by K. A. Linde
So, how was it here, in the middle of the Fallen Desert?
“Why is she so upset?” Cyrene asked Rita.
“It is our most closely guarded secret. Even more than the city,” she whispered. “Quidera will have to tell the council that a foreigner can sense the metal as well.”
“All Doma can sense it,” she told Rita.
Rita frowned. “I did not know that.”
“Different traditions here, Cyrene,” Dean said. “We should tread lightly.”
Cyrene nodded. “It was precious in Alandria, too.”
“Indeed. They had been mining Tendrille for generations, and pure Tendrille was incredibly rare. Your sword might be one of the few remaining weapons there made of it. We do not know what they have been doing with it here.”
“Well, let’s find out,” she said, striding forward to Quidera, who was talking to a tall man with brown skin, wearing impressively woven garments of dark purple.
A leader for certain.
Cyrene bowed her head, an acknowledgment from an equal. “Greetings. Thank you so much for accommodating me and my captain while we reunite you with one of your own.” She looked at the man and watched him weigh and assess her. “I am Domina Cyrene. I speak for the Doma. It is a great blessing to meet so many here today.”
The man pursed his lips, as if to disagree with Cyrene’s assessment. But manners persevered. “Hello, Domina. I am Councilman Dalwin of the Tyghan people. We have heard of the Doma and assimilated some into our ranks many generations prior, but there are no Doma here. We are a peaceful society of artisans and water seekers.”
Cyrene smiled at him. “It makes my heart soar to hear that you mean only peace, considering the world that we live in and the wars that are breaking out across it. And you can use a different name if you like, but anyone who can sense the metal of the gods is a descendant of Domara, and thus, they are Doma. Whatever name you choose to give them.”
Councilman Dalwin looked outraged and turned to Quidera with fury on his face. “Who told her about Hohl?”
“As I was trying to say,” Quidera said sharply, reflexively touching the scar on her face, “Cyrene…the Domina…felt it as soon as we were on our descent.”
“That is impossible,” Dalwin cried. “No one, save a water seeker, can feel the power of Hohl.”
“She is a water seeker,” Quidera said.
Dean cleared his throat next to Cyrene. “My apologies for interrupting. I am Dean, the Domina’s captain. By Hohl, do you mean, Tendrille?”
Dalwin looked at Dean with disinterest. “What is Tendrille?”
Cyrene reached behind her and removed Shadowbreaker. “This is Tendrille.”
Dalwin shuddered with anger at the sight of the sword. “Who did you steal this from? Hohl is sacred. It cannot leave the Tyghan people!”
“Tendrille—or as you call it, Hohl—is the metal of the gods of Domara. It came all the way across the ocean in Alandria, where I received it during a dragon tournament. I had a blacksmith forge this blade for me. Its name is Shadowbreaker.”
Dalwin shook at the word ocean and seemed wholly unconvinced by Cyrene’s story. “Quidera, commandeer our weapon and see these thieves out.”
Quidera looked at Cyrene skeptically. “Sir, I believe her story. She was able to pull water straight out of thin air. She is a water seeker at the least. Though she is of the wetlands. And she was training us on using our powers to find—”
Dalwin cut her off. “Our ways are sacred as well, Quidera. We do not change the way we send out sects of water seekers and how we collect our most important resource. Whatever her methods.”
“But it worked,” Jenstad said, speaking up to the man for the first time.
“You are dismissed, Jenstad,” Dalwin said.
“Why must you always reject anything that is different than you?”
The councilman narrowed his eyes. “I said, you are dismissed. And you will be deducted a water ration.”
Jenstad just glared at the man and pushed past the rest of his sect. Cyrene saw her one real ally disappearing.
But then Lady Cauthorn appeared before the councilman. “Hello, Dalwin. It has been a long time.”
Dalwin eyed Rita. Then something must have registered. His jaw dropped. “Ritanya, is it you?”
