The High Lord (Legends of Trianon: Starla Book 2)

by J. A. Comley

  “My place,” Larkel said softly. A surprisingly vulnerable look entered his eyes, but the fire in his mind grew fierce. “If you'd rather—”

  “Lead the way,” she said, smiling up at him, vaguely wondering when exactly she had stopped being shy or worrying over what she had been taught was proper behaviour. She knew the answer to that. It was the moment she had decided that this man was all she wanted.

  “Oh, could you wait here a moment?” Larkel said as the owner of a store hailed him.

  “Sure, you go ahead. I'll be there, by Notes on the Breeze,” Starla said, indicating the wind chime store three stores down, the only other store not boarded up.

  Smiling, Larkel seemed to consider something then bent and quickly kissed her cheek before walking off into the store.

  Cheek still tingling, Starla made for Notes on the Breeze, barely noticing the number of stares and scandalised whispers that followed her. Today, she felt happier than she had ever done. She was not going to concern herself with people and their prejudices.

  Larkel placed the red velvet ring box on the counter along with an intricately-carved charm bracelet and gold necklace with a heartwing pendant.

  “For Naleiya? I can add her usual petals fr—” the vendor asked, smiling brightly as he was handed the three golden stars in payment.

  “No,” he answered, distracted as he tried to spot Starla through the window.

  The man's hands froze momentarily, his face betraying a raging curiosity.

  The High Lord threw him a stern, 'it's-none-of-your-business' look. “Thank you,” he said gruffly, taking the small package from the now wide-eyed shopkeeper.

  Making his staff appear, Larkel vanished the package. With another glare at the still-shocked shopkeeper's nosiness, Larkel left the store and headed for Starla, a small smile on his face as he saw her fascination with the Rainbow Wood chime. Each hollow, wooden tube changed colour as it struck the black, metal disc inside.

  Noticing the stares they were receiving, he took her hand and began to lead her to his home.

  As they entered the little clearing where the High Lord's house stood, Starla's eyes were immediately drawn again to the view. The ocean glittered like a blanket spun from diamonds. Turning back, her words of appreciation left her as she took in the giant, slowly throbbing, purple plant on the grass by the tree line. As she watched, Larkel made his staff appear and shot a green light around the plant, and it slowly began to unfurl. A picnic blanket, trays of finger food, and two bottles in a bucket of ice were revealed as the 'plant' vanished into a twinkling, purple mist.

  “Do you like the surprise?” he asked, deep voice intense as he came to a stop in front of her.

  She met his gaze, his keen eyes searching her face as his hands slowly encircled her waist. Starla just nodded as she felt the bond between them open, words almost unnecessary.

  Slowly, he lowered his lips to hers. The kiss was gentle, yet deeply intimate, as glimpses of their thoughts and feelings passed through the connection. She found herself reaching her arms up around his neck, allowing him to pull her even closer. Eyes alight, he took half a step back, leaving his hands around her waist. One hand began to trail up her spine, his fingers soft on her bare skin. She felt her eyes close in response and knew he had sensed her desire through the bond. His lips found hers again, this kiss much more urgent, fuelled by fire. Their thoughts lost coherence for a moment, and then he pulled back again, his mind doused in sudden, cold control. But his smile was undimmed by the spike of panic his emotions had caused. Something dark hovered on the edges of his happiness, but Starla returned his smile, and it abated a little.

  Keeping a hand around her waist, he led her to the picnic and offered her some agley wine as they sat. Starla pushed her worry from her mind. If the reason he had stilled his desire was important, he would share it with her.

  Looking at the glass of pure-black liquid he passed her, Starla glanced at him sceptically, remembering the time Davan and Orla had put ink in her tea.

  He laughed at her expression and a glance of the memory. “It really is a lovely wine.” He took a sip.

  Seeing that his encouraging smile was still a brilliant white, she took a sip. Expecting something similar to Earth wine, her taste buds were shocked as something more like strawberries and melted chocolate flooded her mouth, with the added bite of alcohol. Smooth and fruity, it wasn't overly sweet.

