Volkes stared at him, his blue eyes pale and searching and his fair skin flushed red. He moved his hips, grinding himself against Rowen through their clothes, and Rowen succumbed to another gasp. He half pulled away, but Volkes pushed him down farther, his hands tightening against his face. He trailed a finger around Rowen’s lips, then shoved one into Rowen’s mouth. Volkes moaned as Rowen took it, letting Volkes grab his jaw and press against the back of his tongue and his throat with one finger before pulling it out. “Damn, do you even have a gag reflex?” Volkes said. Rowen could feel the other man’s hardness pressing against his. “I bet you want me in your mouth again.” Rowen didn’t move his head, unsure.
“Be a man, Rowen,” Volkes said between panting breaths. “Every man wants a fuck on a hot day like this.” His accent was thick on the last statement, as though it was a traditional phrase from his tribe.
It wasn’t hot at all in his opinion, but logical thought began to fray. Volkes was moving just the right way, and Rowen spread his legs, hoping for more contact. He had dreamed, but reality was always better, even if it was Volkes and not Kristoff.
Thinking of Kristoff made him shudder, his pants suddenly far too tight. He wished it was Kristoff, even as guilt stole over him for thinking it. He should be angry at Kristoff!
But maybe having everything out in the open had cleared up for him how he felt about his mentor too. Kristoff wasn’t some amazing god of storms. He was a human, like him, who made mistakes. And he wanted to fix them. Maybe together, they really could help his village.
“Look at me, dammit,” Volkes said, bringing Rowen back to the moment, and he reached down, unbuttoning his pants. “You want this, don’t you?”
Rowen licked his lips. He almost agreed, Kristoff or not, his brain a fog of arousal. But when Volkes grabbed his jaw and moved his head for him, as though making him nod, Rowen stiffened, his teeth grinding together, the forceful touch like a splash of cold water.
Rowen wrenched his head out of Volkes’s hands and shook it, glaring at him.
Volkes stopped moving, but his upper lip curled. “Sorry, what was that? I can’t hear you.” He stared down at Rowen as if daring him to refuse again.
The fog of passion turned to ice. Rowen shook his head again, sitting up and making Volkes get off him, the other man standing up with a sneer.
“You were gasping like a slut a second ago,” Volkes snarled. “What changed?”
Rowen took a breath, trying to think of a way to answer. He put his hand on his neck, glaring at Volkes, and then shook it.
“No real man turns down a fuck,” Volkes snapped. “But clearly you’re not a real man.”
Rowen guessed that was supposed to be a grave insult. If he could insult him back, he would call Volkes a water stealer. No one could trust someone who was that pushy and forward. They would feel entitled to everything, including water during a heat spell. But he couldn’t, so he just glared and waved a hand as if shooing away a large dog.
Volkes’s eyes flashed with anger. “You’re not worth my time,” he said finally and then turned and left, his feet thudding on the stairs.
Rowen sat back down on the couch, his head in his hands. That was for the best. He didn’t need Volkes. It was time to stop being naïve and going along with whatever anyone else wanted from him. He needed to figure out what he wanted. He wasn’t anyone’s sacrifice, not anymore.
Chapter 19
THE AIR wound around him in a heavy spiral, and when Kristoff cast his senses out, the storm he had sensed a few miles off the day before had dissipated.
That happened all the time. No Storm Lord, not even the ones dedicated to storm sensing who were responsible for locating heat spells, could predict the weather with 100 percent accuracy, and Kristoff had never been particularly good at it anyway. But as he walked down the path to Rowen’s shared house, he couldn’t help but feel it was odd.
Oh well. His heart picked up as he approached the overhanging trees that shaded the small house. He knocked before he could think too hard about any awkwardness that might crop up. He’d had all night the previous night to consider what he wanted to say.
He hoped it would be one of the girls who would open the door. Instead, Rowen greeted him as soon as it swung open.
Everything he had wanted to say rushed to the tip of his tongue and stayed there. Kristoff shut his mouth, staring at his student.
