Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  “Good,” King Arnyel replied, easing back in his chair. “Alaric, brief the woman on her duties. This court is dismissed.”

  ✽✽✽

  “I thought we had an understanding, Alaric.”

  The prince held Vylaena’s gaze from his seat on the plush red couch with a look of serenity that only appeared to fuel her annoyance. “We do.”

  “From the moment I began working for you, my full autonomy was always agreed upon.”

  “And it is! You can come and go as you please, within reason. No one’s shackling you to the palace. And when Thyrian returns home in the fall, you can go back to whatever it is that you find so important.”

  Thyrian watched this exchange from the corner of Alaric’s sitting room, where he leaned against a window, too tense to sit. The three of them had gathered in Alaric’s personal suite, where they had the best chance of privacy.

  Vylaena—whose confiscated weapons had been returned after the king had dismissed them from his courtroom—commanded the center of the room, looking like a human arsenal. Thyrian hadn’t known anyone, even in his years in the Order, who carried more steel than Vylaena. If it weren’t for her blue hair, he might’ve wondered if it was all for show. She glared down at Alaric like a mother scolding an unruly child, her fists clenched at her sides in a quiet betrayal of the fury she fought to contain.

  Thyrian took a breath, wondering if he should interfere before she started stabbing the prince on his own couch. “I don’t want you following me around, either,” he spoke up. “But we don’t know who called for my assassination, and until we do, it’s not safe for me to leave my security in the hands of any old guard. You’ve proven yourself trustworthy—”

  “I’ve proven only that I can be bought,” Vylaena corrected, her head snapping toward him, silencing him with eyes of silver fire.

  Alaric sighed. “And you will certainly be well paid. I can promise you that.” He waved a dismissive hand at her. “Come now, Vylaena. Don’t be so stubborn. This is easy work, and it’s only temporary. Or would you rather dangle from the castle walls until the crows have picked your bones clean?”

  “You wouldn’t permit it,” she retorted, though the bite in her voice had eased.

  “I can’t so easily override my father. You know that.”

  Vylaena frowned, but Thyrian noted the slight change in her posture that signaled the worst threat had passed. She slunk around the central table that separated the cluster of couches, poured herself a goblet of wine, and then fell into a nearby chair, one leg splayed over the cushioned arm, drinking deeply. Her crystalline eyes shifted back to Thyrian.

  “Why are you here, anyway?” she asked him over the lip of her glass.

  “In Enserion?”

  She just stared at him, as if it were obvious that’s what she’d meant.

  Thyrian eyed Alaric, who inclined his head in encouragement. “She might as well know.”

  Thyrian pressed his lips together, unsure where to begin. “Well.” He ran an agitated hand through his dark hair, turning his gaze back to the mercenary. “What do you know of the Desert Kingdoms?”

  ✽✽✽

  Vylaena’s lips tightened. She took a long draught of wine—almost emptying the glass—and swallowed hard.

  She couldn’t stop the memories from flooding back: great expanses of golden earth; a sea of horses; warriors with curved swords. Colorful tattoos on suntanned skin; a bleeding sun warped by heat; the high, yellow walls of a warlord’s keep. The flash of midnight lightning; a man’s face, cruel for its naked smile; bruised children, chained to a wall, their skin peeled away by a sharp knife . . .

  “I know more than most,” she replied, her voice low.

  Thyrian rounded Alaric’s couch and settled into the chair opposite Vylaena, shaking his head at the decanter Alaric offered. He sat like he was prepared to defend against an eminent attack: both hands resting unencumbered on his knees, his back straight, perched at the very edge of the cushions.

  He was a well-built man—a seasoned soldier—and his skin held a deep, pleasing tan, like most of Enserion’s northeastern neighbors. His coloring reminded Vylaena of the Elderwood: timber-brown flesh, leaf-green eyes, thick, slightly waved hair the color of ether. He didn’t seem very much like a prince to her—his bearing wasn’t cocky enough, his face wasn’t delicate enough, and he was too plainly dressed. Either he’d been away from the comforts of royal life for a long time or—more interestingly—avoided them altogether.

