Lost in the Dawn (Erythleh Chronicles Book 1)

by Catherine Johnson

  Jorrell was not worried so much for the consequences for himself, although he was sure they would be agonisingly painful, but fear of the consequences for Serwren made him see reason. If they ran away, unless they ran to the ends of the earth, there was the distinct possibility that she would lose the chance at this match, no matter how disgusting it seemed to him. And if a new match were to be made, it might well be to someone else, someone unknown, someone cruel, someone who might take her far away from her home here in Thrissia. If Jorrell abided by his father’s instructions, Serwren would be subject to a loveless marriage, but at least it would not be in a strange country. At least he would know where she was.

  “I’ll go and make the necessary preparations.” Jorrell made for the door, suddenly needing to be very far away from his father.

  “You’ll find the maids are already packing what you might need. I would suggest that you don’t take too many personal items. An army camp isn’t the place for frippery.”

  Jorrell couldn’t find the respect, let alone the love, to prompt him to say goodbye to his father. He left the room without another word. He knew that if he left the house, his father would immediately think he’d gone looking for Serwren, and the idea was very present in his mind that he would go looking for her, but first he wanted time to think, then consider the implications of his father’s edict, and to find a way around it.

  Not caring who saw him, what they thought, or whether they tattled, Jorrell headed back down into the thick of the city. If anyone saw his path and mentioned it to his father, they would have to say that he was walking in completely the opposite direction to the palace.

  The day was waning as he reached the streets dominated by the native Felthissian traders. The crowds had thinned significantly and some of the merchants who’d had a better day than others were already shutting their stalls. Their apprentices were brushing the muck from the animal pens into the open gutters that ran either side of the cobbled roads.

  Instead of continuing down to the dock, Jorrell took a path that led him westwards. The shops and stalls gave way to the lower-quality houses inhabited by the lower classes of traders and merchants. The smells of humans and animals were eventually overtaken by the sharp, pungent aroma of urine as he came upon the tiers of round stone vats which were filled with a stinking rainbow. This was where the bare threads and wools harvested from the fields and animals were given the vivid hues so common to Felthissian clothing.

  Jorrell continued through the streets stained with splashes and overspill from the vast containers which were deeper than the height of a man and twice as wide. The street angled downwards now, aiming to meet the shoreline. This portion of the shoreline eventually became the coast of Dassrin, and it was markedly rockier than the shoreline to the east of the city.

  There was a particular point on the shoreline that was his destination. There was a single point on the coastal path where a person who did not fear heights could climb down the surf line. At the bottom of the cliffs, the bronze and gold shaded rocks formed archways and caves where they had been worn by the relentless tide. One cave in particular was known as the Moon Cave. The sweep of the water over centuries had worn the softer parts of a rocky outcrop away and left a hollow cavern, a natural grotto, almost completely walled in, that was as large as the biggest room in the palace. The beating of rain and surf had punched a hole in the top of the cavern through which, by some trick of its position, the full moon could always be seen. The cave was generally deemed too dangerous to explore due to the unpredictable effect of the tides in the enclosed space.

  Naturally, Jorrell and Serwren had disregarded the warnings, and the Moon Cave had become one of their hiding places when they wanted to escape.

  Jorrell clambered down the last parts of the path, which were little more than showers of shale that had been washed down the cliff face. At first he thought the bundle of rags he saw by the water line in the cave was rubbish that had been washed in by the tide. As he walked over to investigate, he realised it was Serwren. She had her legs drawn up to her chest, with her arms wrapped around them. Her forehead was resting on her knees; her face was hidden behind the thick curtain of her hair. She hadn’t given any indication that she’d noticed someone intruding on her solitude.

  “Serry?”

  Jorrell took a step back in surprise when Serwren shot out of her crouched position and stumbled several steps into the water at the sound of his voice. The look on her face was one of terror, an expression he had never thought to see her display for him.

  “Serry? What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t back up any further, that was something, but she didn’t walk to meet him either. Jorrell started taking the steps to her, carefully and slowly, so as not to spook her any more than she obviously was.

  “Serry, talk to me.” It was hard to keep his voice soothing and low over the rush of the water breaking on the sand and its attendant echo off the walls of the cave, but he tried.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her voice was hoarse. From the redness around her eyes, he knew it was because she’d been crying. If he hadn’t been watching her mouth, waiting for her to speak, he would not have caught what she’d said.

  “I’m guessing the same thing you are. I’ve been home less than half a day, but the first thing I heard on my return was that you’re to be married. I came here to think.”

  “Jorrell...”

  “Serry, just tell me what you want to do. If you don’t want this, I’ll take you anywhere. We can cross the mountains into Dassrin. We can catch a ship to Veltharesh. I’d even take you to Vuthron. Just say the word.”

  “We can’t... they’d find us...” she stuttered.

  “We’d go far away. Far, far away. Serry, my father has conscripted me to the army. I sail for Naidac tomorrow, unless you want to come with me, right now.”

