House of Falling Rain (Eyes of Odyssium Book 1)

by C. A. Bryers

  If he had any willpower to resist her before, it was gone now. He drew her body tight to his, at last satisfying the overpowering, aching urge to drink her in with the breadth of his desire. The touching of their lips was like a sun exploding in his mind, dazzling his senses with light and fire. He had never felt anything like it, and it only served to make him hunger for more, to feel that wild, thrilling awakening over and over again. Pressing her closer, kissing her deeper, Salla wanted to open himself to her and her to him until the two melded into one magnificent being.

  What am I doing? What…? he thought in the dizzying swirl of emotion and lust. The ludicrous desire to lay himself bare for her, to become some sort of otherworldly being created through their union, it all seemed absurd for the most fleeting of instances. A second later, however, it felt as natural as if that wish was something he had craved all his life, but denied himself until now.

  Ciracelle broke away for a scant moment, lips drawn tight in a smile. Holding his face with both hands to keep him momentarily at bay, she stared into his eyes, searching. Placating him every few moments with a brush of lips here or a darting lick there, Ciracelle returned time and again to that focused, almost inquisitive stare.

  “What is it?” he said with a gasp, his eyes finally leaving that which he desired most to return her gaze. His hands moved to her shoulders, sliding down the length of her arms. One hand slid to an abrupt halt midway down her forearm, bumping into something hard about her wrist. “C—Ciracelle, what—”

  But she smothered his lips again, and any rising uncertainty he felt was doused like a lit candle in a downpour. The back-and-forth jousting went on for what felt like hours. When Ciracelle reciprocated, they pawed and grasped for each other, each trying to leave not even the tiniest sliver of space between their two bodies. The feeling was euphoric, like standing on a plane outside of reality where nothing existed but a starving desire at last satisfied.

  But during those times when she withdrew to simply look him in the eyes, it was as if he lay stranded in a desert without an oasis for miles in any direction. Those near-desperate moments were fueled by a driving need to give more of himself to her, to open himself wider in a way he could not with Rainne, if only so that she might give herself to him again. Then the process would repeat—a maddening cycle of torment and ecstasy, death and life renewed.

  “Please, Ciracelle,” he said between panting breaths as she stared again into his eyes.

  She blinked suddenly, her hardened focus breaking. Her face glistened with a thin sheen of perspiration, features wrinkling as if confused.

  He tried kissing her, but her expression had gone blank, her lips unresponsive.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring off into the distance now. Her hands planted on his chest, gently pushing him away. “S—Salla. Salla Saar.”

  Hearing her speak his name, it sounded as if it had come from another world. Inch by inch, the rapturous, insatiable tide of desire began to recede, ebbing from his body. Her hands slipped from his chest, and his fell lifelessly to his sides. Now standing a few feet from her, still trying to catch his breath, Salla could not fathom what had just taken place. Fading whispers of adrenaline recalled the stunning heights of pleasure, want and need he had felt only moments ago.

  But it was gone now. All that remained were disheveled thoughts and questions springing up left and right.

  Face still beading with sweat, Ciracelle looked at him as if she did not recognize him.

  Salla blinked repeatedly. “What did you do to me?”

  Her dazed expression transformed into one of pain and betrayal. “It’s true. Everything about you…everything is a lie.”

  “What? What are you talking about, Ciracelle?”

  She backed away. “I think it’s ti—”

  “Ciracelle. You got it?” a voice rang out from down the corridor.

  Salla recognized the voice, his confusion turning swiftly to anger.

  Ciracelle turned about just as a figure strode from one of the cells lining the walls. In the staggered flickers of light, Joht Tavross advanced upon the two, his face plastered with a smug grin. He stopped a few feet from Ciracelle.

  Salla didn’t know what to think, looking to the girl he had befriended for some sort of answer. With shoulders drawn in, head lowered like a dog awaiting an inevitable scolding, she told him without words what had just happened. She had conspired with Joht, but why? What could she possibly gain from—

  And then, he had it. It all made sudden, terrible sense. From the hazy recollections of the last dying gasps of their passion, she had said his name…the true name he had never told her.

