Song of the Forever Rains by E.J. Mellow

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Darius gasped, jolting upright, as though splashed with ice water.

His dreams had been a wave of pain that had softened to feather-warm touches before dipping back into a cold kiss of shadows.

His drapes were drawn shut, but a sliver of light crept through, a hint of morning, a new day, while a pattering of rain and rumble of Lachlan’s forever storm played beyond his walls. The rest of his rooms were bathed in a softer orange. The fire in the hearth burned bright, and he pulled at his collar, realizing he was wearing a shirt he hadn’t worn since he was a younger man. The material felt tight and itchy against his skin.

Frowning, he began to unbutton it before a faint cough stopped him.

He turned and found a woman comfortably folded into one of his armchairs.

Darius pulled his shirt closed, springing from his bed. “Larkyra? What are you doing here?”

“How do you feel, my lord?”

“Feel?” he spluttered. “Rather imposed upon at the moment.”

“But not in pain?”

Pain.

The word unleashed a horde of confused memories. He looked down at his hand, where he had once grasped a shining silver object.

He took another step back, spinning around, and looked down at his chest, his arms. Nothing.

No new scars. Then why did he feel as though there should be?

“It was your face.”

“Excuse me?” He turned to Larkyra, still sitting in his chair.

“He made you cut your face.”

She said it as though it were as regular a statement as a morning greeting.

“Are you mad?” he barked, touching his cheeks and forehead. Smooth. “Why are you in my rooms? You must leave.” He strode to his door. “This is wholly inappropriate.”

Especially considering that she was now engaged to his stepfather. That he remembered, and it still hit fresh and low in his stomach. Another nightmare come true. How would he survive it?

“What have you done to the door?” Darius jiggled the handle to no avail. He was locked in.

“Do you truly remember nothing?” Larkyra stood, walking toward him.

He took steps back. “What do you mean? I remember everything. Your celebratory news. Congratulations again, my lady.” He gave a mocking bow. “And your frivolity in re-dressing our entire household.”

Her gaze flashed with hurt. “I ask of the other thing that happened, my lord.”

That vast chasm of blacked-out memories gripped his mind again.

I am not mad. I am not mad. I am not mad,repeated Darius in his silent panic, finding the familiar welt on his right arm. Still there.

“What other thing?” he asked, hoping Larkyra didn’t hear the waver in his voice.

“How remarkable.” She watched him closely. “Do you not remember any pain either?”

There was that word again.

“I—” Whatever he was going to say got stuck in his throat.

Pain.

He held in a shiver.

There was always pain. Especially now, in her presence. In his rooms. So close to his bed, his soft sheets.

By the lost gods, pull yourself together.

“There is much to discuss, my lord. I suggest we have a seat.” She gestured to the fire.

At some point as she waited for him to wake, she must have gotten refreshments, for there was a tray laid out on the low table.

Who else knew she was in here? Or had she used her clever ways to remain unseen?

As she settled herself once more into an armchair, Darius noticed that on second glance, Larkyra was not as poised and put together as usual. Strands of her hair had come out of the complicated braid atop her head, and her gown was the same half-made one that she’d worn yesterday, wrinkles around the skirts. And he couldn’t be sure, but . . . were those specks of blood along her neck?

“You may come and sit,” she said again, pouring out two cups of tea. “No one will disturb us.”

“This is all very odd.” Darius slowly approached the chair across from her, growing light headed. Not to mention his bones seemed weary, his body weighed down with a soul-deep exhaustion that kept the fight in him at bay.

He was tired of fighting.

“I understand your confusion.” She handed him a cup. “I am rather confused myself, but that is why we must talk.”

“Of things not regularly suitable for polite conversation, I imagine.”

An edge of a grin on her fatigued face. “Precisely those.”

“Will this explain what happened the other night, in the house of my ancestors?”

“Among other things.”

His eyes narrowed. “Truthfully?”