  “This is amazing,” she said, taking another sip.

  “To your birthday, even if we are a little late,” he smiled. Tapping his glass against hers, he pulled out of her mind and settled across from her.

  Larkel had been staring into nothingness for a while as Starla lay propped against him, watching the light filter through the white leaves. It was late in the afternoon already, shadows stretching out around them. His fingers trailed through her hair and along her arms, an unconscious action.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, running a finger along the jerking muscle in his jaw as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. He trembled slightly as her fingers slid down his neck before she lowered her hand.

  “Things that should not be thought of on such a beautiful day,” he sighed, still stroking her hair.

  Hearing the sadness in his voice, Starla sat up. Taking his hand, she opened the connection fully.

  “You're getting good at that,” he mused, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, thoughts heavy with dark emotions only just out of her reach.

  Using the connection, Starla opened herself to him, showing him her concern and her love. She was here to listen if he wanted to speak. She felt an echo of the fear that had filled his mind earlier when he’d spoken about not wanting to lose her. “I am yours, Larkel. I am not going anywhere.”

  She felt the fear abate, wonder and love crashing through it, then return stronger than before, and his eyes darkened.

  “I should have done this after the first time I brought you here,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. His feelings through the bond were conflicted, but mostly, they seemed afraid. “I hope you can forgive me for delaying. Starla, I have held something back from you. But it isn't fair of me. For you to love me, for what you've just said to hold true, you must know all of me … and you don't.”

  Starla rested his hand in her lap. She met his eyes. She could feel his fear and anguish behind the hardness of his voice. She could feel the darkness building in his head, threatening the glowing light of his presence. Steeling herself, she sent her agreement through the bond.

  I am ready.

  Larkel drew a deep, uneven breath, seeming to try and find strength for what was coming.

  “As you can imagine, families in Trianon can grow to be quite large, although conceiving is hard for us. I was the second-youngest of my eight siblings before three of them died in the first wave of Kyron's attack on the Light Meadows up north, leaving me the youngest. My mother was already trapped on Aurelia, unable to do anything as her family was torn apart.” he began, struggling to keep his voice steady.

  Starla felt the pain flooding through him, and she held his hand a little tighter as he continued. “After that, things just got worse. Those of my siblings who were not Makhi were in the army. All of them left to fight. I was only sixteen. My father, Jari, High Lord at the time, wouldn't let me go with the other Makhi. I was the strongest Makhi, already destined to be High Lord, my future decided.” He looked up, meeting her eyes, and she felt a faint echo of rebellion, at wanting to be able to choose his own path in life, but knowing he could not. “Four years later, with the Light Meadows turned to darkness, Kyron sent his first attack against our City. Black smoke filled the air for days. We Makhi tried to study it, find out what we were up against. By the time it vanished, no one had found an answer.” He shook his head. “Except me. I had an idea of what it could be but had been unable to prove my theory, and so, no one listened. Though my powers were exceptional, I was considered too young and inexperienced by the older Makhi.”


  He shuddered, and Starla felt numbed by the terrible tempest of emotions, the great anger that he was trying to keep from engulfing her.

  “On the Starsong Festival sixteen years ago, Kyron's smoke had the effect I had predicted. Drodemions sprung up all over the city, killing without thought.”

  Starla saw the horrible creatures in his memory, figures of charred and melted flesh, blind eyes seeking only death, living corpses, with Kyron's mind overriding their own.

  “How—” She shivered, not sure if she actually wanted to know how normal people were turned into those monsters.

  “Kyron doesn't have to kill. He has the ability to take over a person's mind and body, forcing them to do his bidding. He takes their life but twists it rather than extinguishing it. The transformation is excruciating, though brief,” he explained, voice empty of emotion.

  He watched her expression carefully and felt anger, not fear, grow in her. He felt the courage within her. She was stronger than he had given her credit for. “Do you know how Kyron gains strength?”

  “I didn't even know that he could,” Starla admitted, the idea sending a spike of alarm through her. Vaguely, she remembered the Guardians saying something about it but couldn't quite remember what.

