There were several raucous shouts and whistles, and Vylaena heard someone yell, “I’d not object to tossing her around,” to thunderous jeers.
Vylaena turned to face the crowd, scanning the gathered miscreants. Her eyes settled on a brute of a man—no taller than her but built like a pile of boulders stacked one upon the other. A long scar marred his face, rippling over a half-ruined nose. Two swords were strapped to his hips, and telling from the way he sat comfortably in his seat, he’d been wearing them long enough to know how to move properly with them.
She pointed at him. “You.”
There were more catcalls; the man glanced around and then frowned at her. “Lynd?”
“Eighty.”
The shouting grew louder. Eighty lynd to the winner? High stakes. And everyone wanted to see a Shadowheart girl fight the biggest swordsman in the room. The man couldn’t very well back down.
He stood. “House rules.”
“House rules,” Vylaena agreed, a smile curling over her lips.
Hands clapped her shoulders as she and the brute pushed their way through the throng and to the large depression at the back of the bar, ringed by a thin series of wooden posts and a yellowed bit of rope. Vylaena pulled off her cloak and her sword, handing them to Skin. Her daggers came next, followed by the weapons belt she no longer had a use for.
She jumped down into the fighting pit, watching as the man she’d chosen followed suit. He rolled his head in a circle, shrugged his shoulders, and pressed his arms forward to crack his back.
“Try not to kill him,” Skin shouted at her over the roar of the crowd, his arms full of her belongings. “It’s bad for business.”
Vylaena barely heard him over the buzz of adrenaline in her ears. “Just start it,” she snapped.
Skin shrugged. “On my word,” he called out. “Ready . . . set . . . fight!”
The man rushed Vylaena, swinging at her head with an arm like a tree trunk. She avoided the blow, landing a hard punch on his lower ribs before darting away. The man grunted, stepping back, and Vylaena hoped she’d cracked something. Her own ribs ached mercilessly.
The man bellowed at her, his face a burning red, and she knew she had him.
She avoided another hit, and another, darting around the man’s arms and rolling between his punches. But he kept swinging, fury fueling his blows, and she caught a glancing punch to the face when she made a miscalculation, sending her stumbling backwards as the crowd screamed in glee.
She spat blood.
It was reckless—it went against all her training. But she wasn’t really thinking straight anymore. She sprung at him with the full weight of her body, dragging the man to the ground. They rolled over the pit floor, kicking, grabbing, punching what they could. Vylaena’s head rang with the thrill and blissful agony of it, numb to everything but this moment—this barrage of pain—drinking it in as though she were dying of thirst.
She caught the man’s fist at a bad angle and felt her breath leave her; she recovered, but not before he’d landed a vicious blow to her right side. She growled, baring her teeth, and flipped him aside with an angry, impossible strength. She met his head with the side of her fist.
His head rocked against the ground, and he went limp. The crowd exploded.
“Suffer well,” she spat at him, wiping her bleeding nose with the back of one arm. His eyes blinked open, disorientation flooding his face as she stalked away. She felt the pounding of his head and savored it, darkness swirling inside her own skull.
“Winner!” Skin announced, as the gathered men and women moved to retrieve their earnings or losses from their bets. Vylaena grabbed the edge of the pit and hauled herself out, aching beneath the bruises and cuts that decorated their bodies.
There was a hand on her arm, and Skin pulled her roughly to her feet. “Go home,” he said, thrusting her belongings back into her arms. “I don’t give a shit what you’re so angry about. You’re no good to anyone dead, so stop looking for trouble. Go. Home.”
Vylaena strapped her weapons back onto their proper limbs and obliged, slipping through the distracted crowd and up the stairs to the sewers. She spat more blood as she walked, feeling with her tongue for a lost tooth. Miraculously, they all seemed to be intact.
The fight had bled her of her anxiety, and she felt more whole now, odd as that was. It was as if the pain had scoured her clean, like a cleansing fire burning away all the fear and dread and worry inside her. Her emotions successfully drained, she could now face what had happened to her with a rational mind.