  “You’ll be hung for desertion.”

  “Not if they don’t find us.”

  “No, Jor, I won’t spend my life running.”

  “But you’ll spend it miserable?”

  Serwren nodded, and in the last night of the day creeping through the skylight of the cave, Jorrell caught the glint of tears on her cheeks. “I won’t get you killed, Jor.”

  He finished closing the distance between them. He was confused to see that she backed up a step as he approached, but he caught her in his arms easily and pulled her to his chest. “I’d risk it all for you, Serry.”

  He kept his arms around her as he stumbled backwards, pulling her out of the cold surf onto a dryer part of the beach, away from the water. Jorrell tripped on an unevenness in the gritty sand and they tumbled into a heap. He struggled to right himself, but Serwren was quicker to gain her composure. As Jorrell got his feet under him to stand, Serwren straddled his thighs and sat into his lap, forcing him to rest back on his heels.

  She was kissing him, feeding her fingers into his hair to hold him still while she devoured him. There was a desperate edge to her kisses that he’d never felt before, but he thought it was understandable given their circumstances. Jorrell tasted the bitter salt of the sea and the sweeter salt of her tears on her lips. Then she was reaching between them. Her destination was unmistakable. With a huff of irritation, she shoved the material of her voluminous skirt out of her way.

  “Serry? What?” Jorrell mumbled against her fevered lips. His brain was struggling to catch up with the fact that she was freeing his cock from his trews. His body, however, seemed to know exactly what her intention was and was more than happy to comply. At the touch of her soft palm he was as hard as granite for her.

  Serwren held him steady, rose up on her knees and sank down on him before he could think to voice an objection. Jorrell saw her wince, and then her face mostly relaxed, save for her brows drawing down slightly in concentration. He was barely aware of anything more than that he was in the one place he wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world, experiencing a pleasure he had no longer thought
to have.

  Several years before, having found Jorrell in his room with his cock in hand, his father had taken him to one of the more reputable whorehouses in the city. His father had reasoned that the visit was part of his education. Jorrell had enjoyed the experience well enough, but he hadn’t returned, and he had never sought out prostitutes by himself. Even during that first time, his head had been so full of Serwren that it was not the whore’s face he saw while he was inside her body.

  Jorrell didn’t know much about the taking of someone’s virginity, except for the whispered rumours he’d heard. Those muttered jokes had included promises of pain and blood. Serwren had appeared to experience discomfort, she still did not seem to be overwhelmed with pleasure, but there had not been the strong resistance that he’d been expecting. Jorrell would have taken the time to wonder, but Serwren was moving on him, rocking her hips and pushing up onto her knees and sinking back down until he was fully enveloped by her body, an action she repeated over and over until he could barely think.

  Jorrell had been an attentive student that first night with the whore, and he had honed that initial knowledge on Serwren’s body during their illicit hours together. He searched beneath her skirts until his fingers found the juncture of her thighs, then he delved into the tuft of hair there until he found that little knot of nerves that was the secret of a woman’s pleasure. He worked her flesh the way he knew she responded to best, until all traces of discomfort were gone from her face and she was rocking on him even more urgently.

  When Serwren began to lose the thread of the steady rhythm that she’d been keeping, Jorrell took hold of her hips in a tight grip and moved her, raising up himself at the same time to meet her and to bury his cock impossibly deeper inside her. When he felt her hot, wet flesh start to pulse around him, Jorrell moved even faster until Serwren threw her head back and they were both shouting to the stars as they came in unison.

  After his last frantic thrusts and as the last twitches of his spent flesh faded, Jorrell clutched Serwren to him. She fell forward, her limbs limp in his embrace, her head resting trustingly against his shoulder.

  Jorrell swallowed the stone of knowledge that Serwren had not been a virgin. It stuck in his throat and nearly choked him, but it was not important now. She was to be married to another, anyway. His chest felt as though an axe had been buried in his ribs, at the sure knowledge that she hadn’t waited for him, that she’d given her body to someone else. He wanted to ask who the bastard was. There was a red mist behind his eyes that demanded the knowledge, so that he could beat the worthless, undeserving shit bloody, but the requisite words could not squeeze past the stone. If she hadn’t loved him enough to wait, why should she tell him who she had cared for more? Why should he care at all?

  Everything that he’d known, that he thought they had known, that he’d thought they were, was changed in the light of this new knowledge. Memories that had shone bright with the flush of love, cracked and misted with disgust and betrayal.

  The sun had set, but the thousands of stars had provided some illumination in its absence. Now, the moon had risen, and its light flooded the cave in the manner it was named for.

  “I should go.” Jorrell managed to rasp out the words.

  Serwren only nodded against his shoulder. Jorrell took hold of her hips and lifted her off his lap. He winced in bitter disappointment at the feeling of his cock slipping out of her. This was something that they would never know again, and it was not how it should have been known in the first place.