  “Death. With every death in every battle, he absorbs the life-force released, strengthening himself. He's a Demilain Destroyer. Since his bond with Ezira was broken, he cannot just suck the life out of everything here, but he can and does absorb it when it is released. He also can no longer simply expel an endless wave of magic. It doesn't regenerate as mine does. Whenever he casts a spell, the power he uses is gone forever. He needs death to recover it, but using magic to kill drains more than it recovers, so he prefers to let his minions do the work. He seeds chaos, and with every death, he grows stronger.”

  Starla could feel and see the terrible hatred building up inside Larkel. What startled her was that it seemed to be aimed at himself, not the looming figure with hair the colour of fresh blood.

  Larkel's eyes lost focus as he continued, his voice hardening. “We tried to quarantine the Drodemions. We wanted to Heal them. They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Babies.” His eyes seemed to solidify with hatred as the darkness behind him began to wrap around his light. Starla had to swallow her bile.

  “The Makhi elders, my father as High Lord, they took my work, and they realised the awful truth. The Drodemions could not be cured. Not by us. The only magic that could set them right was the magic that had created them, or a magic so rare it wasn't worth hoping for. No Makhi had the ability to reach into death's realm.”

  The image of the chest of books on Soreiaphin flashed through his mind briefly before the dark, painful memories flooded it once more. Starla wanted to shy back from the torturous thoughts that played in Larkel's mind. So much pain and devastation.

  “We tried. The Makhi, the Royal Guard, even the citizens tried to bring all the Drodemions into one place. That's when the first new transformation occurred. The Makhi running tests on one of the captured Drodemions discovered the poison they carried. Each Drodemion could create Corruptions.” He felt Starla recoil from the memories in his head. He also felt her determination to hear him through. “My father ordered me away. He didn't want me to be a part of the horror that followed. But he was over-ruled. My powers, my level of control and skill, honed by mental lessons from the age of five, were deemed necessary. Every drodemion was incinerated. All remaining citizens were to be checked by a Makhi, and if any sign of the curse was found, they would be killed too.”

  Starla felt sick as the horror played out in his head. Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. Slaughtered. Innocent babies killed before they could transform. She shuddered away mentally, focusing outside their minds for a time, feeling the breeze in her hair, the late afternoon sun on her back. All that horror and those impossible decisions thrust on him when he hadn't yet turned twenty.

  Starla watched him as he ran a finger along his scars. “When it was all over, there were so many broken families, so many dead. Two more of my siblings didn't make it.” His voice filled with loss, his presence growing hollow. “The remaining Makhi tirelessly searched for a way to combat this if it ever happened again. One day, Makhi Redkin burst into our home while we were having supper. He told my father of the latest discovery. The attacks, the transformations, had all been fuelled by a source of unique magic just beyond the City. Kyron himself had been here, watching his latest creations at work.”

  Larkel sighed, abruptly rising. Starla struggled to rise with him so the connection wouldn't break. Carefully taking control of the bond away from her, he made it so that they no longer needed to be touching to remain mentally connected. Moving back, he removed his hand from her grasp, ignoring the worry in her eyes, and began to pace. She could feel his determination to get through this even as he slipped further into the dark.

  “A week later, more Drodemions showed up, attacking the Northern Gate. Realising that Kyron would be nearby, my father ordered them to keep Kyron's attention on the gate. He and an elite team of the most powerful Makhi would try to drive Kyron back. I was part of that team. Even inexperienced as I was, my power greatly surpassed any living Makhi, my level of control more precise than most. The intense training I had been put through my whole life was to make me ready for situations like that.” He stopped, looking at Starla, his eyes fathomless pools. Inside her mind, she felt him reach a decision. “We found Kyron on a small outcrop of stone along Sunset Ridge. He instantly aimed a spell at me, sensing the greatest magical store. I tried to stop him, but my father pushed me out of the way, casting a defensive spell. Kyron's spell struck the shield with its full force. It shattered, deflecting some of its force towards me. I got hit,” tears streamed down his cheeks, hands pressed against his scars, “but only by the physical force of the spell. The Curse broke straight through and hit my father.”