  She knew. She knew everything Delflore had worked so hard to keep hidden.

  “For him?” With teeth bared, Salla threw a contemptuous gesture toward Joht. “Why, Ciracelle?”

  She flinched, eyes resonating with apprehension and even a small note of shame.

  “Ciracelle.”

  As much as it seemed she would do anything to avoid it, Ciracelle returned Salla’s hard, imploring stare. Perhaps it was a small penance given in light of what she had done, or perhaps it was the only way she could communicate her regret in Joht’s looming presence.

  “Ciracelle!” Joht repeated, face flashing with anger.

  She spun about but remained rooted to where she stood.

  The other man softened his approach. “Ciracelle. You did a good thing today.”

  The nod she offered in return was minuscule.

  “Is it enough?” he prodded.

  Hesitating, looking as if she wished to shrink into nothingness, she nodded again.

  Salla bolted forward. “Ciracelle, you don’t have to tell him anyth—”

  Joht was a foot in front of him an instant later, and Salla didn’t even see what it was that sent bursts of light shooting through his field of vision as he toppled to the ground.

  “Joht, no!” screamed Ciracelle.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, she does.” Shaking the pain from his fist, Joht Tavross stood over the fallen man. “What’s his name?”

  A thick silence followed Joht’s question.

  “Ciracelle!”

  “It’s…it’s Salla Saar. He’s not…he’s not a Majdi at all. He was a scrapper. Captain of a ship called the Mayla Rose.”

  Joht’s grin became all teeth. “Well, Salla. You’re finished here.”

  “What’s going on down there?” a voice from above called down from the top of the stairwell, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps banging their way down the metal steps.

  Joht backed away, acting oblivious as to why there was a man lying on the floor.

  Salla sat upright and saw Lochmore’s prime assistant, Santerre, clambering down the stairs into view.

  “I’m fairly certain I asked a question.” Santerre’s eyes swept left to right, her focus closing in on Salla’s bloody lip. “Mother’s bones, Tallas, what happened? Were you fighting again?”

  He dabbed at the blood. “If you consider me hitting his fist with my face fighting, then sure.”

  “What are you all even doing down here? You know House rules. Nobody comes down here without an escort.” Her attention shifted to Ciracelle, whose fingers were buried in her hair. “And what is that?”

  Ciracelle looked to the right. Her sleeve had slipped down to the elbow, exposing a sleek metal device on her wrist.

  “It’s a bracelet, Santerre. Relax. We’ll get back upstairs, so don’t stress your head about it.” Joht’s tone was rife with irritation. “Look, this is all nothing. Ciracelle decided to sneak off down here with Tallas, and I didn’t like it much. You know our history together.”

  The angular contours of Santerre’s face went stony. “No, that’s not a bracelet, Joht. It’s a bracer. How did you get a prototype in here? Why would you even need one here?” She shook her head, hands waving in exasperation. “You know what? Lochmore can sort this all out in the morning. I imagine your rhos will be anno
yed to have to be called back here less than a day after they left. Now, everybody upstairs. I’ll see about getting this stairwell blocked as well, since rules don’t seem to mean much to the three of you.”

  Ciracelle almost sprinted to the steps.

  “You, stop.” Santerre held open her palm expectantly. “Give me that.”

  Ciracelle stood suddenly immobile as if Santerre’s command had been a blast of stunning tephic launched into her back. Her poise meek, she walked back to the woman, slid the bracer from her wrist, and dropped it in the prime assistant’s hand.

  “Thank you. Now start moving. All of you.”

  25

  A few hours had passed since Santerre had rousted Salla, Joht, and Ciracelle from the House prison levels. For Salla, sleep came in fitful bursts. Comfort was elusive, not that it was ever easily found on these musty old mattresses in the grim House barracks. That was but one thing keeping him awake.

  The other reason for Salla’s unease lay over him like a blanket made of itchweed. For weeks, even months now, uncertainty had seemed to be the defining characteristic of his life. Would the forces struggling inside kill him one day? Would the Majdi Order catch up with him? Those had been but two questions buzzing about amid what felt like thousands. But uncertainty was not the reason for his unease any longer. It was replaced by a dire, dreadful certainty, an assuredness of what the future had in store for him—a future once more bereft of hope.

