Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  Thyrian waited, scouring his brain for some clue he’d missed but Vylaena had not.

  “I think Eyren truly is Lord Wroth,” she continued, “and I think there’s a reason he chose Emperor Tygnon’s family name as his alias. I think he wants to repeat history—but this time, succeed.”

  Thyrian watched as she clenched her hands into fists, his stomach flipping as he realized what she was about to say.

  “I think,” she growled, “that Eyren intends to use the Breaking Stone to steal Ikna’s power. And if I stop him, I can redeem my Shadowheart ancestors who stood by Tygnon and watched him torture her—and in doing so, repay my debt to her and lift my Curse.”

  If that was true . . . Thyrian held Vylaena’s gaze and understood exactly how much this meant to her. It was the only way her experience in the deserts would never be repeated—the only way to ensure that no one would ever again be hurt in a twisted attempt to torture her. But there were still too many unknowns and too little evidence.

  “How can you be certain?” Thyrian asked.

  Vylaena shook her head. “I can’t; I don’t have Alaric’s Knack. But look at everything that’s happened and give me a different explanation.” Her grey eyes flashed. “Prince Eyren has been trying to recruit me to some cause he’s championing—something about changing the world. Wouldn’t Ikna’s power allow him to do just that?”

  Thyrian frowned. “I agree that Eyren isn’t looking very good right now, but Alaric seems convinced he’s innocent. Why would Eyren try to have me killed? I represent an opportunity to strengthen Enserion. And Alaric has always told me how Eyren has been his only ally and supporter—it was Eyren who helped coordinate my journey here.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Furthermore, why would he want my sister here, in the hopes Alaric will marry her and give Enserion a powerful ally anyway?”

  “I don’t know, Thyrian.”

  “Some of it fits,” Thyrian pointed out, “but not all.”

  “He was getting awfully nosy with Flinx.”

  “Yes, he was curious,” Thyrian replied. “That doesn’t automatically mean he wants to kill a goddess.”

  “But it’s awfully suspect, considering everything else.”

  “I know, I know.” Thyrian sighed deeply, wandering over to sit on the edge of his bed. He ran a hand over his face. Goddesses. This was a tangled mess.

  “Why would Eyren need to kidnap ether-touched?” he asked. “Especially so many—isn’t one enough?”

  Vylaena replied without hesitation, “Flinx said the Breaking Stone transfers power from one entity, through the Stone, and into another. She also said when soulstones are made, you have to channel ether through the stone. What if it’s the same for the Breaking Stone? Eyren would need the ether-touched for that. Perhaps the amount of power required means he needs more than one.”

  “So the ether-touched channel ether through Ikna, into the Stone, and into Eyren?”

  “It makes sense.”

  Thyrian shook his head. “How does he expect to draw Ikna out of the Ether? Or hold her for long enough to perform this ritual?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He let out another sharp breath. “Okay. Let’s say this is all true. What do we do about it? Demand that Alaric arrest his own brother? Torture him until he confesses?”

  “We start with Kaern,” Vylaena replied calmly. “Smuggle him out of the dungeons. Have him tell us where the ether-touched are. We find them, free them, and Eyren is powerless. We don’t even have to be right about Eyren being Lord Wroth that way.”

  “Just about the Breaking Stone and the ether-touched.”

  “Right.”

  Thyrian paused, mulling this over. He eyed her, raising a brow. “This is exactly the opposite of getting involved, you know. I thought you were intent on staying far away from things like this.”

  “If it lifts my Curse,” Vylaena replied, her jaw set with stubborn determination, “I’d do anything. Even accept my Mark again.”

  As if they’d both been stricken blind, the room went black.

  ✽✽✽

  Vylaena froze. “Thyrian?” she said. “Your damn etherlamp finally died.” Rutting Galiffan idiot. He should’ve been using the oil lamp, not wearing out what was supposed to be an emergency source of light.

  There was no reply.

  Her stomach twisted as a heavy dread tumbled down her spine. She drew a dagger at once, blinking in the darkness in a futile effort to see. “Thyrian,” she commanded. “Answer me.”