As she limped back to the palace, she finally allowed herself to think about what it meant to have a Mark again.
In that moment in the darkness, she’d sworn she would try to live, and she would do her best to hold to that. But she was . . . afraid. People took advantage of compassion. Of power. Goddesses knew she was guilty of the same. And if she started getting involved in things again, using her powers again . . .
What had happened in the deserts had really messed her up. She knew that. And it was in no small part due to the harrowing weapons she’d been forced to make. There was no guarantee something like that wouldn’t happen again.
But what if Thyrian was right—what if she actually made a difference this time? What if she could fix things, little by little? Did it matter if her marks on the world would never be as significant as she felt was needed? Was it enough that she contributed, in whatever way she could, despite the possibility that she’d make another mistake?
“That was a fine show you put on.”
Vylaena whirled around, drawing her dagger with some difficulty—her hands were throbbing and stiff. She’d been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard footsteps behind her.
“You.”
Serk stood several paces away, a smug look on his face, his arms obscured in a long cloak. Vylaena scowled at him, lifting her dagger higher.
“I won fifty lynd off you tonight,” he called out. “You have my thanks.”
She was having none of it. “You have a lot of nerve to follow me,” she snapped. “What’s to stop me from killing you right here?”
Serk just smiled at her, his eyes roving up her face, lingering on her forehead. “This,” he replied.
He drew his hands from his cloak, and Vylaena caught the glint of silver. She raised her dagger to parry the blow, but it never landed. And yet . . . she was falling, a tearing pain at her shoulder, blood running down her arm . . .
She landed—hard.
Her head slammed against the bottom of the sewer, and stars dotted her vision. She could swivel her neck well enough to see the speckled holes in her cuirass where the round of ethershot had struck her, but couldn’t move anything else. Anger and horror mixed in her gut as she realized it had been forged to paralyze, not kill. The wound was only skin-deep.
Serk appeared above her, a silver-black dagger held in one hand. It looked terrifyingly familiar.
“Thank you,” he said again, running a finger over her forehead to trace her Mark. “You’ve made all of this possible.”
He plunged the dagger into her chest.
31 | The Trap
Thyrian awoke to a dreary, grey morning, as raindrops peppered the windows and roused him with their laments. He rolled out of bed with a weary groan, rubbing his eyes and wondering if Vylaena had gotten any more sleep than he had. Even with her supreme resiliency, he doubted it.
He dressed and did some low-key sword exercises while he waited for his breakfast to arrive, growing mildly concerned when Vylaena didn’t come bursting in to drag him off to see Alaric.
She probably just wants some time alone.
He didn’t blame her. It had shocked him, to find that Mark on her brow. He couldn’t imagine what it had felt like to her.
Breakfast, however, never arrived. Thyrian rested in his sitting room, reading a book, patient to wait a few more minutes. But when his stomach began to protest in earnest he tossed it aside and rose.
“Vylaena?” he said, kn
ocking on their shared door. “You awake?”
There was no reply.
Thyrian frowned. He knocked again, listened, and then tried the handle. It didn’t budge.
But there’s no lock on this door.
A sinking feeling pulled at his stomach; something wasn’t right. He retrieved his sword, buckling it around his hips, and strode to his front door.
He opened it to find a serving girl sprawled on the ground, a spilt breakfast tray upended over her front. Oatmeal and eggs and slices of orange littered the floorboards around her.
Thyrian knelt at once, feeling for the girl’s pulse, and was relieved to find it. The poor girl had simply fainted.
“Thyrian? What’s happened?”
Thyrian looked up to see Alaric approach at a fast clip, a half-eaten apple in one hand.
“I don’t know. I only just found her like this.”
Together they eased the girl up, and Thyrian took her in his arms, following Alaric to the castle physician’s office. The physician—luckily—was in, and he accepted the girl onto an open cot at the wall. After a cursory examination, he looked at the princes and shrugged. “She’ll be alright. Bit of ether-poisoning, is all. Must’ve walked into a cloud of it and breathed a little too much in.”