“Yes. I did not know that you had become part of the council,” she said with the small smile, “brother.”
He stepped forward and embraced her. “What are you doing in Aleut?”
“The council sent me thirty years ago to watch for the rise of the seeker,” Rita said. “And I am telling you that time is now. That Cyrene is leading the charge. We are here to let you know of the glad tidings and for me to see my granddaughter, if you will.”
“Yes, Isabylle, of course,” he murmured. “We will go to Isabylle at once.”
“And my glad tidings?” she asked him. “You will call a council meeting?”
“Yes, yes,” he said dismissively. “Of course. The rise of the seeker.”
But then, out of nowhere, a small girl of no more than thirteen or fourteen appeared in the street. The tidings must have reached her through some network because she came dashing toward them and threw her arms around Lady Cauthorn.
“Grandmother,” the girl said, her black hair cascading down her back in a long, messy braid.
“Isabylle,” Rita gasped. “You are so big.”
“Fourteen last moon cycle,” Isabylle announced. “Please tell me that you have returned for good. No one has let me to the surface to see you in so long.”
“I am. I am here for good.”
Dalwin turned then and spoke swiftly to Quidera during the heartfelt reunion.
“Come on,” Quidera said a moment later. “Dalwin is allowing you to stay while the sun is at its hottest, and we are offering you each a water ration. I will find you accommodations.”
Cyrene glanced at Dean, who nodded his head once.
“We can do no more until the council is called. Getting some rest might do you some good.”
“And what about you, Captain?”
He grinned. “I have other things in mind.”
Her cheeks colored at his insinuation, and she quickly followed Quidera through the winding maze that was the city of Aleut. Every inch of it was as stunning as the entrance. Though the ceilings were more normal height once into accommodations, none of it felt low or as if they were under tons of rock.
“Here, this will do,” Quidera said, gesturing for them to both enter.
Cyrene observed the lodgings they had been given. A small one-bedroom room with two beds. Nothing fancy, but anything would do at this point.
“I will collect you again when the council is called,” Quidera told her.
“Thank you very much, Quidera. We appreciate your hospitality,” Cyrene said.
Quidera nodded once and then closed the door. Cyrene sensed more than heard a lock slide into place from the other side. She frowned. That was not promising.
“Dean,” she said, her eyes still on the lock, “they locked us in.”
“And? Either of us can undo a lock.” His hands slid down her arms. His chest pressing gently against her back.
“Yes, but…” she murmured.
“Are you upset they locked us in or that you are locked in with me?” he asked against the shell of her ear.
She closed her eyes, the move involuntary. His arms moved to band around her waist and pulled her harder against him. His lips found a spot behind her ear that made her shudder.
“I think…they’re hiding something,” she said instead of every other thing that was going through her mind.
He kissed her neck. “They most definitely are.”
“Dean…is now the time?”
He kissed her jaw. “When will there be another time as there is now?”
She tipped her head back against his chest. “I don’t know…sometime.”
“We should seize the moment.” He turned her in his arms, brought h
is hands to her jawline, and tilted her face up to look at him. “Unless this is not what you want. Unless you do not feel as I do.”
“What happened to, save the world, and we’ll figure out the rest after?” Cyrene begged, unable to say the words he so wanted to hear.
“I realized that I might not survive this. I know what our odds are. And I do not want to have wasted the moment. Wasted our time together.” His hazel eyes were not pleading. They were not demanding. They were just certain. So certain of her.
She stood on her tiptoes and drew his mouth to hers. He reached, trying to pull her closer, harder, more. But she held firm. Held him in her grasp and tasted him. Her Dean. The one who had proposed to keep her in Eleysia and gone across the bridge to earn magic for her.
But also, the one who had blamed her for his parents’ deaths, who had poisoned her and then not remembered her and said such cruel things to her in Alandria. They were both her Dean. Not different, but the same. Just as she was both sides of Cyrene. Good and evil. Not inherently one or the other. But a gray area.
