Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  Vylaena scowled as understanding finally came to her. “What’s that around your neck?”

  The man looked down, fingering his collar. “Oh. Huh. I’ve no idea. Was that there a moment ago?”

  Great.

  He was gone. It was that cursed collar, stifling his memory.

  Vylaena turned, irritated, retreating back down the corridor. She needed to see Alaric, to command him to release Kaern at once. Or by Ikna she’d do it herself.

  She would lift her Curse. And she would finally be free.

  The way back was not as easy to navigate as the way in had been. There was no trail of ether to guide Vylaena’s way; it had vanished into the night. But she managed to find the hidden staircase once more and made her way back up the stairs. The unending darkness wasn’t as horrible this time; she climbed with one hand outstretched and, when she finally met resistance, she searched the top landing for another secret door.

  She was momentarily stunned, however, when she stepped out—into the hallway that housed her own suite. Her bedroom door stood squarely before her; the stairwell had deposited her back on her own doorstep. Precisely where she’d been headed.

  “Well,” she murmured, ignoring the alarmed hammering of her heart, “at least that saves me some walking.”

  Vylaena unlocked the door and strode inside, noting the pale light of dawn streaming into her window and the silhouetted figure leaning easily against the sill.

  “Ah,” Thyrian said, turning to face her. “The mercenary returns.”

  Vylaena shrugged her sword off her back and set it against the dressing table chair. “Your own rooms too grand and comfortable for you?”

  “I woke to find myself half-choked in ether. It seemed to be coming from in here, so I came to investigate. Thought I’d air the place out until you returned.”

  There was something in Thyrian’s voice—something akin to suspicion, but not quite. Vylaena strode over to meet him at the window, looking out to survey the sleeping city in the distance.

  “I found Kaern Westly,” she said.

  ✽✽✽

  Thyrian’s head whirled toward her; he was not expecting that as a reply. “What?”

  “He’s a famous star-born with the Knack for finding things,” Vylaena explained. “He’s been missing for almost a year. Turns out he’s a royal guest.”

  Thyrian scanned her face, his eyes hardening. “The unwilling kind? Accommodations underground?”

  Vylaena looked up to meet his gaze, a question in her eyes.

  “You get sarcastic when you’re irritated,” he explained. “It gives you away.”

  Vylaena pursed her lips and turned back to the window. “Flinx has been helping me research a way to lift my Curse. She does what she can—I know their idiotic Code of Study just gets in the way. But Kaern . . . he finds things. He could find a way to lift my Curse.”

  “Why’s he in the dungeons?”

  “From what I gathered, someone’s keeping him there—sedated, in a way—in order for him to locate people who are ether-touched.”

  “I thought the ether-touched were . . . oh.” Thyrian frowned, crossing his arms on the sill beside her, his elbow brushing hers. “I don’t understand. What would King Arnyel want with Enserion’s ether-touched?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He eyed her sideways. “You want to free him, don’t you? Kaern.”

  “Of course I want to free him. He’s no use to me in a dungeon.”

  For a moment Thyrian didn’t speak; he simply stared at her, trying to see through the thick layer of steel she kept clamped over her thoughts. “That’s your sole motivation? You don’t care that he’s a prisoner, or that he’s entangled in some plot to kidnap ether-touched? You just want to use his Knack?”

  Vylaena returned the prince’s gaze, her jaw hard. “It’s not my responsibility to bring justice to every wrongfully imprisoned man in Enserion. Goddesses—if it were, I’d never get to do anything else!”

  Thyrian shook his head. “You say you want to find your own path, but all I see is a woman trying desperately to avoid any responsibility to the world despite having so many strengths to offer. You would do anything to avoid your so-called fate. And it’s because you’re scared.”

  “Scared?” Vylaena repeated, incredulous. “Of what?”

  “You’re afraid that somehow you’ll lose yourself by giving up the smallest piece of autonomy. But how can you know who you are if you don’t believe in anything?”