Having done what they could, Alaric and Thyrian left the girl in the man’s care, stopping at the kitchens so Thyrian could grab a freshly baked breakfast pastry before heading back to his chambers.
“Where’s Vylaena?” Alaric asked as they walked. “She’s normally up by now, isn’t she?”
Thyrian shook his head. “I haven’t seen her this morning; she won’t answer her door. Alaric,”—he stopped, tugging on the prince’s elbow and leaning closer so they wouldn’t be overheard—“Vylaena... her Mark returned last night.”
Alaric gaped at him. “What?”
“It came back. She . . . I’m guessing she just needs some time to . . . you know, adjust.”
“How? How could it have just reappeared?”
Thyrian explained what had transpired as they walked, finally reaching Thyrian’s suite and settling into his front sitting room.
“I just can’t see Eyren as the mastermind behind all this,” Alaric said, kneading his eyes. “Maybe her plan is the best option we have. Get Kaern out of the dungeons, find the ether-touched . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to do any of that without drawing a lot of attention.”
“Vylaena’s ether-touched now,” Thyrian reminded him. “She could wrap us in a shroud of invisibility. She could enchant the whole castle into a deep sleep. We have routes we can take, as long as they lie within her ability.”
“Let’s get her, then,” Alaric replied, standing. “I’m anxious to have this dealt with and my brother’s name cleared.”
But once again, there was no reply when Thyrian rapped on Vylaena’s door.
“You don’t think she ran off, do you?” Alaric said, pressing his ear to the wood.
Thyrian shook his head. Vylaena was many things, but not a coward. She wouldn’t have left without telling him. Would she?
“Stand aside,” he said. “I’m going to break it down.”
Alaric gave Thyrian space, and the door swung inward with one well-placed kick.
They stepped inside, scanning the dim room, only to find it empty. The shutters were closed, the bed was made, and Vylaena’s sword was missing from where she usually stowed it against the dressing table. A quick check of her bathing room turned up the same.
“No sign of a struggle,” Alaric said, glancing around. “Either someone was very good—better than Vylaena—or she left of her own accord.”
“Why would she leave now, when she was so certain this would lift her Curse?” Thyrian asked, refusing to believe it. “That’s all she’s ever wanted.”
Alaric eyed him, a perturbed frown on his lips. “Maybe she’s letting off steam on the sparring field. Though she could have at least taken you with her. I don’t like that she abandoned you here without any protection.”
Thyrian froze. “Wait. That girl—the one who collapsed outside my door. The physician said she’d breathed in ether.”
Alaric blinked at him. “You don’t think—”
“Vylaena left a trap behind. A safeguard. In case someone tried to get in while she was gone. The question is, where did she go?”
The question lingered all day, for Vylaena never appeared. Thyrian accompanied Alaric and Caeslin on a tour of the grounds and then spent an hour sparring with Alaric—as Eyren never showed up, either. “Maybe he forgot, what with the excitement of Caeslin’s arrival,” Alaric said with a deeply troubled frown.
Thyrian attended the afternoon court and even ate his dinner in the dining room with the other nobles, a daily event he’d always avoided. Not once did he catch a glimpse of midnight blue hair or the sharp edge of a wicked smile, no matter how often he glanced at the nearest door. A grinding, despondent feeling hovered in his gut all day, souring his appetite and his normally agreeable mood.
Where are you, Vylaena?
“She’s gone,” Alaric told him over dessert with a weary shrug of his shoulders. “Sometimes she does that. For months at a time. Honestly, I’m surprised she played along with Father’s plans for this long.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Thyrian replied in a muted tone, frowning into his pie. But what if Alaric was right?
He himself had told her she was free to go should she ever desire to leave. Perhaps he’d been foolish to believe she’d changed her mind about trying to fix things, despite all she’d told him. A burning ache he thought he’d left behind in Galiff flared up in his chest, stealing what little remained of his appetite.
The two of them sat in Thyrian’s rooms after dinner, sipping wine in dreary silence and listening to the rain pelt the castle walls in an unending struggle against the unyielding stone. They needed to form a plan to rescue Kaern, but without Vylaena pushing them, neither quite knew where to start.