  “I am the youngest of three brothers and two sisters,” the man finally spoke. “I am a prince, but I will never rule Galiff.” He paused again. “As I am blessed by Asta and am so far from the throne, I chose to pursue an education at the Cathedral of Eternal Light, and then a career with the Order of the Golden Aegis, working alongside the Verdant Guard.”

  An honorable route, to choose a profession that still allowed him to serve his kingdom. And there was no lingering pain in his chest, no secret jealousy over the siblings who would inherit that kingdom before he. That, she knew, was not common in large, prominent families like his.

  “It took me years,” Thyrian continued, distracting her from her assessment, “but I rose through the ranks. I earned myself a bit of renown in our skirmishes against the outlander clans, the northeastern etherbeasts, and the southern Desert Kingdom tribes. Success brought greater responsibility, and I found myself leading an incursion into Ra’jikk, to free the daughter of a prominent nobleman, who’d been captured by one of the lesser warlords.”

  “Ra’jikk, city of piss, shame of the deserts,” Vylaena drawled. “You must be talking about Yrfir Alajiit. The clay-brained ingrate really managed to pull off something as entailed as kidnapping a noblewoman?”

  Thyrian looked taken aback. “You knew him?”

  “Of him,” Vylaena corrected, draining her glass and setting it on the central table.

  “Well,” Thyrian continued, his brows narrowing, “I ended up chasing the man to Alamatta, where I found him hiding behind a horde of slaves like the coward he was. I recovered the noblewoman, ended the warlord’s reign, and liberated the compound.”

  Vylaena straightened in her seat, lowering her leg back to the floor. “You were the sun-crowned warrior who freed the slaves of Alamatta?”

  She’d heard the news shortly after it had happened, for she’d been at the Deeps when a messenger had brought the tidings to Skin. It had stunned her, to learn that the largest slave house in the deserts was finally gone. It had been on a list of things she’d intended to do herself. Eventually.

  Thyrian nodded, taking credit without boasting. “But the warlord was . . . well, there was a knife struck directly into his heart. A thing forged of ether. He wore it like a badge.”

  Vylaena froze, her heartbeat kicking against the base of her throat. The world blurred around her as Thyrian’s words grasped her by the neck and seized her breath.

  Oh, goddesses . . .

  “We asked him what it was, and how he was still alive. He seemed to be perfectly healthy—he could speak, breathe, walk, fight—even with a length of cold steel in his chest.”

  “What did he tell you?” Vylaena demanded, ice crusting her words.

  The wrinkle reappeared between Thyrian’s brows. “He said that it commanded loyalty—that every warlord in the deserts wore one in their breasts. That they were all sworn to one man now.”

  “Kyshiin of Aughrin,” Vylaena supplied.

  Thyrian nodded, brow-wrinkle deepening.

  “The Desert Kingdoms haven’t been united since the reign of Emperor Tygnon,” Alaric continued, drawing Vylaena’s attention. “Some said it would never happen again. But with infighting stopped by these daggers, Kyshiin has turned his full attention upon Terolyn and, to a lesser degree, Galiff.”

  “And if Terolyn falls . . .” Vylaena started.

  Alaric nodded. “Enserion and Galiff are next.”

  “My parents desire allies,” Thyrian continued, and the others turn
ed to him. “Galiff is large, and the Verdant Guard would be spread thin if an attack came. Alaric and I became friends after meeting briefly at the cathedral and have kept a correspondence for years. I wrote to him, telling him of the daggers, and what was likely to come, and asked to visit Enserion in order to negotiate an alliance.”

  “The king had to have known about this,” Vylaena said, turning to Alaric. “And yet I saw no Royal Guardsmen among the dead at the five-league mark. Surely they would have helped protect the prince on an errand so important.”

  Alaric’s expression had clouded. He stared into his glass, swirling the wine within in gentle circles. “The king knew . . . enough.” He glanced up, meeting her gaze. “Father means well, I think, but he is blinded to the kingdom’s concerns by inept, influential advisors and a disposition inclined toward personal pleasures. I asked permission to bring Thyrian here, disguising the visit as a token of goodwill, and had hoped to brief my father further once Thyrian arrived. I know how to work with him; he needs methodic, gentle prodding, or else he gets annoyed and closes his ears to everything.