Rowen looked back at him, his green eyes guarded. His gaze flicked to the side for a moment, and he held up one hand, nodding once, then went inside, leaving the door open. Kristoff waited.
When he returned, he held a piece of paper in one hand and a charcoal stick in the other. Did he want him to start asking questions, or….
Rowen held out the paper, which Kristoff now saw was covered in messy writing. A note.
Kristoff took it, willing his hands not to shake. It was time to find out how badly he had erred.
Kristoff,
My vilege made me a sakrifise. They thot I killed my parents, took there water. I did not. I wood never do that. But they sakrifised me to bring a storm. And then yu found me.
At home I dug wels for water. In my life, many peeple have died. It got worse in the past few yeers. My parents died in a heat spel. A frend of mine, Lucas, died too.
I want to help peeple. I do not want my vilege to die out, like Darsee. I want a new start here, but I do not know if I want to forget home. I thot I did. But now I am not sure.
I want yu to tel me the truth, always. Yu are my teecher. Pleese teech me everything, not just what yu want me to know. I hope yu did not meen to lie. Yu do not seem like the type to do that. I want to look at records, like yu showed me on the way to the doctors. I want to lern about what has happend in the world.
I will keep trying to lern how to rite better, and how to use magic like a Storm Lord.
Rowen
Kristoff read it slowly, struggling with a lot of words that were spelled incorrectly and letters that were backward. But the message was clear.
“I didn’t mean to lie, Rowen,” Kristoff said. While he had read the note, Rowen had stepped outside the house and closed the door behind him. He now leaned against the wooden wall like a wary cat. “I promise, I didn’t know.” Rowen tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. “I know, it’s hard to believe. But we Storm Lords… we don’t know everything. I’m young, Rowen.” Kristoff held out his hands, the letter fluttering. “Most Storm Lords are older than me and take longer to get their powers.” Rowen frowned. “I guess since I graduated so young, I never learned… never really thought about the truth of things. I never thought about how hard everyone else has to work and how sometimes… we can’t save everyone.”
Rowen’s gaze dropped to the grass.
“If I had known….” Kristoff stopped. He wanted to say if he had known Rowen’s parents were dying, he would have come sooner. But that wouldn’t be true. Two people’s lives weren’t worth a city full of people, and that was likely why they had suffered while he had been sent somewhere else. But it hurt to even think that. “Rowen, I wish I could have helped you. I swear.” He meant every word, but he knew better than to think it would be enough to make up for what Rowen had lost.
Rowen looked up at him, his green eyes dark. Finally he nodded.
“I will teach you, though,” Kristoff said. “As best as I can. Maybe together… I can’t promise. But maybe, together, we can save your village.”
Rowen nodded again, letting out a soft sigh.
“Let’s start with your request, then,” Kristoff said. “We can look over the records at the Storm Building.”
KRISTOFF HAD only been here once before, as a student with a group of other trainees. Most Storm Lords weren’t interested in the records, and he got the sense that most of their mentors had brought them at the same time to get past a boring part of their education as fast as possible.
For his part, he had been more interested in ogling an attractive record keeper than he had been in a
ctually looking over the ledgers. But maybe there would be useful information there—most likely things he should have learned a long time ago.
Lissa wasn’t at her usual spot. Instead an older man nodded to him when he entered. “Kristoff Hurricane, and…?” He pointed to Rowen.
“Rowen. We’re here to take a look at the records. Do you have the key?”
The man handed it over without any further questions. Rowen trailed after Kristoff, peering at the building. Their footsteps grew loud on the stone as they walked down the hall leading away from Lorana’s office, their path taking them through a hallway that looked more like an arched stone tunnel. Two heavy double doors marked the entrance.
“Through here,” Kristoff said, and he hid a smile of amusement when Rowen jumped at the echoes Kristoff’s voice created.
Orderly shelves studded with bound books greeted them when the doors swung open, along with an enormous globe taking up the entranceway that was more detailed than any other map Kristoff knew of on the island. Rowen’s eyes went wide when he saw it. Rows and rows of books and scrolls stretched behind it.