  “I believe in good, solid steel and a nice line of music, properly sung.”

  Thyrian frowned, ignoring the mockery in her tone. “I think you’re scared to involve yourself in anything because you’re afraid it will be tough. That it won’t come easy to you. And that there’s a possibility you’ll fail altogether.”

  He scanned her eyes, trying to find the right words. “You’re scared of the possibilities—of what might happen,” he explained. “That the end result might be worse than not having tried at all. And that is not the kind of thinking that changes the world, Vylaena.”

  Vylaena held Thyrian’s gaze, her pewter eyes clouded in the grey light. “A thought can’t change the world,” she snapped. “I have thoughts all the time. And the world remains the same—just as shitty and messed-up as ever.”

  “Because you’ve stopped allowing the thought to evolve into action. You cut it at the stem before it can bloom. Even without your Mark, you have power to sculpt the world. Everyone does. Don’t you see that?”

  “Of course I do,” Vylaena spat. “The mob bosses in the sewers sculpt the world how they wish. The Desert slavers, too. I’ve seen firsthand what it means to mold the world to your whims, Thyrian of Galiff. And I want no part in it.”

  Thyrian’s eyes flitted between hers, his expression softening. He seemed to have hit a nerve. “So you do care. In a certain way.”

  Vylaena glared at him for a long moment, her eyes blazing with unrestrained emotion. Thyrian could barely hold her gaze; it was as if every bottled-up feeling she’d ever had now came to a head in the swirling storm of her irises. Was this how she looked when she wasn’t trying to stifle her emotions? Her face was no less hard but there was vulnerability there now, too—in the crease between her brows and the way her lips parted slightly. He refused to blink for fear it would disappear.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Vylaena said, her voice a shard of ice pounded into Thyrian’s chest. She turned her body toward him, so close he could see every furious speck of silver in her eyes. A vein throbbed at her neck, just over the collar of her cuirass.

  “Once there was an ether-touched girl who was naive and foolhardy, thinking her skill with a blade and her ability to mold ether would keep her safe as she traveled through the Desert Kingdoms to Estryn. One night she was ambushed as she watered her horse, and though she fought her assailants, she was too outnumbered and was taken captive. The leader of their clan wanted her to make something for him with her gifts, but she refused. So the warlord hung her by her wrists in a hot, dim room and left her there.”

  Thyrian stared at her, unwilling to look away, even as a cold dread slowly climbed his spine. This was it—she was finally telling her story.

  And it didn’t sound like it was going to be a pleasant one.

  “The next day he came back with a slave child. The girl watched as he chained the boy to the opposite wall and took a knife to his skin. The pain he endured was unfathomable. She fought to hold on as the boy stared at her, his eyes haunted and full of agony, his blood painting the floor as his life was slowly peeled away.

  “The next day, the man returned with another child. This one, too, he butchered in front of her.”

  “Vylaena—”

  “The warlord didn’t do as thorough a job this time. It took the little girl two days to die. And the next one was even worse—he hung around for almost a week before fading. Every day it was the same. A new child, a new pain to claw her apart. And one day, in a moment of weakness
, she decided to damn the consequences. She told the warlord to stop—that she would make him the objects he sought—if he gave her her freedom.”

  “The daggers.”

  Vylaena paused, her eyes weary and dull, all the fire gone out. “The thing is,” she continued, her voice barely a whisper, “that she didn’t do it for her freedom. Even though that’s what she told herself. She did it so no more of those slave children would die. She did it for them.”

  “Vylaena, I—”

  “My caring started a war,” Vylaena pressed, ignoring Thyrian. “Thousands will die because of what I did, not just a few children who probably wouldn’t have lived long anyway. That’s what caring does. It clouds your judgment. It makes you lose sight of what’s really important.”

  “And saving children from torture wasn’t?”

  “Not compared to stopping a war.”

  Thyrian shook his head, pity and disgust and anger sloshing together in his gut. He had no idea how she’d managed to endure such a thing without breaking. Or . . .

