerulean eyes flared briefly in his mind, before they, too, snuffed out.
“Ghrenna.” Fenton finished Elohl’s sentence for him. “Say her name, Elohl. She deserves that much when you fuck another woman in her place. And force your liege-man to do the same.”
“You enjoyed it.” Elohl growled, bitter bile in his mouth.
“Sure.” Fenton's gaze was hard, burning like firebrands. “The Vhinesse is a good lay. She fucks hard, and I’m able to take out my anger on her lily-white skin. But no more than I enjoy a prostitute, Elohl. Her wyrria doesn’t affect me like it does you. I learned how to block mind-wyrria of many varieties over my ten centuries. No, you have been the one to put me in a compromised position these three weeks, not her.”
“I'm sorry.” Elohl murmured, spent, a terrible hollowness gripping his chest. He glanced into the room for something more to wear, but there was nothing. Just veils, gauze, silk, and that damned threllis lingering in the air.
“Sorry doesn't cover this,” Fenton’s gaze was still dark. Checking the wound beneath his fingertips, he paused, then removed them. The hole was closed, and though blood still marred his skin, the wound had healed just as quickly. “I couldn't protect my Rennkavi because of what he ordered me to do, Elohl. To follow the Vhinesse’s every instruction. To stay and enjoy her hospitality. To fuck her, night after night, and not set a finger to her pretty white throat. Those orders still stand until you remove them. If I don't obey you, I’m damned by my own oaths...”
Fenton trailed off, gazing out over the rising morning with a lost look upon his face. Suddenly, Elohl realized what he'd done, the gravity of it. And it needed more than remedy: it needed undoing. Grasping Fenton’s shoulder, Elohl turned him. Looking Fenton in the eyes, Elohl summoned command from his very essence.
“Follow my orders, Fentleith. Not anyone else. And from here on... I order you to act in my best interest. If you judge that I'm compromised, if I can't think for myself or protect myself or if something’s wrong with me, then I need you to think and act for me. I order you to.”
The Goldenmarks had lit again with a simmering glow, as if responding to Elohl’s utterance. Elohl could feel them, a cascade of burning prickles over his skin. That slow luminescence seemed to twist in Fenton’s eyes with the last of his wrathful fire, until finally, something in Fenton eased. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and let it out.
“Rennkavi. So you order. So shall I do.”
The tension in the air cleared. With Elohl's command he had put Fenton's heart at ease, or perhaps his very soul. The day brightened to clear skies, sunlight glimmering in the raindrops upon the balcony and raising curls of steam. A cool breeze skimmed the olive grove far below, rustling the dark foliage.
Fenton stood very still, his eyes closed in the golden sunlight. Elohl watched the Scion of Khehem take slow, deep breaths in the rising dawn. Even though Fenton was becalmed, Elohl could feel a beast of unfathomable energy still trying to escape from his wire-tight frame. As if all his sinew and muscle was needed to rope in the power that seethed within – never ceasing, never sleeping.
Only dormant, because the man who contained it forced it to be.
Watching Fenton breathe on the balcony, Elohl found himself wondering at the power of the Wolf and Dragon wyrria that lived within Fenton, now yoked to the Rennkavi – to his command. Elohl pushed it from his mind. It was too enormous to think on. He had practical problems to deal with, most notably their current situation and how to get out of it. But the question of Fenton's power lingered in the back of his mind even as he shoved it there, like live coals raked under hearth ash.
A question that would rise again, and would need remedy.
CHAPTER 2 – ELYASIN
Queen Elyasin den’Ildrian Alramir woke with a gasp in the luminous darkness, brandishing her longknife.
Heaving deep breaths and rank with sweat in her bedroll, she waited, a woman’s scream still ringing in her ears. All around the underground grotto the haunting sound of water flowed, cascading from rock walls and pouring into basins filled with phosphorescent moss. The expansive hush of the Heldim Alir, the Way Beneath the Mountains, breathed around Elyasin: ferns glowing moon-white in the water, luminous pink snowdrops pushing up through ice-blue moss beside her bedroll. Gradually, she realized that the scream had only been nightmare. Rummaging in a pocket of her undergarments, she retrieved a palm-sized stone. Producing a throaty hum, she watched the singing-stone brighten in her palm from a dull luminescence to a curling glow like moonlight through an ebbing tide, illuminating the grotto in a milky light.
At the edge of the light, Elyasin saw the sleeping mounds of Kingswoman Ghrenna den’Tanuk and Queen’s Physician Luc den’Lhorissian in the bedroll they shared, nestled in a mossy alcove and surrounded by ferns. She could just see the blonde hair of the scribe Thaddeus den’Lhor where he was curled in his blankets against the perpetual chill. Elyasin gazed down at her own bedroll to see her King and husband Therel Alramir scowl at her light, then snuggle back down into the warmth so only his pale, unruly hair was visible.
All was silence in the grotto, save for the splash and burble of water cascading down the rock wall into a pool inset with gold and moonstone sigils. As Elyasin waited, willing her heart to slow, she heard an eerie sound from Luc and Ghrenna’s bedroll. The sound of a woman singing – in a sinuous, rolling language Elyasin was beginning to know.
Giannyk, the language of the Giants.
Elyasin watched Ghrenna writhe in her blankets, then gasp as if in passion. She was asleep, but her long eyelashes flickered in dreams, lit by the grotto’s unearthly glow. Luc stirred and sat up in the bedroll beside her, still fully clothed in his tan and fawn buckled leathers from the day before, his hands cupping the back of Ghrenna’s neck. His eyes closed in a light trance, and Elyasin knew a soothing balm eased from his wyrric hands. Elyasin could almost feel that flow, seeping like warm milk into Ghrenna. She watched Ghrenna relax, breathing deep as her dream was banished.
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With Ghrenna finally quiet, Luc let his hands slip away. The light from Elyasin’s singing-stone started to fade and she hummed again. Resonance resounded within the stone, making the phosphorescent light whirl faster. All around, the grotto responded, veins of blue ore brightening until the space held an evening’s gloaming that danced with the movement of galaxies.
They’d discovered these luminous alcove-gardens after escaping Lhen Fhekran. The first grotto they’d found in the dark tunnel beneath the Kingsmountains had illuminated to their speech. They’d chipped out ore to take with them these past three weeks, the stones a blessing in the expansive dark of the Giannyk tunnels. This dreaming was Ghrenna’s tenth in the past three days alone, the episodes more frequent the deeper they plunged into the tunnels upon Morvein Vishke’s ancient path. Ghrenna’s seizures and headaches were a thing of the past, and though she grew more hale every day as Morvein’s centuries-old memories trickled back, everyone else was getting worse from interrupted sleep.
Luc’s green eyes were tight, his golden brows knit as he caught Elyasin’s gaze. Therel made a low moan in his sleep and twisted in the bedroll, snuggling down into the soft carpet of moss. Gazing at her King and husband, Elyasin ran her fingers through his pale hair. His brows knit in dark dreams before his breathing steadied. She could see his pale eyelashes and strong, high cheeks, unearthly in the grotto’s glow. His jaw was coarse, a beard showing the passing of their weeks underground. As Elyasin soothed her husband, she opened her senses. The dark tunnels held a resonance that rang in her mind and body. Like untapped streams, Elyasin felt a flow of power even more concentrated in the glowing grottoes than the tunnels themselves. Immersing herself in that flow, Elyasin felt an immaculate silence; the same as she’d felt since coming through the rose-crystal doorway beneath Fhekran Palace.
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