Of course. Rowen had likely never seen a globe before. He wondered if Rowen knew the world was round, not flat like many cultures believed.
The globe towered over them both, and Rowen carefully held out a hand, glancing at Kristoff as if for permission. Kristoff nodded.
The globe creaked as it spun, and Rowen jumped back. Kristoff hid a laugh.
“It’s all right, Rowen. It spins. See?” Kristoff set the globe on a slow rotation, the continents and oceans traveling under his fingers, the colors a mix of red, brown, and green. “Do you know what this is?” He stopped it with one finger, pointing directly at the Storm Lords’ island.
Rowen paused, then gave a slow shake of his head.
“It’s the world. Our world.” Rowen nodded, staring at Kristoff in a way he assumed meant he wanted to learn more. “The world is a giant sphere, Rowen. And all of these are the oceans and the landmasses that it’s made of. Right here, see?” He pointed. “That’s where we are. The Storm Lords’ island.”
Rowen moved closer, peering at it, then traced his hand lightly enough to not make the globe spin, over what Kristoff knew was the empire of Pearlen and then over the northern territories.
“I know,” Kristoff said. “The island is small compared to the rest of the world.”
Rowen traced his hand in the other direction. Kristoff didn’t know if it was on purpose or an accident, but he nodded as Rowen’s trailing finger grew closer to his old home.
“Do you want to know where you lived?” Kristoff asked.
Rowen nodded.
Gently, Kristoff took Rowen’s hand and guided it south and west, toward where the green began to give way to a burnished red. “Here,” Kristoff said. “You can follow this path down south from Pearlen, toward the southern continent.” Rowen’s hand was cool beneath his, but the skin was chapped and heavy with calluses. Rowen had clearly been a working man once. He should have asked more about his life back at the village. Kristoff’s body heated slightly at the thought of Rowen’s strength, and he cleared his throat, taking his hand away. “Your village would be right around here, about a hundred miles from the strait.” Rowen let his finger stop there. The land was still green.
He kept moving, down the enormous landmass of the southern continent, to where cartographers past had shaded in the deep red. He looked up at Kristoff.
“This is the most up-to-date map of the world that we keep,” Kristoff said. “The green is where people live, and the blue oceans are where the air is cool enough to sail through. The red on the land means the heat is too great to dispel.”
It had never changed in Kristoff’s lifetime. Once he had assumed that it never would.
Rowen’s brows drew down, a small frown marring his features. He spun the globe, searching, and stopped it on another landmass, west of the southern continent, that was entirely red. The seas around it were the deep green of waters that were untraversable. He looked to Kristoff.
“That’s Darsea.”
Rowen looked back at the globe, his gaze scanning it. Kristoff felt sure he wanted to ask more questions but couldn’t. He wished he could better guess what Rowen was thinking.
“The oldest records here are from four hundred years ago,” Kristoff said. “The changes are reflected on the globe. It was the Darseans who suggested we keep the records at all, and they’re expert mapmakers. They made the globe for us and put in place the color system to keep track of how the world has changed. The last time it was changed was fifty years ago.” It had felt like a vast amount of time when he was a student. But now, he realized, that meant there were people still alive who fifty years ago would have had to mark down lands that were once inhabitable as desolate. He wondered if Lorana was one of them. That would explain a lot about her and how she made the decisions she did—like sacrificing whole villages for the greater good.
Rowen’s mouth was turned down in a small frown. He took a few slow steps down the hallway, peering at the numbers etched onto the side of every bookcase and at the level of every shelf. Kristoff wondered if he could read them. His feet were silent on a red plush carpet that covered the stone floor, making the room look almost inviting.
“Hello?” Kristoff turned to see an older man wearing a red cap. It wasn’t the apprentice record keeper Kristoff remembered from his time as a child—so this must be Waldeve, the historian.
“We’re here to see the records,” Kristoff said. “I’m—well, we’re, curious.”
“Curious? Excellent.” Waldeve strode over, nodding at Kristoff and then turning to Rowen. “You look as though you’ve never seen a globe before.”
