Niya grinned. “Now I really like them.”
Larkyra pulled her hand from Niya’s.
“Careful,” warned Arabessa as the child approached Achak before stopping by the brother’s feet.
Larkyra seemed unconcerned by the possible threat; her blue eyes were transfixed by Achak’s shimmering dress. “Pretty,” she said as her tiny hand brushed against the rich material.
Achak raised an impressed brow. “You have good taste, little one.”
“Mine?” Larkyra tugged on the fabric.
Achak surprised them all by laughing, the sound both deep and light. “If you choose wisely, my darling.” Achak bent to pick up the child. “One day you could have many pretty things such as these.”
“Could I as well?” Niya stepped forward. “I like pretty things.”
“As do I,” chimed Arabessa.
Achak glanced between the three girls, all so different, yet each uniquely the same. They were an odd trio, each two years apart but all with births on the same day. Achak began to wonder if such a quirk had something to do with their gifts. A thread that tied them together. For their powers promised greatness. But in devastation or salvation? The question remained.
They will be trouble, thought the sister to her brother.
Thank the lost gods for that, he silently replied.
“Most things in this world are obtainable, my sweets,” said Achak, turning to place a hand against the onyx wall beside them, Larkyra perched on his hip. “And those that aren’t . . . need only to be found through a door that will take you to another.” As he spoke, a large glowing circle was cut against the black stone. It burned blindingly white before he lifted his hand, revealing the stretch of a new tunnel. A pinprick of light sat at the end. “Now, shall we walk you home?”
The girls nodded in unison, delighted by their new friend’s tricks. With a suppressed grin, Achak showed them the way, traveling past the muffled moans of prisoners and leaving behind the memory of blood, guts, and terrible things. Instead they filled the sisters’ heads with stories that sparkled with adventures and promised dark, delicious dreams. They told them a tale of their future, one that had begun the moment the youngest had opened her mouth to sing.
Sometime
very much later
CHAPTER ONE
Larkyra knew the blade was too dull before it swung down to sever her finger. A scream shot like arrows up her throat before she clamped down on it with the force of falling boulders. Her magic fought against her quiet control like a petulant child, scratching and kicking through her veins.
Stay quiet! Larkyra silently yelled, gritting her teeth as her finger sang in searing pain, waves of heat erupting up her arm.
The blade came down again. This time with a decided thunk as it passed through bone to wedge into the wood countertop.
Bile rose into Larkyra’s mouth. But that, too, she forced to return.
Through a blur of tears and sweat, Larkyra stared at the tip of her left ring finger, now separated from her hand. The dim candlelight lit her bloody stub, cut at her second knuckle.
“Yer a brave one, to be sure,” said the pawnshop owner as he slipped off the emerald ring from her remaining nub. “Dumb, but brave. Most would be a sobbing mess right about now.”
His thugs released their grip on Larkyra’s shoulders, where they had been holding her in place. As she cradled her injured paw to her chest, warm crimson liquid soaking her shirt, Larkyra kept her body rigid with intangible self-control. She dared not speak, for if she did, Larkyra feared it would not merely be her blood decorating the room.
Her magic was angry, howling for revenge. She sensed it waiting to erupt, impatient as a boiling kettle. It wanted to sing from her lips, overflow, and saturate everything in sight. Pain for pain, it demanded.
But Larkyra would not let it out, not trusting her control in this moment. Too many in her life had been hurt by her sounds.
Plus, this suffering was entirely her own making.
No one had forced her to steal the ring.
If anything, her lesson of the day was to travel farther next time to pawn it. The lower quarters of Jabari were a tightly woven network, and she should have known better than to do business so close to the crime. But how was Larkyra to know the recent wearer of the ring would be the pawnshop owner’s own wife?
Still, this mistake Larkyra would suffer alone. For she alone was at fault. Certainly the men in the room had no idea what creature they had maimed, what terrible powers she could unleash within this shop with a mere whisper from her lips. Her companions were giftless souls, after all, and could not sense the magic stirring in her.
“Now begone with you,” barked the pawnshop owner, wiping a smear of Larkyra’s blood on his smock. “And let this be a reminder of why you don’t go stealing from the likes of me and me’s wife.” He shook his wife’s ring at Larkyra. The green gem winking mockingly in the candlelight.
Then perhaps you should tell your wife not to display it so prominently in the lower quarters, thought Larkyra morosely as she stood, gathering what remained of her dignity. Which was rather hard to do, given that the thugs roughly turned her about and threw her out the door.
Larkyra fell into the wet street. Her injured hand stung in agony with the impact.
The evening had turned to night, and people stepped over her rather than helping her up as they hurried home before different shops, ones that were an acquired taste, opened for business.
Larkyra let out a deep breath as she picked herself up, wanting nothing more than to yell into the open air. To give in to what her magic begged of her. But Larkyra wouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
And not only because she was in the midst of her Lierenfast—her time to be without her magic—but because again, she could not risk hurting innocents. It had taken years of practice for Larkyra’s voice to expand beyond mere magical notes of sorrow and pain, to be controlled past pure destruction and tempered into complex spells. But when Larkyra was this emotional, her power’s intent was that much harder to control.
By the lost gods, thought Larkyra in frustration as she wove through the lower quarters, hugging her hand close. If I could just be free to feel! To laugh and scream and yell and call out a name, without the fear of her magic being laced into her words.
Larkyra’s eyes stung with the threat of more tears. Soon she would not be able to hold them back.
She needed to find a place to be alone.
So Larkyra left behind the Midnight Market and did not stop until she’d entered into Huddle Row.
The smell of body odor and piss mixed with the burning of small fires attacked Larkyra’s nose as she picked her way through tents crammed together like makeshift fortresses of children. Here were people not merely destitute but wanting to be forgotten. They clung to the shadows like she clung to her now-deformed hand.
Look away, they all said.
“Pigeon,” croaked a woman who appeared like a pile of rags with two blue eyes. “Yer leakin’ like a casket of wine on a Council member’s birthday. Come here and let me tend to that.”
Larkyra shook her head, ready to march on, until the woman added, “Ya might lose the whole thing if ya don’t keep it from gettin’ infectious.”
Larkyra hesitated.
Alone, she thought. I need to be alone.