  “I did not ask Father for the Guard because I do not trust them well enough to execute such an important task. I’m sure you know better than I how easily they can be bribed.”

  “The secrecy was for my protection,” Thyrian explained. “Enserion can be a lawless place in many parts. I am the youngest child of many, but still a member of the royal family—still someone who could be used as leverage, or to pressure my parents into an action they would not otherwise choose.”

  “But someone knew,” Vylaena pointed out. “They knew exactly where you would be, and when.”

  “No one should have,” Alaric replied, frowning. “Apart from our families, no one should have known.”

  Vylaena rounded on Thyrian. “One of your brothers, jealous of the successful sun-crowned soldier-turned-ambassador.”

  He shook his head. “My family is not like that.”

  Perhaps you think so. But every man has a price.

  “What I don’t understand,” Alaric continued, his eyes far away, “is how Kyshiin managed to get ether-forged weapons like those knives in a place that burns the Marked alive. They don’t even believe in the goddesses—they think the Marked are demons, infected by evil spirits.”

  Vylaena rested her hands on her knees, forcing herself to assume a state of complete calm. She licked her lips to moisten them. “Kyshiin had those knives,” she said, as if commenting on the weather, “because I made them for him.”

  The two men stared at her, eyes blank, mouths slightly agape.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Alaric snapped.

  Thyrian’s eyes narrowed. “She looks like she’s serious.”

  “If she made those knives, where’s her Mark?”

  “I had a Mark once,” Vylaena replied. “Now it’s gone.”

  “Gone.” Alaric let out a gurgle of choked laughter. “Because it is something so easily misplaced.”

  “Ikna retracted it?” Thyrian continued to watch her, still calm, still steady.

  Vylaena shook her head, a curt side-to-side. “I did not want to be a part of what happened in the deserts. And when I finally escaped, I swore never to allow anyone to enslave me again—including the goddesses. I rejected her.”

  She remembered every vivid detail: running so fast and so long, collapsing for two days, weak and starving and broken. Waking to find the moon black and empty, staring at her expectantly, wanting more, more, always more.

  She remembered the fury, the blinding anguish. She’d screamed—the first time she’d ever done so in her life—and denied it all: her power, the goddess, any supposed fate tied to her cursed soul. And for the span of a few seconds—seconds that moved like days, crawling through time as though weighed down by a mortal wound—it was as if Vylaena’s consciousness had left her body.

  Her vision had swum with blue-white light, and her heart had screamed as though it had had a voice of its own. She’d felt her insides shatter, had felt them pull away from the shell of her body, and for a long, terrifying moment she hadn’t known if she’d have the strength or power or choice to rein them back in.

  And then, the pain had ended.

  Vylaena took a breath, allowing the memories to dissipate. “The next morning, I awoke without my powers—and without my Mark.”

  “You were ether-touched,” Thyrian said. The statement was obvious, but someone had to say it aloud.

  She’d never wanted to be. It was just another collar. She’d been told she was special, that Ikna had selected her for some great purpose—the only Shadowheart to be Marked since the collapse of the Empire. Her fate shone brightly against the darkness of the world, the Elders had said. But she’d never accepted that—she couldn’t—for it meant she’d never be free to choose her own path.

  Thyrian frowned. She’d mistaken his calmness for acceptance. “You single-handedly caused a war,” he pointed out. “Do you realize that?”

  “Men start wars all the time. If not I, then someone else would have given him what he sought.”

  “Why? Why did you do it?”

  Vylaena eyed the foreign prince, disliking the threat in his tone. “Did I need a reason? You men fight battles over nothing—a bit of pastureland, a neighbor’s pretty wife. I might’ve simply wanted the sapphire ring on his finger or one of his handsome, strong warlords to warm my bed.”

  Alaric choked on his wine, his eyes going wide, and Thyrian reached over to clap him on the back.

