Song of Blood & Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles Book 1)

by Penelope, L.

  Jasminda sat up so fast the room spun. “You’re going to sleep here?”

  “I made you a promise, and I plan to keep it.” He settled back, hands behind his head. The bottom of his new, freshly pressed army-issued shirt rose, revealing a thin strip of skin on his abdomen.

  “You don’t need to do that. You can’t sleep on the ground!”

  “I’ve been doing it for the past few weeks. Another night won’t hurt anything.”

  “But you have a whole set of rooms here. With comfortable beds, I’m sure.”

  He pinned her with his gaze. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” His face softened. “Besides, this is better than sleeping standing up, which I’ve done a time or two. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  She lay on her side, facing him. Her finger traced a random pattern on the thin pillow, her thoughts delving into forbidden territory. His breath rose and fell slowly and could not take her eyes off the muscles of his stomach. The thin strip of hair disappearing into his pants. If he insisted on staying here, she couldn’t stop him. But it would not do for him to sleep on the ground.

  Perhaps . . .

  “You could probably fit on the cot.” She held her breath, waiting for his reaction.

  Without a word, he stood and slid in next to her. There was just enough room for both of them to lay on their sides. His body warmed her back. His arm curled around her waist. She gathered her hair to one side so it would not be in his face, closed her eyes, and leaned further into his embrace.

  The stress and uncertainty of the past days melted away as she settled in his arms. She’d woken up like this today. She wouldn’t mind waking like this every day. Aghast at the thought, she froze, not even allowing a breath to escape.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack whispered into her neck.

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” She pulled his hand tight against her stomach, both excited and afraid of her feelings. His breath on her neck was her only warning before his lips brushed the skin there. She shuddered as goose bumps prickled her flesh. He kissed her again.

  “Jack,” she whispered.

  His only response was another kiss, closer to where her neck met her shoulder.

  “I haven’t ever . . . I mean, I want—”

  “What do you want, Jasminda?” he said, running his lips across her skin.

  She was afraid to say it out loud. While her head knew Papa’s dowry was little more than wishful thinking on his part, her heart longed for a family of her own, a husband, or even a lover. Though the embers of these secret longings had grown cold during her years of solitude, they’d never fully been extinguished.

  Jack nudged the fabric of her dress aside to press a kiss to her shoulder. “Tell me. I’ll give you anything I can.”

  She burned from his kisses, each touch of his lips a forbidden desire made real. She turned to face him but kept her gaze at his chest. He wiped the tears that had started to fall and tenderly kissed each cheek.

  “Some things are not for me.” She forced herself to look him in the eye. Her fingers hovered over his lips until she found the strength to trace them. The full bow of his bottom lip called to her. “You aren’t for me.”

  “So why is it that I can’t stop thinking about you?”

  She drew closer, transfixed by his mouth. One taste—that’s all she would allow herself. One kiss just to know what it was like. Her lips met his, and a spark of electricity flooded her. The soft press and sheer strength of him made her dizzy. His heat radiated through her whole body as his fingers threaded through her hair, pulling them together. When his tongue prodded her gently, she opened, giving him entry.

  She lost herself in his kiss, drawn under by the insistent waves that warmed her belly and gave rise to a host of butterflies.

  When they broke apart, both breathing heavily, he captured her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm. Their foreheads met, and he stroked her cheek. Sliding an arm beneath her, he rolled them so he was on his back with her on top of him. He rested his hands on her lower back, and she longed to feel them everywhere, moving across her body, cooling her heated flesh.

  He kissed her again, and she wiggled on top of him, wanting to burrow herself under his skin. Her thigh brushed against something rigid and she froze. Jack turned his head to the side and exhaled a breath.

  “Please don’t move.” His voice was tightly controlled, his breathing ragged.