  Jorrell was not ignorant of the fact that Serwren was sitting in the sand and weeping, but he did not have the words to comfort her. She did not call out to him. He left her crouched in the sand and headed back to his father’s house to prepare for his new life.

  That night, his dreams were all of Serwren and the life they might have led together.

  Chapter Seven

  When Serwren wanted to be alone, when she wanted to escape the world, she ran to the Moon Cave. But sometimes, it was not possible to make that trip down to the coast. Sometimes, duty, and the possibility of being sought and caught out, demanded that she remain closer to home.

  For several days, she had been unable to remain in the palace for very long. She avoided her lessons, not caring at all if the tutors reported her to her father. Either they had been given an impromptu holiday in acknowledgement that the class had been reduced by one third, or her father had recognised the futility of any intervention, because he did not mention any complaint about her lack of attendance. The bitter worry that her studies were now ended because she was to be a wife, and eventually, inevitably, she supposed, a mother, made her want to scream in frustration.

  Serwren had been gripped by a pervading sense of terror that she would have to be in the same room as Erkas. She found it almost impossible now to think of him as her brother. She knew that there would come a time when she would have to see him, and that it would be in public, and that she would have to appear unaffected by his presence, but she hadn’t found the inner-strength to contemplate and prepare for that eventuality. She went to the Moon Cave every day to search for it.

  She had been no closer to finding it when Jorrell had appeared, as if conjured from her wishful thoughts of the first day of his absence. She hadn’t thought of him much in the following time, or rather, she had tried not to think of him much, because it simply hurt, deeply and painfully, to dwell on what had been taken from her, what was being denied to her.

  He’d offered her a child’s fantasy, a dream of freedom, of escape. It was a dream that she knew would evaporate in the cold light of dawn. Her decision to take him for herself had been fuelled by her deep sense of injustice. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she was to be married to a far older man that she didn’t respect, let alone love. It wasn’t fair that her brother had raped her. It wasn’t fair that her father refused to hear even a single word from her. It wasn’t fair that the life she’d hoped and dreamed of for so long had been snatched away from her and that she was powerless to snatch it back.

  It was from the mire of those feelings that Serwren had decided that she would feel Jorrell inside her. Even if it was agony, she still wanted his flesh in hers. She had been scared, and it had hurt, at first. She was still bruised and sore from Erkas’ assault, but then Jorrell had worked his magic on her body and for a few moments she had been able to forget the unfairness of everything, her disgust, her fear, her pain. She had basked in a pleasure that she knew she would be unlikely to receive again.

  Jorrell had realised, of course, that something was not as it should have been. He hadn’t said so, but the frigid way that he’d left her confirmed her certainty of that. She didn’t know exactly how he’d known, perhaps it was the way she’d thrown caution to the wind, perhaps it was something he could feel, but he had known. There was no way in any realm that she would have been able to explain what happened, so she had let him leave without an explanation, without the reassurance that she had been pure, that she had been waiting for him.

  Unable to find the strength she knew she would need to face the rest of her existence, Serwren had fallen to contemplating ending her life. She had been waiting for the tide to rise and was evaluating the ways in which she could weight her body or her clothing, so that when the waters came, she could anticipate and foil her body’s innate desperation for air. She had changed her mind when Jorrell had appeared. Despite the barriers now between them, despite their fractured dreams, if there was a world with him in it, that was where she wanted to be. Even if he was at the opposite end of the earth to her, there was a grain of hope to cherish. Even if cherishing that hope felt like she was plunging scorching needles into her soul, over and over and over.

  That was the pain that she was feeling now. She was sitting in the casement of the sole window in the turret of the highest minaret of the palace. This was her hiding place when she had to remain nearer to home. No one ever ascended the steep, narrow, twisting staircase. Its sanctity
was evidenced by the thick film of dust, disturbed only by her own footprints. The imprints of Jorrell’s shoes from the time that they had first ventured into the forbidden nook had been long obscured. T he room was not of any size to be useful. It had been declared out of bounds to her, because her father thought the stone steps were too much of a risk. It was true that if she slipped, it was unlikely she would survive the fall, but that had not dissuaded her from exploring.

  Serwren had been awake in the room throughout the dark night. On the previous nights, since... since... she had only remained her bedroom long enough to appear as if normal life continued apace then she had crept through the palace and had slept in the turret. During the black hours, Serwren had stared out over the city, at the warm glow of lights from the homes that tumbled down to the bay, and at the pinpricks of starry light in the heavens.

  Now she was watching the tiny ants that were the people of the city. She knew one of them was Jorrell, but she could not pick him out as an individual from this distance. She watched as the new conscripts gathered in the harbour, and as they boarded the long ship that sat low in the water. The oars emerged from the portholes like unfolding limbs. They beat frantically and chaotically at first, but they soon found their rhythm, and when they did, the ship slid away from the quayside and began to sweep steadily through the traffic of the harbour waters.