  His future was a cell, whether it was back down below in the dungeons where Ciracelle had betrayed his trust, or in some other fetid hole from which the Majdi Order would ensure he could never escape. He had come so far here in the House of Falling Rain, had found a small measure of acceptance and even come to see the Order in perhaps a truer light than in the past. Peace was made with Rainne Zehava, and the power of the Eyes of the One and the vestiges of the Magsem had been quelled for the time being.

  But that was all coming to an end. Ciracelle knew everything. He saw it in her eyes in that moment she withdrew her lips from his. It was like she was looking at a stranger.

  She was looking at a stranger, he thought. It was the truth. Since leaving Natke, he’d concealed or lied about his past to nearly everyone with whom he’d come into contact.

  This would be his last night among these Majdi and ijau, some of whom he knew to be good men and women who had gone astray. For fleeting instances, he’d felt glimmers of belonging among them. But he did not belong here, nor anywhere, did he? It was a lesson life had seemed intent upon teaching him ever since his mother had died. Natke, his father, the crew of the Mayla Rose, and now the Majdi Order. Nothing lasted.

  Feeling as cold and isolated as if he were already locked away in some bottomless pit to be swallowed by time until forgotten, Salla drifted off to a shallow, restless sleep.

  ***

  The pattering of bare feet on the barracks floor woke him. How long he’d been asleep was impossible to say—an hour? Minutes? Shifting in his bed, Salla watched a squat shape slip through the room, maneuvering to one of the bunks.

  “Joht?” the figure whispered, and Salla recognized the voice as Trigg’s. “Joht, wake up.”

  Joht let out a sleepy burst of air. “Go away.”

  In the utter stillness of the barracks, their hushed conversation carried throughout the room with ease.

  A marked note of apprehension entered Trigg’s voice. “You wanted us to watch Ciracelle, right?”

  “That’s done with, you idiot. Now get out of here.”

  Trigg’s shape bobbed in place as if unsure of what to do. “Anyway, Joht, thought you might want to know she still isn’t here. Her bunk’s been empty all night.”

  Joht propped himself up on an elbow. “Trigg, I’ll let you in on a little secret, and then I’ll let you in on one more. Ready?”

  “Sure, Joht.”

  “Good. Ciracelle being gone all night? Nothing new. Why do you think I had you and the others watch her the last few nights? So she wouldn’t go running off.” His sigh was like a release of pressurized steam in the darkness of the barracks. “Why do you think she was so worn out every day? Make sense yet?”

  “Oh…oh. Yeah, Joht. I think so. You two had a thing, though, right? How’s that make you feel, man?”

  “Trigg—”

  “Right, right, none of my business.” Trigg patted Joht’s mattress and started to walk away. “Wait, what was the other secret?”

  “The other secret is that if you don’t get back in your bunk and leave me alone in two seconds, I’m going to feed you your eyelids. Now what are you still doing here?”

  Without another word, Trigg obediently scurried away like a scavenger dog spooked by a noise, retreating to his bunk.

  ***

  When morning came, Salla’s body ached, and he still felt as physically and mentally drained as he had the night before. Sitting upright in bed, twisting the stiffness from his neck, Salla looked left and right. Some House students stirred in bed; some were getting dressed, while other bunks lay bare save for a pile of rumpled blankets. Joht still lay dead asleep across the room, his mouth hanging open against his old pillow. But a few bunks further down the wall, the state of Ciracelle’s bed—her brown blanket flat and neatly tucked in—was difficult to ignore.

  He chose to ignore it anyway. He didn’t care where she had been all night. Their friendship over the last several days had been nothing more than a ploy so she could get inside his head. Slipping on the drab gray House uniform yet again, Salla spotted Joht finally sitting upright. He was staring down at Ciracelle’s empty bunk for several long moments before turning his dark gaze to Salla.

  “Trigg,” he called out, refusing to break eye contact with Salla.

