Rowen gave a weak smile. As soon as he could write, he would. He also wanted to know more about undispellable heat spells, but Volkes tossed him the glass bottle before he could.
“Well? You know where it comes from now. Try it.” Volkes grinned, popping his bottle open with his thumb.
Rowen followed suit, the strange wooden top falling off onto the floor. He almost moved to pick it up, but Volkes waved a hand. “Forget it. Just try it.”
His tongue curled at the taste, and he tilted his head back, letting the fiery liquid fall down his throat. It burned immediately, and he swallowed it fast, coughing a few times. The aftertaste was smooth and cloying, with a rootlike flavor Rowen could not identify.
Volkes whistled. “Wow. You didn’t gag or anything. I’m impressed.” Volkes tilted his head back and downed a portion of his own bottle, then stood up and set it down on the dresser. Rowen’s skin buzzed as Volkes came so close Rowen could smell the Darsean beer on his breath.
“So, Rowen. You want to celebrate or what?”
It occurred to him what Volkes meant, his words about men and men who liked men flashing through his mind.
A chill breeze blew through the window, but it wasn’t the cold that sent goose bumps down Rowen’s neck. He had never been with any man, with anyone at all. Was Volkes the one he wanted as his first?
Kristoff came to his mind then, and with him the anxieties of the coming few days. No. He didn’t want to think about the past, not now.
“Rowen? Do you want to celebrate with me or not?” Volkes asked again, his tone more demanding this time. He reached out and took Rowen’s wrist, his grip firm. “Yes or no?”
He looked so much like Lucas, and yet not. Rowen’s mouth went dry, his heart speeding up at the thought of finally doing something about the desires that had plagued him since he had first seen the blacksmith’s son, the desires that plagued him when he thought of Kristoff. His desires for men, the ones his father had told him to be careful about.
But that didn’t matter here. This was Rowen’s new life. It was normal. Kristoff liked men too, even if he wouldn’t like Rowen.
Rowen gave in to his feelings, his eyes leaving Volkes’s face and roving over his body. Warmth began to suffuse Rowen, curling up his spine and quickening his breath. Volkes smirked.
“Yes, right?” He reached up to Rowen’s chin. “Either you are the lightest weight in history, or just really easy.” Rowen wasn’t sure he liked his words, but they ceased to matter when Volkes’s lips met his.
He had heard girls in the village giggling about such things, and boys and young men describing how soft girls’ lips were. Volkes’s were soft, but Rowen felt the tiny pinpricks of stubble, and Volkes moved his lips in such a way that guided Rowen to copy it, molding his mouth against the other man’s. Volkes pulled with his kiss, as if nibbling on Rowen’s lips, and the sensation sent the curling heat into a burning flame.
“Do you want any more beer?” Volkes asked, breaking apart and leaving Rowen breathless. He shook his head, letting Volkes take the bottle from his hand and place it on the floor. Volkes smirked.
“Have you ever been with anyone?” When Rowen didn’t respond immediately, he clarified. “Have you ever fucked anyone?”
Rowen blushed hot.
“Well?” He moved forward, so fast that Rowen stepped back, bumping against the wall. Volkes put a hand on his chest, then trailed it lower, his lips turning up farther as Rowen squirmed. He was hard now, his erection uncomfortably confined, and he knew it was obvious.
“Answer me. Am I going to be your first?” He didn’t move, his hand motionless an inch above the bulge in Rowen’s pants.
For a moment, Kristoff flashed through Rowen’s mind, sending the burgeoning heat into a consuming flame. Rowen wished this was Kristoff.
No. Kristoff was going back to his village, and thinking about that wasn’t what he wanted right now. He pushed the thought away and nodded at Volkes.
Volkes broke into a victorious smile. “I’m going to make you feel really fucking good.”
Chapter 13
THE SUN had barely begun to turn the sky purple when Kristoff summoned a small storm to take him up over the ocean. Getting the permission the night before had been easy.
Now came the hard part.
