CHAPTER THREE
All was fine.
Or at least, it appeared to be fine, which of course meant it could very well be all wrong.
Larkyra had learned the hard way that calm often camouflaged the most vicious of intent.
The air grew warmer as she approached the orange light at the end of the passage, making her corset ties that much more oppressive. Larkyra’s throat also began to grow tight, like the very air was laced with an allergen, but perhaps all this was in anticipation of what would greet her when she stepped through.
A large figure draped in a fine leather tunic dominated the center of what appeared to be a winter cabin, fitted with fur rugs, low wooden rafters, and a large blazing fire.
Larkyra’s heart beat rapidly in her ears as she waited, with no real patience, for Dolion Bassette, Count of Raveet, of the second house of Jabari, to acknowledge her from where he sat behind a large oak desk, reading over a mountain of parchments. Dolion’s light complexion glowed with a healthy tan, matching his honey-rusted hair, which was long and thick and fed into his beard so seamlessly it very well could have been a lion’s mane. And though he was seated, his formidable size was apparent—he was a hulking muscle of a man who led many to wonder how much he spent on his tailor.
Larkyra gently cleared her throat. Dolion looked up, glancing around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. But whether he was happy or annoyed to find himself in this room, Larkyra could not tell.
Presently, all she could concentrate on was her magic not flying straight from her chest. The love she had for the man before her was so consuming she truly felt she might burst into flames if no one spoke this very moment.
“Larkyra.” His voice was a deep rumble of stampeding beasts. “My darling girl.” Pushing away from his desk, he opened his arms, allowing her to run into them.
Ensconced in his massive embrace, Larkyra cherished the smell of home on her father, of honeysuckles in sunshine.
“How are you this evening?” He smoothed a comforting hand up and down her back.
Larkyra could have answered in many different ways—tired, overwhelmed, excited to be here with him, anxious to be here with him—but she knew she was meant to say, “Wonderful.”
“And why are you wonderful?”
“Because I’m blessed with my family, my health, and a roof over my head.”
“That you are,” said Dolion, a smile in his voice. “And from your answer, I take it your Lierenfast was successful.”
“Yes, Father.”
“My reports read that you only suffered a mild injury after an incident involving a pawnshop owner, his wife, and an emerald ring?”
Larkyra would not exactly describe her injury as mild, but she wasn’t about to contradict him. She knew Dolion would have intervened if he’d thought the threat deadly. At least . . . she believed that he would have.
“Yes, Father,” she replied again.
“But you got through it.” He raised her bandaged hand, displaying the severed finger. “And I must say, it is very becoming on you.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“Tell me”—Dolion shifted, gesturing for Larkyra to take a seat in a chair opposite his desk—“what are three things of importance that you learned?”
Larkyra’s magic swam, unsettled, as it sensed the buzz of nerves in her belly. This was what she had been both dreading and anticipating, this final part to her Lierenfast. Larkyra took an extra few grain falls to fix her skirts as she planned her next words. She had gathered and noted everything she had experienced to later recall, and now, she struggled to only pick three.
Which was probably the point. There weren’t only three. All of it was important. Every sand fall of each day. Which was what led her to say, “My three are just one.”
Dolion was quiet as he leaned into his high-backed chair, waiting.
“Life favors no one,” said Larkyra.
“Elaborate.”
Larkyra ran a gentle touch over her injured finger. “One may be beautiful,” she began, “rich, poor, young, blessed with magic or not, a sinner or virtuous, and the gift of life is still given to us all, just as death comes for us all.”
Dolion watched her carefully. “Which means what?”
Which means what, indeed, thought Larkyra as images of all those she’d lived beside in the lowers flashed before her: the lady who’d helped clean her wound, the people she’d watched slit a sleeping throat just to acquire a slice of moldy bread, the more established families and shop owners who lived so close to the destitute.
“That no one is worthier of being given life than any other,” said Larkyra eventually.
“Not even the generous over the horrible?” asked Dolion.
“Not even them.” She nodded. “You or I may feel differently, but life certainly doesn’t care enough to change. A hero may die in squalor, a villain in wealth.”
Dolion tapped a pensive finger on his desk. “So with your belief that life is a freely given energy, what keeps everyone from practicing only gluttony and sin? From abusing gifts given?”
“Our souls.”
Dolion’s gaze sparked. “Our souls,” he repeated.
“Yes. Life is made to move in one direction—forward,” continued Larkyra. “It is our souls that act as the winds guiding its course. Life can be given to all, but only our souls decide how we want to live.”
The room fell silent, the crackle and snap of flames beside them the only sign of time passing.
Larkyra waited for her father to speak. And as she sat there staring at the man, she noticed something she hadn’t upon first entering. He had more gray running through his hair and beard than when she’d left. More than would naturally creep through in the weeks that had passed, which meant only one thing—he had gone to see her mother.
Larkyra’s chest tightened, a million questions bursting on her tongue, as they often did when it came to the woman she had met only once, the woman who had slipped away into the Fade the same day Larkyra had come into this world.
She opened her mouth, ready to ask something, anything, but her father sat forward first and said, “You have earned your Eumar Journé, my songbird.”
It was as if the room flooded with sunshine. His words were everything sweet and lovely. Larkyra couldn’t keep the grin from splitting her features, her magic crooning in kind. Her father’s approval, her family’s, was what kept Larkyra holding her powers in check, despite how suffocating it was at times. Every day of her life, she sought to prove why her life was worthy, of value, just as valued as she knew her mother’s had been.
“Thank you, Father.” Her voice came out breathless.
“I’m not surprised, given that you’ve had to learn from a young age what it means to practice restraint, especially with your gifts.”
At the mention of the very subject she had just been thinking about, Larkyra swallowed.
“Yes,” she replied, her throat growing tight once more.
Her magic had always been the most difficult to control among the Bassette sisters’. For how was a child to contain a wail when she skinned a knee or an unconscious hum as she picked flowers? How was a girl to keep her magic in, separate, when it was attached to such natural behavior?