“My lord.” She sat back. “What I am about to tell you will most likely get me kicked out of my family. Perhaps even executed. Well, if anyone could catch me, that is. So yes, what we are about to discuss will be the truth—no more tricks and no more masks.”

Darius studied Larkyra, from her shining blue eyes to her steady fingers holding her cup. “Very well,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“The difficult part is probably where to begin.”

“Perhaps with the most recent events?”

“Yes, those.” She took a deep breath, gazing into the fire. “My engagement with your father—stepfather—is a farce.”

It was as if he’d been splashed with cold water. “Excuse me?”

“It is merely for show.”

He snorted. “Isn’t every marriage?”

“What I mean is, I do not intend to go through with the wedding.”

The flames beside them seemed to pause midflicker as a drop of relief fell into his well of confusion. I do not intend to go through with the wedding.

Darius’s heart gave a stuttering start, a strange surge of emotion filling him, but of what exactly he could not say. “What do you intend on doing, then?”

“That . . . is rather complicated.”

“As only something involving you could be.”

“I also know of your scars.”

A ringing filled his ears. “My scars?”

“Yes, the ones that marked your chest and arms.”

Darius’s hand involuntarily went to his uncomfortably tight shirt. “I have no idea what you mean. I have no scars there.”

“You do, but not as many.”

His breath hitched, his skin growing colder, and he had to put down his cup to keep it from spilling.

“It is nothing to worry you,” she continued. “For—”

“Nothing to worry me?” He nearly choked on his own tongue. “I beg to differ, my lady.”

“Larkyra,” she huffed. “Please, return to calling me Larkyra. If I must remain muttering ‘my lord’ and ‘sir’ to you, then so be it, but it feels foolish to stand on formalities now.”

“Now? Meaning after you’ve just admitted to seeing me bare chested?”

A deep blush graced her cheeks. “Among other things,” she replied.

Darius raised a shocked brow.

“Not those other things,” she corrected quickly.

“I would hope not.”

“Anyway . . .” She fluttered a hand along her skirts. “I have seen them because I came to check on you after you fell ill at dinner.”

“Ill—”

The medicine bottle on his floor. It had been empty.

In a foggy flash, a memory of his stepfather’s angry face swam before him, the soup smelling so strongly of curash, feeling compelled to eat it even though he knew it would lead to such pain . . . why had he done it?

Hayzar,screamed a voice inside his head. Always Hayzar.

“To find you asleep.”

The sound of Larkyra’s words brought him back.

“I saw the scars then, and well, I helped take them away. To heal you. As much as I could, anyway.”

The room hung in silence; the rumbling storm beyond the windows was the only reply to such a statement.

“I can see you don’t believe me,” she said after a moment. “Which I was prepared for, so I will show you.” Putting down her cup, she pulled out a pin from her half-made dress. The tip winked in the low light as she pressed into her palm and sliced.

“Larkyra!” Darius jumped up.

She let out a hiss of pain but otherwise seemed unfazed. “Sit back down. It will be fine.”

“You are mad.” He kneeled at her side, pulling her hand in his. “We need to wash this. I have ointment and—”

“No.” She tugged herself free. “I need to show you. And you need to hear. I will try to keep the song’s effects contained just to me, so you should be able to listen safely, but you may need to cover your ears. I’ve never done this particular spell when those without the gifts are awake or not tied down.”

“What are you—?”

But his words were cut off as notes began to stream from Larkyra. A song that was wrapped in such gorgeous melody and perfect pitch that he rocked back, the breath stolen from his chest. He knew that voice. It had played in his dreams, woven between nightmares, every night since he’d first heard it.

But how could it be?

How could she be . . . ?

Larkyra’s eyes remained fixed on her hand, where the bleeding slash lay, and though Darius couldn’t see it, the air around them became charged, a gathering of something strong. Something that could change the very rhythm of his heart.

The music poured from her, a song that had no words, at least none he knew, but whose melody was wrapped in a complicated story of forgiveness, of mending broken things.

What happened next Darius would never have believed if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. The parted, bloody skin along Larkyra’s palm began to move and fuse back together until it returned to its soft pink pad, every drop of red flowing backward into the closing wound.