Storm Lords were no strangers to walking around in foreign places. But usually they visited large cities, where a strange face was not unusual. Rowen’s village had been tiny, one of those rare places where it was most likely everyone knew everyone else. A newcomer would stand out, especially one who arrived with no rations or bags from a long journey. Kristoff wished once again that Rowen’s village was not smack in the middle of what he had thought was uninhabitable desert. He had been surprised to see it the first time.
The storm took him into the air, a small thundersquall that strengthened as he flew over the ocean. Tendrils of air supported him as he flew for miles, stopping once at the small island where he had taken Rowen to relax and refresh himself before he continued on. The island was beautiful, and he wondered why no one had made it a port yet.
The storm weakened underneath him as he moved on and over the desert, the dry air and parched ground sucking the moisture from his power. He kept moving, summoning what little humidity was left in the air, before he saw the thatched houses that marked the village. The place he had found Rowen.
He landed immediately, sending the storm rushing ahead of him. There was not much moisture or rain left, but what little there was would surely be appreciated by the townsfolk.
Taking a deep breath of hot, dry air, Kristoff walked on.
Warmth seeped through the soles of Kristoff’s flimsy sandals from the sand and clay underneath. He knew that farther south, the land would be humped in dunes of sand, but here the grains merely collected on top of rust-colored earth. His steps made a soft crunching noise, as though he walked on snow. Small plumes of dust billowed from his feet when he walked past an area where the sand was deeper, and he left flat-soled footprints.
A lizard, tail wriggling, scurried past him and disappeared into a hole in the ground. The heat of the day grew as the sun mounted the sky.
Bushes sprouted from the ground the closer he got to the village. They were small, stunted things, and Kristoff didn’t recognize them. Instead of leaves, they had spines, and around most of them, the ground was scuffed.
Not scuffed. A footprint was embedded in the sand near the scrub, and he saw more as he walked. They led toward the village, but he saw no sign of whoever had left them.
The day had moved on toward noon by the time he arrived, forehead beaded with sweat. The storm he had sent had passed over the town, the stratus clouds thinned into nothing as the sun beat through them. There was no unnatural heat that marked a heat spell here, but it was certainly hotter than Kristoff was used to.
He paused. The footprints were more obvious here, many of them gathered around mounds of fresh dirt. Sticks were hammered into the ground next to them.
Kristoff’s eyes widened. Graves. Dozens of them, coming all at once into his consciousness as he kept looking. His throat tightened.
Had his storm done this a week ago?
He hurried into the village, the scrub brush vanishing in the face of tiny red clay huts with thatched roofs. They stretched into the distance, no rhyme or reason to their placement, although a few were built so close that their roofs touched, forming a shady passage between them. No more dust swirled under his feet as he walked, the ground baked into fired clay and swept clean. In the distance, a man walked between two houses, a bucket on his shoulder.
Each hut had a gutter on the edge of the roof, which drained into a bucket. They were clearly desperate for water here, and he wished his small storm had brought some. The thatched roofs of each hut spread far beyond the edge of the house, providing an overhang and a promise of shade.
For a moment, Kristoff stood in the village, staring at the huts and feeling the heat of the day. This wa
s where Rowen was from. This had been his student’s home. He wished he knew which one Rowen had lived in.
“Hello.” His heart leapt, and he turned toward the source of the voice. A wiry older man with graying hair walked toward him, carrying a water flask. Despite his age, his eyes were clear and green, the same color as Rowen’s. “Where have you come from?” The man stopped close, peering into Kristoff’s eyes. “How far have you come? Do you need water?”
“I…. No.” Kristoff stepped back, and the man’s brow furrowed. Kristoff bit the inside of his lip, struggling to remember his story. “My supplies ran out just outside town, but I am well. I am… looking for someone.”
“I am Alain, the elder of this village. Who are you looking for?”
Kristoff’s mind reeled. The elder, already? The other man he had seen had vanished, and the doors to the houses were closed. “Where is everyone?”