Finally, Alaric took a breath. “Father is asserting this marriage idea pretty heavily. To the point of obsession, you could say. I’m afraid it might be the only way he’ll consider an alliance with Galiff.”
Thyrian glanced at Alaric, then nodded slowly. He ran a finger over the edge of his glass, eyes clouded. “I never liked the idea of marriages of convenience. But if you both are willing, maybe it’s for the best. At least you’re not some random foreign nobleman who just covets her wealth.” He tried a smile and failed. “And at least we’d have our alliance.”
“I just always assumed I’d have more of a choice than this,” Alaric replied, staring into his wine. “Sometimes I wished that I’d . . . well. Never mind.”
Thyrian knew that look. “You had someone else in mind.”
Alaric shrugged offhandedly, then glanced up to meet Thyrian’s gaze. A small, self-deprecating smile perched on his lips. “Perhaps, once. It was never going to happen. She made her thoughts on the matter well known, and I always understood that was the end of it. And even if she’d . . . well . . . Father would never have approved. Nor anyone else, I’m sure.”
Thyrian wondered if he was talking about Vylaena. Her warning to him at the Golden Orchid came rushing back, deepening the dry, empty feeling in his stomach.
Don’t be like Alaric, please, she’d said. For both our sakes.
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
Alaric merely shrugged again, draining the remains of his cup. “The thing is, I’m no longer really certain it was anything more than infatuation. Because there’s this other woman, and when she’s nearby, it’s so completely different that I find myself wondering if—”
There was a knock at the door, making both of them jump. Thyrian rose first, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword, the other held out in a signal for Alaric to remain seated. He eased the door open a crack, poised to draw his blade, and then relaxed. He swung the door open.
“Flinx?” Alaric said from behind Thyrian, craning his head
around to see.
Flinx performed a swift, ill-practiced curtsey. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Come in,” Alaric interrupted, getting to his feet. His expression was clear, inviting. “Please.”
Flinx obeyed, and Thyrian closed the door behind her. “I was looking for Vylaena,” she explained. “She didn’t answer the note I sent. Or her door. I thought she might be in here with you, Prince Thyrian.”
“Just Thyrian,” he corrected. “And I’m sorry; we haven’t seen Vylaena today.”
Flinx’s face hardened. “Rutting Ether,” she murmured, before her eyes widened and she met Alaric’s gaze. “I’m sorry, I—”
Alaric let out a genial laugh. “If you think that’s the worst language I’ve ever heard, you’re mistaken.” His smile faded. “You look upset. Can we help?”
Flinx hesitated, her eyes shifting to Thyrian. “It’s about the Stone,” she told him. “And what I came to see Vylaena about yesterday afternoon.”
“Sit,” Thyrian bade, waving toward the chairs. “Alaric knows everything.”
Flinx strode forward to claim a seat on one of the proffered couches, but her back was stiff and her hands were clenched into fists on her lap. “I told you I’d look into the Stone and see what more I could learn about it. I practically raided Rynley’s private archive last night. And I found a selection of old um . . . I suppose you could call them rituals. Early experiments with etherlore, from back when we didn’t really understand the Marks or what they meant.
“I think the Breaking Stone might go back even further than Emperor Tygnon,” she continued. “There are references to something similar in the tome I found. It makes me wonder if he merely found it, and took advantage of its powers, rather than creating it himself.”
She frowned. “There’s a ritual listed in that book, explained in some detail. I could have gotten the translation wrong, but I’m almost certain it describes the exact circumstances that must be met in order for the Breaking Stone to function.”
“Such as?” Alaric asked, leaning forward in rapt attention.
“A certain number of ether-touched—thirty, to be precise. All able to channel ether into the Stone. Where they need to stand, where the recipient of power needs to stand . . . and, most importantly, when the ritual must be done in order to succeed in a particular manner. By my calculations, if Eyren wants Ikna’s power, he must try to take it at midnight on a night when the moon is new.”
Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1) Page 33