  “If it so concerns you,” Vylaena continued, regarding Thyrian with a hard eye, “it should be sufficient to know I had my reasons. I’m neither a coward nor petty. And despite my heritage, I don’t worship spilt blood. But sometimes an imperfect action is necessary to gain a desired result. You, a soldier, should understand that perfectly well.”

  Thyrian’s eyes were still dark. “I’ve never met a Shadowheart like you.”

  “Because you’ve never met a Shadowheart who wants to be free.”

  Alaric set his goblet on a side table. “Regardless of all this, we need you, Vylaena. You have connections. We need to find out who ordered that attack on Thyrian—find out who doesn’t want Enserion to have friends if Kyshiin’s army arrives at our doorstep.”

  “Connections?” Vylaena almost laughed. “You’re the goddess-blessed prince. Use your own.”

  “I am. But we want to increase our range. You see a lot of people in the Deeps—mercenaries, pirates, thieves, sell-swords. They hear things. They see things. They do things. Anything you can learn would be helpful.”

  “I agreed to follow the Galiffan around,” Vylaena snapped, dripping with derision, “but not to go sleuthing for you. If you wanted my help so badly, perhaps you should have asked for it instead of forcing me into this mess. Completely ignoring the fact that I have a life of my own.”

  She stood. Rutting courtiers. It was the same old story; she was just a pawn to them—just another body to use without regard for her own desires. “Play these games amongst yourselves,” she spat. “I have my own problems.”

  “Where are you going?” Alaric demanded as Vylaena strode to the door. “You’re Thyrian’s guard now.”

  “Doing what guards do and standing watch outside the door,” she barked as she slipped into the hall, shutting the door behind her with the hard snap of finality.

  ✽✽✽

  “So,” Thyrian said once Vylaena had gone, turning to his friend, “care to finally explain where you found her?”

  “The blackened depths of the Ether.”

  Thyrian raised a brow, unamused.

  Alaric sighed, slouching back against the couch cushions in defeat. “Actually, she found me. Evidently I’d been targeted for elimination by some disgruntled crime boss in Elska with too much lynd and not enough sanity. She was the one hired to do it.”

  “Don’t tell me—she grew a conscience and couldn’t go through with it?”

  Alaric snorted. “No, I have no doubt she
intended to kill me. But Vylaena . . . she ultimately makes her own choices, regardless of the influence of others. Even those who employ her.”

  Thyrian grunted. He was getting that idea, yes.

  “As she held the dagger to my neck, she asked if I had a counteroffer. Which, of course, I gave.”

  “And she’s worked for you ever since.”

  Alaric nodded. “She’s cost me a fortune over the years. But I . . .” He swallowed, shook his head. “My Knack told me she would be useful. And she’s certainly proven to be, no matter her . . . idiosyncrasies. I am lucky to have her as an ally. Trust me on that.”

  “I don’t like the idea of a mercenary guarding my door day and night, Alaric. Especially one who doesn’t want to be there.”

  “I know. But she’s the best we have.”

  “That,” Thyrian replied, turning a cool eye on the prince, “is what frightens me the most.”

  14 | The Pulser

  Flinx leaned against the wall, arms crossed, weight on one hip, her feet aching mercilessly from standing these past four hours. She could scarcely believe that she’d been waiting here for that long—and had more than once questioned her own sanity. But Lorist Vicmon had to come this way eventually. And she wasn’t giving up this time.

  The carved eagles that served as the knobs to his office doors glinted in the flickering torchlight, watching her as she waited patiently beside them. Where is he, Asta? she thought to them, half hoping the goddess would speak through the avatars of her prized birds and reply. She rubbed her forehead with merciless vigor. She truly was losing her mind.

  But then she heard the telltale tap of shoes on polished stone and straightened to find Lorist Vicmon rounding the corner at the far end of the corridor, two thin books nestled beneath one arm.

  Their eyes met. A look of surprise, and then undiluted panic, passed over the presiding lorist’s face as he slid to a halt. He blinked once, twice, and then turned on his heel to flee.

  “Lorist Vicmon!” Flinx called out, pushing off the wall in pursuit. “Lorist Vicmon, please! I need to speak with you!”