Rowen nodded, spinning the globe again and resting his hand on the southwest. He tapped it.
Waldeve frowned, and Kristoff spoke up before the other man could get offended by what seemed like rudeness. “He can’t speak. He wants to know about… records about the southwest regions, right, Rowen?” He got a quick nod in response.
“Oh.” Waldeve’s expression broke into a smile. “I see. Well, we have records going back centuries. What sort of things do you want to know?”
Kristoff had his own questions too, and he hoped Rowen’s overlapped. “To start,” he said, “I’d like to know about heat spells over the southwest regions. Maybe in the past… twenty years?” That would hopefully limit it enough. “Is that all right, Rowen?”
Rowen glanced back at the globe and then nodded.
Waldeve clearly took his job seriously. “Very well,” he said, and he motioned for both Rowen and Kristoff to follow. The old man moved sprightly through the rows of books and picked out the right shelf within seconds. He muttered to himself as he perused the books. “Here we are,” he said. He pulled out a bound ledger that was thinner than the ones on either side of it.
“Do you know how records are kept?” Waldeve asked Rowen. “Are you going to be a Storm Lord?”
Rowen didn’t respond immediately, and a spike of fear went through Kristoff. Then Rowen nodded, and Kristoff wondered where that fear had come from.
“And you’re his mentor, I take it?” Waldeve didn’t wait for Kristoff’s answer. “Excellent. This is good to learn. You’ll be writing reports one day, since you won’t report them verbally, so it’s best you learn this.” He flipped open the book, revealing a page full of notes, and Rowen peered over his shoulder.
“Each heat spell that gets cleared is reported to the governor and transcribed here. Details of the region, the date, the temperatures, the person responsible for clearing it, and the method used to dispel it,” Waldeve explained. Rowen nodded, still looking over the man’s shoulder. Kristoff wondered how much of it he could read. “The southwest region has been getting hotter of late.” Waldeve flipped a few pages forward. “Some places don’t have accurate reports. Not many live there anymore, and we hear more about it from travelers from Pearlen than most anything else.”
Rowen gave a voiceless sigh. He looked up at Kristoff, then at the globe, and then back, his eyes big and sad.
It didn’t take too much thought to figure out what Rowen wanted to ask. “When will we have to mark it red?” Kristoff asked.
“A bit of a fatalist, aren’t you?” Waldeve snapped the book shut. “The continent was marked red about eighty or so years ago. The northernmost portion has been habitable since, but not comfortably. Only small villages have survived.” Rowen nodded. “But those villages still get their heat spells fixed. It’s not a total loss yet. I’m just a records keeper, so I don’t know. You’d have to ask Lorana. The worst part about these heat spells is that they’re unpredictable, so looking at how things have gone doesn’t always tell us what’s going to happen.”
Rowen nodded, and for the first time since the night before, Kristoff saw him smile. Good. He wanted Rowen to have hope.
They were Storm Lords. They had to keep trying.
As they left the records hall, though, he couldn’t help but see the globe again and estimate how much of it was green and how much red. Of the land that remained, there was probably less than a third that was green.
It hadn’t changed much in the past four centuries, their small habitable circle staying that way. But as the record keeper had said, that didn’t mean anything either.
Soon enough they left the quiet warmth of the records hall behind, though no familiar breeze greeted Kristoff as he walked down the hallways. The stone was cool as Kristoff trailed his hands over it, but as they approached the door, the stone grew warmer, especially where rays of sun replaced torches. The air was still and the sun oppressive as they stepped outside, and the heat reflected off the stone. No birds called from the trees, and sweat prickled on Kristoff’s neck and shoulders.
Rowen stopped walking, looking back over his shoulder at where Kristoff had stepped outside the doorway.
“Sorry, Rowen,” Kristoff said. In a few days, he was sure, someone would have to dispel this. But until then, they would let it build, just enough to keep the pressure systems stable in other areas, before breaking it. It was a delicate balance that Kristoff didn’t fully understand, but he knew the necessity. “Do you sense it?”
The Storm Lords Page 13
