Song of the Forever Rains

by Mellow, E. J.

  Larkyra laughed lightly, the birds around her fluttering at the sound before flying back into the storm.

  “You might as well come and join me,” she said, her blue eyes quickly running the length of him, almost clinically. “Unless you prefer snooping.”

  “I was not snooping.” He knew his flushed cheeks told a different story.

  “Of course. My apologies. This is your home. I forgot that means you’re allowed to peer through any door without reason or invitation.”

  “Did you not just invite me now?”

  A smile curled across her lips. “Well volleyed, Darius. Now please come out of that crack before I drag you out.”

  He cautiously stepped onto the balcony, the cool air hitting against his jacket. “Are you not cold out here?”

  “I asked for a small fire to be brought out.” She pointed to a stone bowl with a metal-grated top by her side, hot coals and licking flames beneath. “We have these lit in our courtyards in Jabari on colder nights.”

  He drew nearer, savoring the warmth that surrounded her. “Did you have this packed?”

  “Against many arguments from my sisters. I was pleased to write them how very wrong they were.”

  “Yes, I can imagine how you might enjoy sharing such news.”

  “Please.” Larkyra untucked her feet, shifting to give him room beside her on the sofa. “Come sit and tell me why I have the honor of your visit.”

  Darius leaned against a nearby column instead. “I wanted to see how you enjoyed dinner last night.” And whether you survived it.

  Larkyra flicked a crumb off her lap. “It was fine.”

  “Fine?” Darius raised his brows. “I doubt my stepfather would be satisfied with such an answer.”

  “Yes, I doubt he would be.”

  Darius noted the edge in her tone. “Did something happen that displeased you?”

  Larkyra looked out at the downpour, at the raindrops smacking against the edge of the balcony.

  More, Darius always thought the Lachlan storms seemed to beg. Give us more. More to drench. More to own, more to make like us, falling, falling, falling forever.

  “I do not like the way your stepfather talks to you.”

  Her answer set a nervous buzz in his ears. “What do you mean?”

  “He seems to hate your very existence.”

  Darius blinked, her candor never ceasing to set him back on his heels. He found himself laughing.

  “You don’t agree?” Larkyra’s brows drew in.

  “Oh no.” Darius let out a few more chuckles as he finally moved to sit beside her. How she disarmed him. “I agree completely. I’ve never met anyone who would admit it to my face, however.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  Despite the topic, Darius smiled. “Now I have.”

  “Does it not bother you?”

  “That people don’t speak their minds regarding my stepfather’s and my relationship? I doubt anyone feels it appropriate to do so.”

  “I meant, does it bother you that he doesn’t like you?”

  “Why should it?” Darius shrugged. “I do not like him.”

  It was the first time he’d ever admitted it out loud; it was freeing, especially when he had the feeling no judgment would come from his current companion.

  Larkyra twisted fully to regard him, the movement bringing her blue-clad knee precariously close to his thigh, the heat between them more charged than the lightning splitting the skies. He also couldn’t stop staring at her hands. Not because of her missing finger but because he wasn’t used to seeing them without gloves. Even with the bump of scars along the knuckle of her ring finger, her hands appeared delicate yet strong. Power lay in her grip, but her breeding, as a lady, was clear in the way she gently laid one atop the other.

  “Have you ever been on good terms?” she asked.

  The question drew his eyes up to meet hers, his mind reluctantly spinning to a time he had thought long buried. “There were moments . . . in the beginning. I remember Hayzar visiting Lachlan, before he became the new duke, and he took my mother and me into town. It was sunny then . . .” He glanced out at the storm. “He bought me sugar candies and a small wooden boat. I placed it in the lake, not knowing how strong the current was that day, and it was immediately pulled out. I panicked to have lost the gift so quickly and splashed in to retrieve it. I didn’t get far before I was scooped up and brought back to the beach. I remember how pale my mother was as she wrapped me in her arms, tears in her eyes. Hayzar was beside her, rubbing her back, his beautiful suit half-soaked from saving me, but he did not seem at all mad, just relieved. ‘You are worth more than any boat,’ he said, ‘even those built in Esrom.’ He and my mother married shortly after that day.”

  “Should I marry him?”

  Darius drew back as though slapped. “What?”

  “Should I marry your stepfather? The purpose of my visit is hardly a secret.”

  Darius opened and closed his mouth, a fish out of water. “I . . . I hardly think that is an appropriate question.”

  “So?”

  “So it shouldn’t be asked.”

  “The propriety of something should have no bearing on its value. In fact, most improper topics contain more important conversations than proper ones.”

  “Another lesson from your father not found in tomes or governesses?”

  “He is one of the wealthiest men in Jabari for a reason.”

  “Evidently.” Darius leaned his elbows on his knees, angling away from the woman who held the power to drive him mad.

  She was dangerous, this Bassette. Too dangerous to be conversing with alone.

  He should leave.

  “I thought we were to always speak plainly to each other,” reminded Larkyra. “So? Will you answer my oh-so-shocking question? Or will you be no better than all the people who refuse to speak the truth to you?”

  “Says the woman who is an advocate of lying when the situation warrants it.”