  Or perhaps she had.

  It was after her time in the deserts, she’d told him, that she’d refused her Mark. How broken must she have been—how hopeless and numb and grieving—to have screamed at a goddess and ordered her to retract the power that had made her such a valuable target . . .

  His heart twisted at the thought of how low she must’ve fallen at that point. And she’d been entirely alone, having to wake up every morning and face what had happened with no friends to comfort her and no family to run back to. Instead she’d withdrawn even further, alienating herself in the middle of the Elderwood and focusing on one thing above all else: how to free herself from being tortured in that way ever again.

  “So now you refuse to get involved in anything?” he asked, trying to understand.

  “Why should I? What’s the point?” Vylaena’s eyes glinted an angry, stormy slate. “Don’t you see how useless it is to try and fix the world’s problems? Even if everything goes perfectly—which I doubt it ever does—you’ll never even put a dent in all the suffering. It’s so much easier to be selfish than selfless. And people will always prefer what’s easy. How do you expect to change a world full of people who are only looking out for their own interests?

  “You’re just as self-serving as everyone else,” Thyrian pointed out.

  Vylaena smiled, just a flash of bared teeth. “I’ve never pretended to be otherwise.”

  “And I’m not completely selfless, either, but at least I try,” Thyrian replied, adjusting his position to face her fully. “You had—have—gifts. Use them. Apply your energy to something that will help others in addition to yourself. Fight for a day when no more children are tortured and killed. It doesn’t take that much effort to do what you can to make things better.”

  “But it does,” Vylaena replied. “It does take effort. It takes significantly more effort to make right than make wrong.” She let out a hard breath, glancing out the open window, and the smoky dawn light caressed her face, softening it. “Say there’s a priestess who campaigns for the poor. She could spend every waking hour applying herself—organizing donations, doling out food, sewing clothes, holding meetings with wealthy benefactors, constructing housing, propositioning the king for increased security in the slums—and slowly, slowly make progress.”

  Vylaena turned, fixing him in another intense gaze that Thyrian forced himself to hold. “But,” she continued, “do you realize how fast that could all come crumbling down? As fast as it takes for the disgruntled mob boss who used to exploit those poor to let an arrow fly.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I used to think as you did, that there existed a future where people were decent—where people looked out for one another and didn’t try to kill each other for sport or coin or pride. But evil will always exist, here and everywhere else. I feel it every day, the pain people feel. The discomfort. The loss. The heartbreak. Don’t try to convince me it only takes a bit of kindhearted effort to fix that.”

  “It can,” Thyrian replied simply, still holding her gaze. She looked so lost, so . . . so sad. He wasn’t used to seeing her emotions displayed with such potency, and the sight made his throat tighten. “I truly believe it can. Maybe the world won’t change today, or even in our lifetimes. But as long as we try, it will continue to get better little by little. Evil may always exist in some capacity, but don’t you think it’s worth it to pursue a day when the majority is good?”

  “You have too much faith.”

  “And you not enough.” He tilted his head, giving her a contemplative look. “You’ve only ever known pain. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you view the world in terms of it.” A small smile wound up his cheek. “I wonder, if you do end up lifting your Curse, if that will change.”

  “You’ll find out faster if I can get Kaern out of that dungeon,” Vylaena reminded him, finally moving away. She set a path towards the door, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Come. Let’s go wake Alaric.”

  27 | The Confession

  Alaric could hear the metallic clang of swordplay before he could see the sparring field. He hurried past busy couriers and overburdened servants carrying linens and pots and brooms, skipping around coupled nobles leaning out open windows to take in the view. He wanted a closer look, himself—not just to deliver his news but also to watch the infamous Shadowheart mercenary take on the sun-crowned Prince of Galiff.

  He rounded the open back door, stepping out onto the curved, gravel-lined trail that led northeast to the library and the barracks and southwest to the sparring field.