“It is the heat of the day.” Alain’s mouth turned up. “Why would anyone be outside?”
“I….” Kristoff swallowed. He needed his information. Then he could go. “Could I speak with the village doctor?”
Alain frowned, his eyes leaving Kristoff’s face. “I am sorry. She died recently, in the last heat spell.”
Kristoff’s blood turned to ice in his veins despite the heat. The graves outside the village. There had been dozens of them. Fresh ones.
The heat spell. “How many?” he whispered.
“Twenty-seven,” Alain answered. “The heat spells this year have been very harsh.”
Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven dead. Kristoff’s stomach turned, his words to Rowen coming back to his mind. Preventing them from getting to the point where they killed anyone? No wonder he had looked angry. Kristoff was surprised Rowen hadn’t laughed in his face.
He had failed. He had failed Rowen, and he had failed this village.
“Are you all right?” Alain leaned closer. “Come inside, out of the sun.”
KRISTOFF SAT on a mat woven from the scrub plants that grew outside the village, sipping the water Alain gave him. The elder sat across from him, silent.
Kristoff didn’t want to take any more resources from these people than necessary, but if it would just be thrown out after he had sipped it, he didn’t want it wasted. The inside of the hut was sparse, the mat he sat on and a writing desk carved from stone in the corner the only furnishings. A hanging of what looked like longer versions of the scrub plants blocked the entrance to another room.
Twenty-seven dead. In one heat spell.
The Storm Lords rarely ventured far into the southwestern regions, as they were perilously close to the areas of the world that were already uninhabitable, ruined by the constant heat spells that no one, not even a group of Storm Lords, could break. But he always performed his duties as soon as they were assigned, which was supposed to be when the heat spells were first sensed. A heat spell that killed twenty-seven people….
“How long did it last?” Kristoff asked. Alain looked up. “The last heat spell.”
“It only broke about a week ago,” the man said, gaze distant. “It lasted nearly three weeks.”
Kristoff set his water cup down, his stomach spasming. Three weeks. This village, and Rowen, had suffered for three weeks. Alain merely watched him, his gaze unreadable.
He had to make it up to them. He had to make it up to Rowen, somehow.
“Alain?”
The elder met his eyes once more, tilting his head at Kristoff’s tone.
“Can you tell me more about the heat spells here? What are they like?” He needed to know. He wanted to get information about Rowen, about the seeds the doctor wanted to know more about, but he hoped that would all come up in the information about the heat spells here.
Knowing about the hardships these people faced, hardships that it should have been Kristoff and the other Storm Lords’ responsibility to prevent, was most important.
Alain sighed, the creases in the skin of his eyes and face more prominent. “We had another traveler come here, about a year ago, a northerner. He has said that the spells here are the worst he’s seen. I lost my wife to one, two years ago. She was the village elder, and I had to take over.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It is not your fault.” Kristoff frowned, his stomach turning again. “It’s just the way of the world. It gets hotter each year, and the heat spells get worse. This village is dying. There is nothing we can do, is there?” He turned hopeful eyes to Kristoff, and anxiety thrummed through him.
“Was it always like this?”
Alain’s gaze grew distant. “No. We had grass here when I was young.” A small smile formed on his face. “We used to supply travelers with pit seeds for their journeys.” Kristoff perked up. “They would come through here on their way south. But soon they stopped coming. Travelers came back, and they said that nothing was there. There were mines, I think, but the heat overtook them. Now it’s taking us, and we’re running out of pit seeds.” He shook his head ruefully. “The storms aren’t enough.” His green eyes met Kristoff’s.
Kristoff swallowed. “I… what are pit seeds?”
“I’ll show you.” Alain stood, motioning for Kristoff to stay where he was. He moved over to his desk, a drawer scraping as he pulled it open, and came back with three small seeds.
Rowen really was a good artist. They looked exactly the same.