  “Yes, and I vote that this situation does not.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  She grinned. “Isn’t it, though?”

  With a frustrated breath, Darius stood and walked to the balcony’s edge. For once he was grateful for the cold rain hitting his skin, as it cooled his racing thoughts. “I don’t believe my opinion is of any importance.”

  “As you’re a member of his family, I believe that it is.”

  “Well, if you believe it is, then it must be.”

  “I knew you were a smart man.”

  “The fact that I remain with you unchaperoned proves otherwise.”

  “Do you think something nefarious will come of it?”

  “Nefarious?”

  “Inappropriate, to use what seems to be your favorite word.”

  “No.”

  “No, it is not one of your favorite words?”

  “Nothing inappropriate will happen.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What a shame,” she repeated. “For then you’d be right and I wrong. But now that you’ve just contradicted your own claim against your lack of intelligence in visiting me unchaperoned, I fear any declarative statement you say from here on out will have no bearing.”

  “I have a headache.”

  “Here.” Larkyra plucked a pastry from the tray. “You should eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Ah, ah,” she tutted. “As we just proved, you probably are.”

  “I . . .” He looked from Larkyra’s dancing eyes to her outstretched hand holding the small glazed dessert. “I give up.” Darius took the cake, sat beside her, and ate the entire thing in two bites.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Which now means yes.”

  To his own annoyance, Darius huffed a laugh. He should have known better than to verbally spar with this Bassette.

  The pair fell into silence then, and Darius was grateful
, considering how his mind grasped for what he had originally come here for. This woman had a gift for distracting him thoroughly.

  But as the wind flowed over the balcony, pressing into his coat, kissing his skin, it all came flooding back. His scars, gone.

  Glancing at Larkyra, watching her sip her tea, he realized that whatever had happened last night, she either didn’t remember, remained unharmed, or both. She did not seem the type who would keep quiet after seeing his raked-over marks in their full glory, let alone witnessing them suddenly disappearing. And it wasn’t as if he could up and ask her about the matter. He could just imagine it—him tearing off his shirt, standing bare chested before a lady, explaining how he used to have many scars and now only had a few. She would think him absolutely mental. Which, again, perhaps he was. Though he still could not entertain the notion. Lachlan was already growing weaker by the day; his land and people could not afford Darius to fall to ruin as well. He needed to keep it together. The mystery that had led to some of his scars healing might simply need to remain just that: a mystery. After all, Aadilor was a strange place and, as he’d seen in the Thief Kingdom, held even stranger possibilities. Perhaps he had brought a bit of that magic back to Lachlan . . .

  Larkyra shivered beside him, and without thinking, Darius pulled off his coat and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said, glancing up in surprise.

  This close, her lavender-and-mint fragrance danced over him with temptation. He dropped his hands from her arms, moving away. “Of course,” he said.

  The heavy storm continued its performance beyond the balcony, rendering the surrounding land impossible to make out. It was as if they were sequestered upon their own private island within an island.

  Intimate.

  Darius shifted. “May I ask you something?”

  “Always.”

  “Why do you care about my thoughts on your marriage?”

  Larkyra pulled his coat tighter. “Because I do.”

  “But why?”

  “Because your voice deserves to be heard.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Your happiness.”

  “My happiness?” scoffed Darius. “Forgive me, Larkyra, but I do not see how one has to do with the other.”

  He did, of course, but not even in his most private thoughts could he admit such a thing.

  “I hadn’t exactly meant in regard to whom would be your stepfather’s bride,” she explained. “Just that every soul in Aadilor deserves a chance to be heard. For their wants and wishes to be recognized.”

  “And you think I have not been given that chance?”

  “Not here.”

  Darius studied Larkyra’s features, the delicate slope of her nose, her wind-kissed cheeks and poised posture, the way she looked at him as though she knew his deepest secrets.

  That was when he felt something he didn’t expect, something that jolted him back to reality, away from their private, hidden world—anger. For something about her—her words perhaps, or the way she acted as if she knew him, really knew him, how he had suffered silently, alone for years—sent a flash of rage through him. Maybe because she’d hit so close to the truth: that he did, in fact, want a life of his own, free from a master’s choking grip and the fear of his own thoughts being spoken out loud. It was a truth he had forced himself a long time ago to forget.

  “And you believe you are the one to give me that?” he asked. “My hero, come to rescue me and give me a voice? Well then, if we are going by our agreed standards of honesty, then let me say this—I do not know what games you like to play at home in Jabari, what little projects you and your sisters decide you need to pass your time in your gilded mansion, but not everything in this world is fair or just or needs saving. Some things just are.” Darius stood then, straightening the cuffs on his sleeves and ignoring whatever look marred Larkyra’s brows. “I merely came to see that you were well, my lady, that you had a pleasant dinner. I was not looking for your opinion on my life that, quite frankly, you don’t have enough knowledge to give.”

  A beat of silence. Of only rain and thunder, before, “So we have returned to ‘my lady’?”

  “It appears so.”

  He could feel her gaze on him, daring him to look at her as he made such a declaration, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t.