  Starla took a step toward him, wanting to comfort him, the terrible pain inside him tearing at her, too, as she lived the memory with him. He moved away from her, eyes hard with anger. Her legs faltered to a stop. She felt the agony rip through his mind as his father shut the bond they’d been using to coordinate, the moment of numb horror as Jari stepped in to save his son, even knowing he had no hope of blocking Demilain magic.

  “As my father rose from the ground, we saw—”

  Starla gasped in horror as Larkel's words turned into a guttural cry. His father had become a drodemion. She could see the image clearly. She was so deep into his memory that she was there. Every sight, sound, smell, and touch. She felt the pain of watching someone so dearly loved decay and then turn on you with death in their blind stare and the sickening scent of burning flesh in the air.

  Starla felt nearly crippled by pain and torment as Larkel forced himself to finish.

  “The other Makhi tried to fight him, but Kyron controlled him now. All my father's magic was in the hands of the enemy. I watched as he cut down people who had been his friends, cut down one of his own daughters, my sister. We retreated to the gate, the Makhi screaming for me to end him. I was the only one powerful enough to manage it.” He turned his back on her, hands in fists, trembling by his side. “So I did.”

  The words were unnecessary. Starla was there, in his memory. She felt the soul-ripping anguish as he had cast the spell, the mental torment as the monster before him turned back into a man as death released him from the enslavement curse.

  She forced her numb legs to move. She felt as if she had been run through with a blade, slicing straight through her heart. In his mind, she saw the final act, lived it as he had. She experienced his horror and disbelief as his father killed the very people he had sworn to protect, the unspeakable pain as the spell he cast killed the drodemion High Lord, his father. And then the ordeal as he was tried for murder by negligence, the people baying for his execution, accusing him of murdering their loved ones through his inaction. The King had found him not guilty, and later, he was r
aised to be High Lord. But many of the people never forgave him. They still hated and feared him. They knew it was his research that had concluded that their families couldn't be saved after the first attack. It was his inaction while he had struggled to summon the will to take his father's life that lost them their loved ones when the wave of black smoke swept through the City, and it was his power that made possible the cull that followed.

  Now, in front of him, Starla knew no words would help ease his feelings of guilt and anger. Gently, she reached up and took his face in her hands, her own tears flooding down her cheeks. She entered into his mind as she had done during her trial, pushing through the darkness that tried to hide his light from her. She gasped as she saw clearly now how he viewed himself: as a murderer, with dozens of scars to remind him every day of his failure and his loss. The guilt and shame of feeling that his actions had left his mother’s heart broken, left her in the impossible position of being unable to feel any resentment towards her husband’s murderer because he was her son. At last, she beheld all the shame he had been trying to hide from her. This was the darkness that iced his eyes over, that tempted him to stop feeling. So much pain and self-loathing. He had hardened himself so that he could perform his duty, serve his people, who would never understand, who cast all their anger and hatred at his feet.

  With a shock, she noticed something else. He had secretly cast a spell over himself. If Kyron ever tried to turn this High Lord, he would fail. Larkel would be consumed by his own magic, denying Kyron both a puppet and a power source.

  Larkel opened his eyes, locking them on to Starla's as she entered his mind, her presence soothing his pain, chasing away the nightmarish scenes. Her light filled the empty void inside him. At that moment, he knew he could never survive being parted from her, no matter who or what she was. She had restored to him a kind of hope and love that he thought Kyron had destroyed. But how could she want to stay, now? He was responsible for his own father's death. And his inaction before that had cost hundreds of innocent people their lives. He may as well have killed them, too. And afterwards, the hundreds more who had been infected with a new wave of the drodemion Curse. All those people he, as High Lord, had ordered dead. And the Corruptions, all the lives he had taken for the good of the many. Who could love a murderer? Who would be willing to be tainted by him, to share in the fear and hatred that hounded him through the City streets? The grim darkness tried to blot out her light, but her presence seemed to swell, banishing it.