  Vylaena and Thyrian were at the west side of the field, close enough for the courtiers inside the castle to make a morning of watching them, but far enough away that their faces were too blurry to see. He was glad they’d chosen a place out of the way; he had sensitive information to divulge.

  The thought made him frown as he strode across the clipped grass, fists clenched at his sides. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this thoroughly angry and confused. Perhaps Thyrian would have a suggestion of what to do. He’d not spent much time at his own court, but he had a level mind. Maybe he would have some advice.

  To Alaric, it appeared as though the mercenary and the prince were locked in the throes of mortal combat—the two wove around each other with frenzied energy, heaving swords at each other’s necks as though they were truly intent on killing one another. He faltered a moment, losing his current thought, as he saw Vylaena spin around Thyrian’s outstretched blade and reach out with a strike of her own, only for Thyrian to parry it just as quickly. They danced like sun on water, one shining bright before the other glinted brighter, a melody of movement underlined by deadly grace.

  He wasn’t sure who was most impressive: Thyrian, whose unconcerned elegance and easy finesse was inspiring to watch—or Vylaena, whose body was a blatant threat, each movement dangerous and calculated. There was something thrilling about watching Vylaena fight; something that made Alaric’s heart beat in his ears and the base of his stomach clench. He wondered what it would be like for her to look at him with that concentrated, intense stare, her slight smile cocky and perilous, her eyes afire with the thrill of exertion. For the thousandth time he wished he was sun-crowned instead of star-born, if only to have an excuse to spar her.

  Thyrian noticed Alaric approach before Vylaena did; only then did Alaric realize his talent was so great that he’d only been half-concentrating on the woman before him.

  Foolish man. If I were in your place, it would take the moon falling from the sky to draw my attention away.

  The Galiffan calmly disarmed Vylaena, surprising Alaric with the swiftness of his movement; in one moment Vylaena had a sword in hand and the next it was flying sideways to land in the grass. Alaric wondered if Thyrian had just been toying with the woman all along.

  “Rutting bastard,” Vylaena murmured as she scurried to retrieve her sword, giving Alaric only a brief, passing glance. He swallowed his disappoin
tment.

  “News?” Thyrian asked, wiping his forehead on the back of his sleeve. His golden Mark glimmered beneath the warm summer sun.

  Alaric nodded, walking past them to rest his hands on the low wall at the edge of the grounds. The sun-warmed stone was hot beneath his hands and it took his mind off the disgruntled twisting in his gut. The river below was serene and full of white-sailed ships, its far shore obscured by midmorning haze. He watched the boats without really seeing them.

  “Give it up, then,” Vylaena said, coming to join him at the wall. She smelled of sweat and warm leather.

  Alaric swallowed. “I was on my way to confront Father when I found myself drawn to the dungeons instead,” he explained. “I had a conversation with two of the guards and it’s true; Kaern Westley is a prisoner of the crown.”

  Vylaena frowned, eyeing his chest. “There’s something else.”

  Alaric took a steadying breath as Thyrian rounded his other side, pinning him between them. He nodded. “The guards confirmed that Kaern’s being held for murder. Except . . . it was Eyren, not Father, who ordered the arrest.”

  Thyrian took a sharp breath. “That doesn’t mean anything, does it? Even you can order an arrest.”

  “Yes, but there should be a trial,” Alaric replied, flexing his fingers against the stone. “The guards said Eyren’s not set a date because Kaern’s still feeding him useful information—names of gang members, clients he’s had that are bribing guards, that kind of thing—and they’re working out a deal. The guards were under the impression that Kaern is a family friend—which he is—and that his arrest was hushed up so it wouldn’t cause undue scorn. Avoiding a trial is what they expect, so no one questioned it. I just don’t understand why Eyren wouldn’t have mentioned it to me.”

  “The guards’ explanation makes sense, though,” Thyrian said, ignoring the sharp look Vylaena tossed at him. “Maybe Kaern was just hoping Vylaena would take pity on him and get him out—avoiding a trial.”