  Nothing.

  Vylaena felt her way forward, desperate to reach the last place she’d seen him. Had he been stabbed? Had he been incapacitated? Her heart hammered so hard she feared it would burst out of her throat; she was so intent on reaching Thyrian she didn’t even question why she was suddenly so uncharacteristically frantic.

  Something grabbed her arm.

  She didn’t even have a chance to struggle. She was disarmed in a moment, her arms pushed to her sides with relentless force. She snarled as she felt something wrap around her legs, curl over her hips, and climb up her ribs.

  She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She was held—impossibly—by the darkness itself.

  And then she felt the hand on her forehead.

  And the pain.

  She was Shadowheart. She did not scream, even as the white-hot brand seared her brow, burning through flesh, through muscle, through bone, to the spirit lingering beneath. It burned her very soul, a match meeting dry tinder, her entire body humming with the explosion of power that rocked her consciousness. She ached with it, feeling it invade her bones, cracking them into splinters one by one and then rebuilding them anew. She felt it tear through her muscles, reinforcing them with something else—something that seared her with blue-white light, scalding the darkness that threatened to drown her.

  For a precarious moment, she wasn’t sure if she’d survive it. Not the pain—that she’d endure—but the careful shattering and reassembly of her body. The body could always break, she knew, even while the mind remained strong.

  And at that moment, she realized that she didn’t want to die. Not just like this, frozen and unable to fight back, but . . . not at all. Not when she’d never truly lived. Not when she’d never had the chance to be without constantly worrying about every thought, every emotion, every interaction. Goddesses! If she made it just one more breath, she’d change. She’d change. She’d fight her fears. She’d participate in life. She promised it with all the remaining willpower she had.

  The pain evaporated.

  Vylaena gasped—an ugly, retched sound, blinking into thin, greyish light. Even such weak light blinded her, after facing that impenetrable darkness, and she twisted away in agony.

  “Vylaena!”

  Someone was shouting in her ear. A man. Thyrian.

  “Vylaena! Damnit, answer me!”

  There was a hand on her skin—on her upper arm. Warm and hard and urgent. She blinked again, bleary-eyed, and saw the shadowed outlines of a familiar face hovering above hers. There was something else, too—a sharp pain, emanating from his right hand. The one not on her arm. It was—inexplicably—quite badly burned.

  “Vylaena, please! Oh, goddesses . . .”

  She winced. “You’re going to make me go deaf, shouting like that.” The words sounded awful to her ears, as though half her vocal cords had been severed.

  Thyrian let out a long, heavy breath, retreating a little. He didn’t remove his hand from her arm. “Rutting Ether, Vylaena. What happened to you?”

  He helped her sit, and though she was inclined to shove him off, she found she needed the assistance. She squinted at the nearest window, which was open to the night, a white sliver of moon resting against the midnight sky. The etherlamp was no longer glowing; it had been moonlight that had blinded her.

  “Are you alright?”

  Vylaena turned her face toward the prince, but couldn’t make out his features in the dimness. “I think so
. Mostly.” She paused. “I fainted?”

  Thyrian grunted. His voice was rough when he replied, “Something like that. The lamp went out and the window banged open, and then there was ether in here, pouring in from everywhere: the hallway, beneath your door, the window . . .” He shook his head. “It covered everything. I couldn’t see. And then I heard you hit the floor, and I fought my way through to get to you, but it was like you were on fire. I couldn’t touch you—I . . . I burned my hand, I think.”

  “I can feel it. Let me see.”

  “A moment.” He got to his feet, shuffling to the dresser. Vylaena blinked rapidly as golden light flickered through the room, courtesy of the oil lamp he lit.

  Thyrian hunched over his hand, tilting it to the light, his back to her. “It’s starting to blister. Goddesses, Vylaena. Running that hot—you should be dead.”

  “I’ll walk you to a physician.”

  Thyrian turned. “You’re in no condition to . . .”