  “Yeah, Joht.” Trigg pulled a shirt over his ill-defined, hairy frame, stood and moved toward Joht. “What do you need?”

  Joht’s stare finally swept away. “Ciracelle. Training’s about to start and she’s still gone. That isn’t like her. Get the others. Have them start looking around.”

  Trigg nodded, and darted away.

  Joht again directed his purposeful stare at Salla. There was a smoldering intensity there, a silent threat that spoke of the horrors he would unleash should he find out Salla’s hand was in some way responsible for Ciracelle’s prolonged absence.

  With his mood darkening into deeper degrees of blackness by the second, Salla turned his back to him. Whatever reason Ciracelle had for not coming back to the barracks after Santerre had sent her on her way had nothing to do with him. Hopping down from his bunk, he decided to get on with his day, to enjoy what little relative freedom he had left before Joht and his accomplice revealed their discovery about him.

  A few minutes later, Salla loitered in the broken, dismal environs of the foyer, lingering at the fringes of a small grouping of other House students awaiting the day’s opening of Cereporis Hall. Joht arrived and performed a few stretches but kept his grim countenance set. One after another, his acolytes returned.

  “Nothing?” The concern was beginning to show on Joht’s face now. “Where did you look?”

  “Iron Grounds, then the commissary.” Trigg gave a regretful shake of his head. “She wasn’t there, man.”

  “I tried Adjutu’s Path. Same with all of the assistant apartments I could get into,” said Ystolt, running both hands through her bone-white hair.

  The mention of Adjutu’s Path sparked a memory, something Salla had forgotten in the haze of Ciracelle’s tephic-assisted seduction and the dark clouds of dread that had gathered about him ever since.

  Rainne.

  He hadn’t seen her since before the whole debacle with Ciracelle and Joht, and he wondered if she was still in that empty living compartment, resting after her body had gone weak. As if of its own accord, his body started moving toward Adjutu’s Path several seconds before his mind became aware of it.

  He’d just crossed the threshold to disappear into the corner that led to the assistants’ quarters when the sound of
racing, leaden footsteps brought him about. Other heads in the foyer swiveled toward the passage leading to the commissary. A second later, Kanoh burst forth from the mouth of the hall, eyes darting from face to face, his expression on the verge of panic.

  “Out of the way! Out of the way!” he shouted, weaving by Gavon and pushing Ranna and Wescusi aside until he found Joht.

  Joht’s face fell slack. “What is it?”

  He slowed, breathing hard. “I found her. She’s down there, in the bottom prison level.” He shook his head as if trying to comprehend what he’d seen. “She’s…she’s been attacked, Joht. Come on!”

  Kanoh shot from their midst like a missile, and the others charged after him.

  Unsure of what else to do, Salla started running too.

  Ahead, Joht skidded to a halt, eyes afire. “Stop. You’re not going down there.”

  “You’re wasting time.” Salla did not slow, running at full bore for the passage leading down to the prison levels.

  The sound of a couple dozen feet banging down the metal stairs was like a barrage of automatic gunfire. The crowd before him kept charging down the steps past the first prison level, veering to the right like a swarm of bats in the shadowy, disused cell level.

  “Over here!” he heard Kanoh shout from the forward wedge of the mob.

  The path taken was becoming darkly familiar, and Salla felt his lungs go cold as those ahead stopped at the bend. The corridor fell into an eerie, solemn silence. Gently weaving through the ranks toward the front, Salla watched the doors to the expanded cell Delflore had prepared for him draw nearer. There was no chance the signs of recent renovation and use would go unnoticed. Perhaps while everybody was busy staring at what had happened to the girl, sure. But what about after that, when the investigation began?

  No chance, he knew with the darkest of certainties.

  A moment later, Salla was only one pair of shoulders from the front row of onlookers. Iriscent was on her knees over the crumpled form on the cold stone floor, hands hovering over the body, no doubt calling upon her tephic to help Ciracelle in some shape or form. Whether it was to check the severity of her injuries, to stop the bleeding or to manage the pain, Salla couldn’t say. It could be all of those things, or she could be simply checking for signs of life where none existed.