  She stifled a giggle and rubbed her thigh against his erection again. Jack gave a mock roar, and in one movement, he swapped their positions and hovered over her on shaky arms. His eyes were intense, cloaked in desire, and she reached up to kiss him. She stroked his jaw, then slid her hand down his chest to his belly, stopping at his belt. His dark gaze was a plea. She moved downward, barely grazing his erection before he trapped her hand in his and placed it next to her head. He grabbed her other hand in a preemptive strike and shook his head. He kissed her once more, hard, before rising from the cot. She rolled to face him as he settled on the ground again.

  “You can come back. I’ll be good. I promise.”

  “I don’t want to make you an oath-breaker. And I will make no such promises.” His gaze stoked the fire within her, and she fell back on the thin mattress, a swirl of directionless desire.

  “Tonight, we should sleep,” he said. “I do not want to do something that you will regret.”

  “Would you regret it?”

  He reached for her hand and drew it to his lips. “No. But it is not my virtue we are speaking of.” He kept her hand in his as he stretched out on the ground.

  Her virtue. She’d feared it would be intact until the day she died. That she would never meet a man who desired her. But she had felt Jack’s desire, had seen it in his eyes. Could there be some kind of future that included her and Jack as lovers? The stories from the magazines were full of clandestine meetings and secret trysts. Marriage, children—those dreams of normalcy were closed to her. From the day she was born, her life had never been normal, but perhaps she could create the life she wanted, even if it was unusual. Perhaps she could create it with Jack.

  “They found her.”

  Jack looked up from the papers on his desk. “Found who?”

  His assistant, Benn, stood just outside the office, his hand gripping the edge of the doorframe. “The farm girl, the one the mob was looking for. Turns out she ran off with her beau.”

  Jack dropped his pen and sat back heavily in his chair, letting out a curse. “Has the magistrate identified everyone involved?”

  Benn stepped into the room and closed the door. “He claims to be having a difficult time. None of the men are talking.”

  Jack stood abruptly, toppling his chair. “They killed ninety men. Innocent men. If the magistrate is unable to do his job and find those responsible, I’ll find someone who can. Tell him that.”

  Benn nodded. “What else is troubling you?”

  “Is that not enough?” Jack snorted.

  His assistant eyed the mess on Jack’s desk, which was usually kept in pristine neatness.

  “The Council.” Jack shook his head and shuffled the papers in front of him. “The Sisterhood doesn’t have the resources to care for all the arriving refugees. Another group came over the mountain just this morning, twenty kilometres north of here. We will have to help with their care, but the Council is refusing to respond to my cables.”

  “Perhaps after the coronation—”

  “Yes, I’ll have to wait until then,” he interrupted. “We’ll need additional funds for the troop buildup here, and they’re just not bloody listening.” He turned to the low window that looked out over the squat buildings of the base. “A bunch of old bureaucrats sticking their heads in the sand.”

  “In a day’s time, they’ll have to listen to you.” Benn came to stand by him, offering his presence as support. He was a good man, one Jack trusted, who had been with him for close to three years, traveling from base to base without complaint. He had a young family of
his own back in Rosira that he probably didn’t see often enough.

  “In a day’s time, any freedom I had will be gone.” He held back a sigh. Responsibility beckoned, but every step that brought him closer to the capital took him farther from Jasminda. He would give anything to stop time and spend an eternity the way he had last night, even if it did mean sleeping on the ground. But the city would swallow him up as it had his mother, to the point where she’d had to escape to another country to find any peace. After tomorrow, he was unlikely to have even a moment to himself, much less one to spare to lie in Jasminda’s arms.

  What he couldn’t tell her last night, what he didn’t want to think about was that once they arrived in Rosira, his life would not be his own. His duties would overwhelm his entire life. He would see her settled somewhere safe, make sure she was taken care of, but anything more was only wishful thinking.

  “How do you stand being so far away from them?” Jack’s voice was thick as he tried to swallow his emotion.

  “Ella and the baby?” A smile crept onto Benn’s face. “She writes every day. Told me just yesterday she’s having a phone line put in. It will cost a fortune, but it will be worth it to hear her voice more often.”