  He stopped midsentence as his eyes fixed on her face, his mouth going slack.

  She frowned in response. “What?”

  He didn’t answer. He ran his good hand over his face, and then stared some more, his eyes round and disbelieving.

  “What?”

  He just shook his head, turning on his heel and disappearing into the hall.

  “Thyrian, damnit!” Vylaena struggled to her feet, using the wall for support. Her legs were hopelessly shaky beneath her, as though she’d never used them before. She clung to the wall, breathing hard. What in the rutting Ether was he doing?

  Luckily, she didn’t have to test her ability to run after him. Thyrian returned a moment later, carrying a bronze hand mirror. He stopped in front of her and held it to her face.

  She grabbed it, holding it closer, her heart doing acrobatics against her bruised ribs.

  A silver Mark lined her brow.

  30 | The Brawl

  “I haven’t done this in a long time.”

  “How reassuring.”

  Vylaena looked up from her examination of Thyrian’s blistered fingers, her eyes flashing silver. “It was your idea. I’m still happy to walk you to a physician.”

  “No, no. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  Vylaena continued to stare at him, seeking out any weakness in his expression. Finding none, she returned her gaze to his hand. “I need to gather some ether. Give me a moment.”

  Leaving him sitting on the edge of the bed, she walked to his dresser to retrieve the broken etherlamp. Already it had begun to lose its shape; tendrils of ether waved from its surface like the frayed edges of a worn tunic. She held it in between her hands, concentrating her attention on it—and in the span of a breath the lamp dissolved, dissipating into a cloud of ether.

  She carried the ether back to Thyrian’s bed, reaching for his injured hand. He offered it to her, watching as she coaxed the ether onto his stinging palm. With careful, calloused fingers she spread it over his skin, as though she were buttering toast. It tickled a little, like a thousand tiny feathers—not entirely unpleasant.

  And suddenly, he felt slightly nauseous. It was as if he stood at the prow of a ship, tossed on a stormy sea—it felt as though the air around him wasn’t quite stable, as if something—or someone—was tampering with the very fabric of the world.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked her.

  She didn’t look up. “I’m out of practice. Don’t distract me or it’ll get worse.”

  He closed his mouth.

  Vylaena pressed her other hand down upon the ether, sandwiching it between their palms. It warmed as she added pressure, hurting more and more as it pushed against his burned skin. He successfully fought the urge to flinch but he couldn’t help the line of sweat that beaded upon his brow.

  Vylaena closed her eyes, and the ether began to glow.

  It shone like a cluster of tiny thunderstorms run through with blue-white lightning. And rutting Ether it itched! Thyrian gritted his teeth, knowing that whatever he felt, Vylaena felt, too.

  And then she relaxed, lifting her fingers, wafting the now-dull, considerably smaller cloud of ether away with a careless wave. She let go of Thyrian’s wrist and allowed him to peer at his fingers, where raw blisters had been replaced by new skin. He lifted his eyes to meet hers.

  “Vylaena, that’s incredible.”

  She took a step back, her lips twitching. “I reattached a man’s hand once.”

  “Really?”

  “Well,” she admitted, giving him a dark smile, “just so I could cut it off again myself.”

  Vylaena wandered over to the window, leaning her elbows on the sill. She stared into the sky, the silver of her Mark catching the thin shower of moonlight like a handshake between old friends. The remnants of her smile still lingered, but her eyes were hard and glassy.

  Thyrian rose, striding slowly across the room to join her. He stopped once he’d reached her side; he ignored the window, instead staring down at her with quiet attentiveness. The slight midnight breeze caught the loose strands of her hair, brushing them away from her face, exposing the full length of her Mark to the sky. There was a small scar beneath her eyebrow, only visible this close, shinier and paler than the skin around it. Briefly, he wondered what its story was, or if it was merely one of many scars she bore, hidden and half forgotten.

  “Vylaena,” he ventured finally, his voice soft. “What just happened?”