And maybe, just maybe, she could move past what had happened to them. What they had done to each other. Find a new place for him. For the man standing before her—not as the prince of Eleysia, but as her captain. As hers.
Finally, she withdrew from him and smiled. “I do not want to do this as a chance against the odds. Malysa does not get to claim this, too. Our moments are not wasted. They could never be wasted.”
He kissed her one more time. “You just want to break the lock.”
She grinned devilishly. “No one locks me away and gets away with it.”
16
The Youth
Dean had the door unlocked in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t even an impressive feat. It was clearly someone who had underestimated them. Whatever they thought of the rise of the seeker and that part of their culture, they certainly weren’t taking her seriously.
There wasn’t even a guard posted. It was frankly a little insulting.
“Stop looking like that,” Dean said with a laugh.
“What?” Cyrene asked, following him down the hallway.
“Like, how dare they not know who I am.”
“Psh,” she muttered. “I don’t expect them to, but with their distrust of foreigners, you’d think they’d be more careful.”
“I suspect Quidera was doing us a favor. She can say she locked us in. She did her part. It’s not her fault if we escaped.”
Cyrene shrugged. “I don’t know what to think of this place. They have Tendrille and Doma—Doma who fled the fall of magic, I might add,” she told him. “Yet half their water seekers barely have any water magic, and they’re terrified to speak about this Hohl. With this much power, they could be a force to be reckoned with. What are they afraid of?”
“From what it seems…everything.” He checked the next hallway and then turned them right back toward the main common area of the city.
“It’s been a long time since the full-blooded Doma were here. Perhaps the magical line has just been too diluted. Who knows how many even made it out?”
“I’d guess few. I’m sure, like any nation, they are averse to change. Even Eleysia didn’t want Affiliates to come into the country,” he reminded her.
“Creator, that feels like so long ago,” she said as they turned another corner.
“It does.”
“Wait,” she said, stopping him.
“What is it?”
“The Tendrille. Do you sense it that way?”
He shook his head. “Actually, I can’t sense it.”
She jerked her eyes to him in surprise. “But you…you earned your magic from Domara.”
He frowned as if he didn’t want to speak about his time in Domara. He still had never told her what had really happened there. “I did. That does not make me Doma though. I am still human, I think.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “I didn’t consider that.”
“Doma are the blood of the Domara. The blood of the gods gives you the magic in your veins. What I have,” he said darkly, “is something else.”
“Dean…”
“Daijan,” he spat. “The word they called me is Daijan. And it is not a compliment.”
Cyrene frowned. What had happened to him? “I don’t care what they called you. In our world, Doma are not of Domara. The blood that runs through my veins came from my parents, Hamidon and Herlana. I am a Strohm. Descendant of Anne and Serafina, all the way back to Benetta in fact. The magic might have been given of the gods, but here, in Emporia, under my rule, as far as I’m concerned, any person with magic in their veins is under my domain. Which makes you a Doma of Emporia.”
A muscle twitched in Dean’s cheek, and then he bowed his head. “It would be an honor.”
“Now, let’s follow the Tendrille and see exactly what these people are hiding.”
“They will surely love that.”
“Shouldn’t have locked us in,” she said with an unrepentant shrug as she stalked toward the heart of the Tendrille vibrations. Her own sword singing in harmony with the song.
The pulses led to an empty corridor and the sound of laughter and the ringing of steel beyond.
Dean smiled. “Ah, now, that sounds like home.”
“This should be interesting.”
Then, she stepped through the door and into a large, circular room stocked to the gills with Tendrille metal weapons of every variety imaginable. The feeling was almost too much to bear. She clutched Dean’s arm for a heartbeat before she was able to tamp down the feeling until it was more manageable.
“Actually, this might be more your scene,” he said, not acknowledging what had just run through her.