  “Very well, my lord. I am fine, as was the dinner last night.”

  “Good.”

  “Excellent.”

  And with that, Darius strode from her rooms. Ignoring the fact that his coat was still wrapped around the one person who, after all these years of being alone and closed off, had helped him open up. It’s better this way, he thought, holding on to his anger. Better he snuffed that flame before it could truly burn. For those who had cared for Darius, loved him, well, their fate lay on the other side of the Fade.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Larkyra sat in the library, fuming. And not because for the past three days Clara had refused to take a walk with her, forcing them to remain cooped up indoors. Really, are the reports of ice rain, rockfalls, and mudslides so horrible? Nor was it because she had not seen the now Lord Mekenna since the morning they had gotten into the spat on her balcony. He was doing a fine job keeping to his dusty wing, while she was left to sip tea, eat meals, and continue her charade with the oozing duke. Not that she wanted Darius there, of course. Despite having gotten away with healing the young lord, she thought it in everyone’s best interest if he avoided his stepfather’s company.

  No, what truly filled her with anger was the letter she gripped in her hands.

  Kaipo had delivered it that morning, his silver wings glistening with beads of rain as he’d shrunk in size, allowing Larkyra to bring him into her chambers to warm himself by the fire as she’d loosened the small leather case around his leg. She had read it immediately, of course, before Clara had come to dress her, and again after breakfast, then two more times as they’d strolled to the circular library, where Larkyra had thrown herself onto a cushioned windowsill to sulk.

  “You’ll sprout wrinkles too early with such a frown, my lady.” Clara sat in a nearby armchair, embroidering a handkerchief. “Surely the news can’t be that horrid.”

  “It is exactly that horrid.” Larkyra crossed her arms, glaring out the window.

  The note wasn’t very long, considering how many pages the last one she’d sent had been.

  In fact, her father had written only five lines.

  My Dearest Songbird,

  That is a dark business regarding Lord M, but I must insist you still refrain from singing. Unless you yourself are harmed, all else must play out. Patience. Continue your search. Z and I are close to finding what we seek. Your sisters and I miss you.

  Love, your father

  He might as well have written nothing at all. Refrain from singing. Well, that would show him for sending such a sparse letter. She wasn’t sorry in the least for using her magic. Lord Mekenna’s vicious scars still swam before her whenever she lay in bed to sleep, the shadows on her walls seeming to mimic their slashes. Did he still see them? Still fear their presence as he woke each morning?

  Maybe her father was right. Maybe she shouldn’t have interfered . . .

  But then again, hadn’t she been here to do exactly that?

  She glanced at the letter once more.

  Continue your search.

  Larkyra snorted. Hadn’t Dolion read what all her late-night snooping had brought? Besides a detailed description of the empty canisters of phorria in Hayzar’s bedchamber, she only had news of two servants carrying on an affair, a footman who overindulged in spirits, and someone stealing food from the pantry on the regular—to displeased grunts and moans from the cook.

  While her father and Zimri and no doubt her sisters were out having some grand adventure, searching for whomever was brave or stupid enough to leak the drug from the Thief Kingdom, she was stuck running around a castle that housed an abusive lunatic—and nothing more.
Sure, there were secret passages here and there, as any old estate would have, but all seemed to be used by servants, helping them move from the bowels of the castle to their positions around the estate. If there was an ancient family vault, it was beyond discovery.

  Larkyra stared out the window again, at the rain drumming against the pane.

  Or perhaps it isn’t even on this cursed island.

  “Oh!” Larkyra sat up.

  “What is it, my lady?”

  “Perhaps it’s not.”

  Clara frowned. “Perhaps what is not, my lady?”

  Larkyra pressed closer to the glass, practically smooshing her nose against the surface. “Clara, what are those ruins up there?” She pointed to the large stone facade that sat beyond a veil of mist, carved out of the mountain on the mainland. The forest had crept and grown over most of it, but it still towered proudly over the town and lake below. It was the same fortification she had noticed her first week here, but she had written it off as an old watchtower of sorts, some relic of Lachlan’s forgotten history.

  “I believe that was the original home of the founding Mekenna family, before this castle was built and they moved off the mainland.”

  “Does anyone live there now?”

  “Oh no. It’s been abandoned for centuries.”

  “Have you ever been inside?”

  Clara guffawed. “Not if I wanted to keep myself on this side of the Fade. Only fools would enter willingly, especially with nothing but ghosts lighting those halls.”

  “Ghosts?”

  Clara looked about the quiet library before leaning closer to Larkyra. “I’ve heard whispers that on some nights, a torchlight can be seen on the balcony.”

  “Maybe it’s someone passing through who’s forced to spend a night there to save themselves from the heavy rain.”

  “Maybe, but then why doesn’t anyone eventually see them in town or on the roads? Strangers passing never go unnoticed. Nah.” Clara shook her head, returning to her embroidery. “I believe something else is at work up there, my lady. Lachlan may no longer carry what the lost gods left, but it keeps its own mysteries.”

  “And curses?”

  Clara caught Larkyra’s gaze. “Aye, those too.”

  Larkyra looked out the window, considering the old ruin.