  She didn’t answer right away. She kept her eyes on the stars, barely blinking, entertaining private thoughts behind a passive face. But then, slowly, she turned to him, and he saw that her irises glowed slightly where moonlight struck them—a shimmering, potent, silver-blue. And for the first time, as he sunk deep into her gaze, he didn’t think her eyes strange or odd, but disarming. Compelling. Exquisite. He wasn’t sure how he’d ever thought otherwise.

  “Ikna once told me there are many types of death,” Vylaena said in a quiet tone. “I suppose I embraced a certain kind of demise when I turned my back on the world—and in doing so, I rejected my fate, my future, any sort of real progress. Now that I’ve decided to help, to participate . . . in a way, it’s like I’m alive again. Like I was reborn. And in the process, I was Marked again, just like any newborn ether-touched who enters this world.”

  Silence stretched between them as Vylaena’s words lingered in the air. The two of them regarded each other with quiet solemnity as the minutes stretched on. Something intrinsic and elemental flowed between them—a sort of unspoken understanding Thyrian would have been unable to describe aloud.

  It was an odd feeling, in that Thyrian had never felt it before. But it wasn’t uncomfortable or unwelcome. Rather, it was an almost primal recognition of something kindred in the other, despite how vastly different they were. It was as if they walked a common path, sealed off from the rest of the world—at least for this brief, frozen moment.

  And then it was broken, as the city bells chimed the hour.

  “It’s very late,” Vylaena said, drawing back from the window. Her face was closed to him again; as hard and emotionless as always. “I’ll let you get some rest.”

  Thyrian watched her walk to their shared door, feeling like he should ask her to wait—to offer her some reassurance or wisdom or something to fix the weary darkness that tarnished her voice. But he didn’t know what to say. And as the door shut behind her, he wondered if he’d just missed some key moment he’d never get back.

  He sighed, reaching over to close the window. Vylaena was right; they both needed sleep. Tomorrow they’d seek out Alaric and ask his counsel on how to proceed with Kaern. And he had a feeling that a rescue would prove to be a tremendous undertaking.

  What about Eyren?

  The thought haunted him. Perhaps Alaric was right, and it was all a big misunderstanding. Maybe there was an explanation for everything that made him look so guilty.

  But if Vylaena is wrong, then why did Ikna return her Mark? Why did the goddess suddenly entrust her with so much powe
r?

  The thought kept him awake for a long time.

  ✽✽✽

  Vylaena twisted the ropes of ether, blue sparks popping beneath her fingers as she worked. There. That should be sufficient.

  She tied one of the strands around the doorknob to Thyrian’s suite, then left her rooms and tied the other around his front door. Anyone who touched them would spring the trap laid in the ropes, knocking them out cold for a few hours. That would keep anyone from disturbing Thyrian while she was gone.

  A hundred thousand frenzied thoughts followed her as she stalked through the sleeping castle. They tailed her like buzzing insects desperate to prey on her blood. She didn’t want to think right now; she wanted to get away—to drown the frantic feelings in her gut and pretend everything was all right.

  She found a servant’s passage and entered, navigating down to her secret tunnel in the sewers. She pulled her hood low over her head as she unlocked the sewer door, hands shaking, and then picked her way through the labyrinth of pipes beyond.

  The Deeps was packed, as she’d anticipated. She breathed in the musty scent of the place and let it out in a long, shaky breath. Skin was manning the bar as usual, and it took him only a few moments to notice her once she’d pushed her way there and removed her hood. His good eye narrowed on her forehead, then widened, and a deep frown cut across his scarred face.

  “Always wondered if the rumors were true,” he told her.

  “I’m not here to talk,” she spat. “Open the pit.”

  “Brawling night was yesterday, you won’t find any—”

  “Open,” Vylaena growled, “the fucking pit.”

  Skin eyed her a moment longer, then nodded. He retreated a step, reaching back to ring the cracked bronze bell hanging from the back wall. “Lady here wants a fight,” he shouted over the din of the crowd, drawing a hundred curious eyes. “Anyone wanna oblige her?”