She glanced back up and saw what she hadn’t been able to differentiate before. It wasn’t military sparring, as she’d suspected. Or even training like they had endured at the dragon tournament. About a dozen young adults, ranging from much too young to be imbibing whatever they were passing around to much too old to be pushing it on the youth. Some of them were indeed sparring, but it seemed child’s play more than actual training. Considering the sheer quantity of the Tendrille arsenal, Cyrene thought they might have taken it more seriously.
It was a young girl, no older than Isabylle, who noticed them first. She squeaked in alarm and passed the drink back to another boy. “Who are they?” she gasped.
All eyes turned to them now.
And Cyrene was surprised to realize that she recognized one of them. Jenstad strode forward in front of his friends with a Tendrille fencing blade held lazily in his hand.
“Ah, if it isn’t the great Domina,” Jenstad said with a cocky swagger he hadn’t had upstairs while facing off with the councilman.
“Hello, Jenstad,” Cyrene said. “I did not get to thank you for standing up for me with against Councilman Dalwin.”
A girl snorted, sidling up next to him and slapping his blade with her own. “You mean, his father?”
“Shut it, Cambria,” Jenstad bit out.
Cyrene put the pieces together. Well, that made a lot more sense.
She took another step into the room, mirroring Jenstad’s and Cambria’s easy demeanor. She might look out of place in her all white garb compared to the sand-colored water-seeking uniforms they wore, but she was obviously closer to one of them than to the elders here.
“This is quite impressive,” Cyrene told them. “All the Tendrille.” She smiled. “Hohl, as you call it.”
“She really does know about Hohl,” the young girl cried, jumping down from her seat and pushing past Cambria. “Huh. I thought Jen was making it up.”
They had everyone’s attention in the area now. The sparring had ceased, and everyone was watching and waiting to see what the small group, the leaders of the crowd, had to say.
“Creator, Alchia,” Cambria spat. “Just because you are the youngest water seeker in a generation does not make you important in this conversation.”
Alchia flipped her b
raid off her shoulder. “Who asked you, Cam? For one, I’m almost sixteen. And two, she’s a foreigner. She probably has news of topside outside of Tygh. Don’t you give a damn?”
A boy laughed. “She doesn’t give a damn about anything, except sticking her head so far up Jen’s—”
“That’s enough,” Cambria spat. “I can still dock you water rations, Bratton.”
The boy just lazily laid out on his bench, putting his head into another girl’s lap. “Do it then.”
Cambria rolled her eyes and looked back at Cyrene. “I don’t know who you are, but you probably have less irritating sects in the wetlands.”
Cyrene shrugged. “This seems about normal.”
Dean chuckled. “Maybe even nicer than what we deal with.”
“So, you mine the Hohl? How did it get here?” Cyrene asked.
Cambria looked to Jenstad. He winked at her. And she sighed heavily, giving in to him. “Long ago, Tygh was part of the wetlands. The desert had not extended out this far. It was a time when gods walked among us. Our people were blessed by the gods with developing Hohl weapons. But then one of our own, Ishme, thought himself better than the gods. Ishme drew a Hohl sword against a god. He and his entire line were slain, and the desert swept across our lands. We were punished to live our lives underground, always seeking out water as punishment for our hubris. We make weapons now for when we are required to take up arms again for the gods.”
Cyrene nodded reverently at the story. She knew better than to distrust any myth as nothing but fantasy at this point. Everything she had ever been told was true. It was likely that this had its basis in truth, too.
“So, is it true you pulled a Hohl blade on Councilman Dalwin?” Alchia asked with a quick grin.
“I was there,” Jenstad said. “I saw it.”
“Yeah, but you exaggerate,” Alchia said with an eye roll.
“Yes, I did. But just to show him that I’d already known about Tendrille.” She pulled Shadowbreaker out. “A Hohl blade forged on a different continent but the same material.”
Jenstad stepped up and admired the blade. “It’s something else though.” He frowned at it. “What else is in it?”