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment, remembering Jasminda’s sleep-coarsened voice wishing him well as he’d left her that morning. He rubbed the back of his neck, a bit stiff from his night on the ground.

  “What we do here keeps them safe,” Benn continued. “I could have joined my father on the docks back home and seen them every day, but then I wouldn’t be sure . . . I wouldn’t know I was doing everything I could to protect them.”

  Jack inhaled deeply and let out a frustrated breath. “I don’t want to go back there.”

  Benn looked up, chagrined. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know. Duty calls me to Rosira, so I must go. But I want to be sure, too. I don’t want to leave . . . those I care for unprotected, either.”

  “But you won’t. You have much more power than a dockworker.”

  Jack leaned a hand against the glass. It was still early, the base just beginning to come to life. “Wouldn’t it be simpler though if that’s all I was?”

  Benn’s brows drew low, and he was quiet for a moment. “Duty is a hard thing,” he said, “but it’s the measure of a man. How you respond to its call is what the world will remember. If they remember you at all.” He clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You they will remember, my friend.”

  Jasminda’s face stole into his vision, blocking out all else. He didn’t want to be remembered in the history books; he only wanted to live in a world where he could exist inside her kisses, breathe in only air scented with her fragrance. Where position, class, duty, and race were not things that could keep people apart.

  He sighed and turned back to his office.

  This was not that world.

  The calm blue day died with a blood red sunset that faded to black during the long journey from the eastern border of Elsira to the capital city on the western coast. It was a journey Jasminda had never imagined she’d make. For security purposes, Jack rode in an armored vehicle, which couldn’t legally transport civilians. He’d woken her with a kiss before disappearing into his work, and she had only seen him briefly that morning before the caravan of trucks and buses left the base.

  She had a vehicle to herself, though her driver’s eyes would flick back and forth to the rearview mirror, shooting cold, suspicious glances at her. She didn’t waver, meeting his gaze each time until he looked away. He was no doubt wondering why he was chauffeuring around a Lagrimari-looking Elsiran girl.

  The rolling hills and dense forests of Elsira’s picture-perfect countryside sped past. Only occasionally did they pass a small village; most of the population lived on the coast. As night fell, dusty, unpaved roads eventually gave way to wider, paved highways, illuminated by electric lights and full of vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

  Jasminda sucked in a breath when she got her first glimpse of Rosira from the crest of a hill. The city swept up and away from the ocean like a gentle wave. Lights sparkled from thousands upon thousands of houses, which from this distance gave the impression of being stacked on top of one another, but as they drew closer, were really etched in layers going up the steep hillside.

  There were no skyscrapers or especially tall buildings like in the pictures she’d seen of the megacities of Yaly and other countries. The main industry here was commerce, and docks stretched the entire length of the coastline with an assortment of vessels anchored there like great beasts asleep in their pens.

  Before reaching the city limits, her truck turned onto a rough path cut into the dirt, and they drove another half kilometre or so before stopping. A miniature city lay before them, made up of orderly rows of white tents with oil lanterns strung up on poles to form the perimeter.

  Jasminda’s driver parked the truck and got out, but she stayed put, not wanting to be mistaken for a refugee again. There was nothing overtly frightening about the camp; it was quiet and seemed clean. Still, she felt equal parts glad she would not have to stay here and guilty for being glad.

  She reached for her connection to Earthsong, then dropped it quickly, immediately overwhelmed by the dense press of so many energies. How could anyone use magic in a place so heavily populated as this? Did Lagrimar have cities, and if so, how were the residents able to cope?

  Word of the refugees' arrival must have spread quickly, for soon people emerged from the tents to curiously gape at the caravan. They were almost all women, children, and elderly folk. All with dark hair and dark eyes, sturdily built with skin the hue of her own.