“These were the reason our village was prosperous, once,” Alain said. “The brush that grows from our village. We thought we were blessed, once. We prayed to the Goddess of the Brush.” Kristoff kept his face neutral. For all the religions he had heard of, praying to a deity of something that clearly supported these people was one of the better ones. “These lower body temperature,” Alain continued. “It makes you feel hotter, but they keep you alive.”
It clicked in Kristoff’s mind. Rowen had taken these to stay alive. “What… is there a drawback?”
“None, unless you take too many.” Alain closed his fist, the seeds disappearing. “You lose the power of speech. A curse by the Brush Goddess, some say. I have only seen it twice in my lifetime.”
Kristoff’s heart sped up. This was it. This man knew what happened to Rowen. “Tell me about them.”
Alain’s eyes narrowed. “The first was a traveler, back when I was a child. He took a satchel of seeds with him on his way south. When he returned, he could not speak.” Alain fell silent, staring at Kristoff.
“And the second?”
Alain’s mouth turned up, but it wasn’t a smile. “The second was a young man. I am not sure exactly what happened, but it was during a heat spell a year ago. His parents died. Some in the village say he stole their water, but no matter what happened, he took too many. He never spoke again.”
Kristoff swallowed hard. “What happened to him?”
Alain did smile this time. “How about you tell me, Storm God? Are you here because we sacrificed him?”
Kristoff’s heart thudded hard, his mouth going dry. Storm God. That was what northerners called them, and superstitious people from the more advanced countries of Linland and Pearlen.
Stories and rumors traveled far. And Kristoff had no idea what to do. Talia had never instructed him on anything like this. Did he go along with it?
Not to mention what he had said. Sacrifice. That explained the state Rowen had been in. Not a murderer or a thief. Kristoff did not believe for a second Rowen had stolen his parents’ water. Even if he had, it would have been in desperation, to survive a heat spell Kristoff should have dispelled in three days, not three weeks.
These people had sacrificed him, a young man, to bring a storm. If Rowen had not been a Storm Lord himself and Kristoff hadn’t noticed him, he would have died for nothing.
Kristoff knew what he had to do.
“Yes. I have come to give you a warning.” Kristoff stood from the mat, Alain bowing his head. The elder didn’t tremble or quail, making no sound, and some of Kristoff’s anger ebbed. This man knew what he had don
e was wrong.
But the warning still needed to be given.
“If you ever sacrifice anyone again, there will be no more storms. And without us, the Goddess of the Brush will abandon you.”
Alain didn’t move. Kristoff left the house, heading immediately to the edge of town. Forget the pit seeds. These people needed them more.
He wanted to get out of here. Back to Rowen.
Chapter 14
THE OCEAN was huge.
The water lapped at Rowen’s toes, pricks of cold that multiplied and rushed up his legs as the waves burbled up the sandy beach. The sand reminded him of his village after a windstorm, when sand from the south would blow up into the village and nearly bury the brush. The elderly would always complain as they swept it from the streets.
The only thing that swept this sand was the sea, ebbing and flowing. It reflected the morning sun, a riot of color and an alternation of cold and warmth. It reminded him of Kristoff.
Kristoff, who today would discover what the villagers believed he had done.
“Happy there?” Volkes moved next to him, Rowen’s face heating again as he put his mentor and his fears out of his mind. He moved his gaze over the northerner’s body. He wore no shirt now, only a pair of shorts, and the sight brought back vivid memories of the night before. Volkes’s lips, his mouth, his powerful arms as he had pushed Rowen down on the bed…. Rowen shivered. He wasn’t sure he had liked being pushed down like that, but what Volkes had done after that had more than made up for it. Rowen remembered how he had shuddered, then shuddered again, his body succumbing to a level of pleasure he had never been able to bring himself as Volkes rubbed harshly against him.
It was confusing, though. Once it was over, Volkes had sent him back to his room. Rowen had no idea if it would happen again, or even if Volkes had liked it… although the taste of the other man’s seed on his tongue suggested he had. Volkes had certainly seemed to love shoving himself down Rowen’s throat. Rowen hadn’t liked that part as much.
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