  Jasminda loved her skin as much as she hated it. These people were beautiful, and they made her miss Papa even more. But she shrank lower in her seat, not wanting to be singled out. Though she spoke the same language, she could not relate to the bleak hopelessness coming off them in waves. Even from the children. The past two years had been lonely without her family, but she’d been surrounded by memories of them every moment. The house her father built with his own hands, her mother’s quilts, her brothers’ tools. And the poor goats . . . She hoped they were safe and hadn’t scattered too far. She’d had a happy life before the sadness, but these people had a permanent melancholy etched into them.

  The bus emptied and the new refugees were swallowed into the crowd. Jasminda spotted the gray heads of Gerda, Turwig, and Lyngar, along with other elders. Only Gerda turned towards her and gave a nod good-bye before being swept away by the others.

  Soon after, the driver returned and the vehicles were back on the road, traveling a serpentine path through the city. Jack had assured her he would find lodging for her, though he hadn’t mentioned where. She suspected the Sisterhood had a dormitory of some kind where she could stay. If so, perhaps she could discover more about the woman she suspected was her aunt.

  The steep road through the densely packed buildings turned back on itself several times, dizzying Jasminda. After half a dozen twists and turns, the truck approached a gilded gate guarded by soldiers wearing black uniforms with gold trim and fringed epaulets. The gates swung open revealing a brightly lit, curving drive that ascended even higher.

  The Royal Palace of Elsira loomed in front of them, white stones gleaming under the illumination of a shocking quantity of electric lights. The pictures in her textbooks did not do it justice. Columned porches ran along the first floor with a seemingly endless number of arched windows just beyond. Carved into the stone above each window were images of the Founders, the magical Lord and Lady in various poses showing how they’d transformed Elsira.

  Somewhere within this building lay the sleeping body of their descendent, the Queen herself, protected by the Prince Regent who was to rule in Her stead until She awoke and returned to power. Seeing it in person, Jasminda was transfixed. Though there was no longer any magic in Elsira, the palace seemed to give off its own energy and spoke to her in an unfamiliar way.

  Once a
gain, the driver exited the vehicle and Jasminda remained, hoping that whatever business Jack had here would be quick. The trip had been exhausting, and she wanted nothing more than to fall into whatever bed she was assigned. The door she leaned against jerked open and there stood Jack, holding out his hand.

  She stared at it uncomprehendingly. “Can I not wait here for you?”

  “You would prefer to sleep in the truck?” The corner of his mouth quirked, shattering his grim expression.

  She looked from him to the palace and back again. A knowing smile crept up Jack’s face.

  “When you said you’d find lodging for me, I didn’t think . . . Jack, I can’t sleep in the palace.”

  “Whyever not?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the truck.

  “Because I’m a goat farmer. Palaces are for royalty. The Prince Regent cannot possibly allow someone like me here.”

  “Trust me, it’s all right. Many officials and dignitaries live in the palace. A whole wing is devoted to ranking officers and their families. Honestly, it’s more like an inn than a proper palace these days.”

  “But—”

  “I’m well acquainted with whom the Prince Regent allows under his roof.” A flicker of pain crossed his face, and he took a deep breath. “Jasminda—”

  “Commander!” an insistent voice bellowed from across the driveway.

  “One moment, General,” Jack responded while his eyes pleaded with her. She accepted his offered palm, gripping it as she stepped from the vehicle and approached the palace.

  A battalion of servants greeted them inside the entry. Jack announced her as an honored guest and conferred with a matronly woman who must have been in charge of things. Two maids whisked her away before she could even thank Jack or say good night, let alone find out what he had wanted to tell her. Hopefully it was whatever he'd said she needed to know about him. Her heart burned to know his secrets, even as part of her was glad she didn’t.

  She barely registered the dazzling hallways of the palace, the opulent room she was led to, the plush carpeting, detailed tapestries, or hand-carved furniture. She saw only the bed, canopied and enormous, and then the backs of her eyelids as she sank into the extravagant mattress.