Her voice faded away, leaving a longing in his chest as the ranting of the rain and clap of thunder beyond the windows overtook the room once more.

Darius remained holding her hand. He stared down at the flawless palm, gently running his fingertip along the area where the slash had once been, feeling no evidence of its existence besides the fading image of it in his mind.

A shallow intake of air had him glancing up at Larkyra, their faces moved closer together, and his attention dropped to her full lips as they parted on another breath. The scent of her, lavender and mint, enveloped him, more enticing than a fresh bath. He was helpless, unable to make a next move. Forward or away.

“See?” she said, her voice a subtle reminder of the power that had poured from it, of who she must be. “All healed.”

Darius blinked, dropping her hand. “You,” he breathed. “Have magic.”

“Yes.” Larkyra nodded. “I do. And what I did with my hand, I did that here.” She placed a gentle palm to his chest. His skin flinched. “And here.” She moved it to his cheek.

Darius sprang back, the echo of her touch searing as he stood. His mind reeled to piece everything together, to catch up to what was taking place.

Glancing back at Larkyra, at her calm face regarding him, he suddenly saw another creature sitting there, one whose features were wrapped completely in black pearls, a giant bow upon her head.

He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.

The vision was gone.

“You . . . you did this?” His hand went to where his shirt covered smooth skin.

A nod.

“You had no right!” Anger overtook him, a feeling of invasion pushing bile up his throat.

“What?” Larkyra’s brows snapped together in confusion.

“Do you have any idea what I thought when I woke finding hardly a scratch on me? After years of knowing the geography of my pain? I already do not remember how they appeared; to then not know how they vanished . . . I thought . . . I thought I had lost my mind! That I had finally gone mad. That nothing I suffered was real.” His chest ached with each ragged intake of breath. The walls began to feel closer, as if they were moving to crush him.

“Darius,” began Larkyra hurriedly. “I am so sorry. I had not intended . . . that is, when I saw your scars, I could not bear knowing you had experienced such pain. And you have. You have. You are not mad. I’m so sorry. I merely wanted to help. Still want to.”

“Help with what?” he demanded.

“What you’ve gone through, Darius,” continued Larkyra softly. “Your stepfather, he has been hurting you.”

A kaleidoscope of new emotions erupted in Darius’s very core as he heard out loud what he’d always thought but never wanted to believe.

“And I want, no, need you to understand,” she went on in earnest, “that you are not at fault for any of it.”

Darius fell into the nearby chair, all his strength and fury leaving him in a whoosh.

You are not at fault.

Tears sprang to his eyes, his body beginning to shake. He had not known how desperately he’d needed to hear such a statement until it had filled his rooms.

You are not at fault.

You are not at fault for your mother’s death.

You are not at fault for Lachlan falling to ruin.

You are not at fault for your stepfather’s anger.

New memories, long buried, surfaced then. A moment when Darius remembered sitting with Hayzar, soon after his mother’s death. He had been absently rubbing a thumb over one of his mother’s brooches she had allowed him to play with before she’d gotten sick. He had kept it close ever since. When Hayzar had noticed it, he’d asked where he had gotten it. When Darius had told him, a sharp look had entered his stepfather’s eyes. He had not understood the look then, but now . . .

You are not at fault.

Could it be, thought Darius, that the source of his stepfather’s rage was jealousy of his wife’s love toward her son? Dizziness overtook him as everything crashed down.

“Darius.” Larkyra’s quiet voice filtered through his racing thoughts.

She moved to place a hand on his, but he recoiled. That hot flame of anger filling him again. “Taking away scars won’t change how they got there,” he said. “Nor will it stop them from returning.”

Larkyra was quiet a moment, letting his feelings swirl, before she replied, “Perhaps not the first part, but I would beg to differ about the latter. Why else do you think I am here, showing you what I just did? What your stepfather does to you, makes you—”

“It does not matter,” he spat.

“Of course it matters.”

“Not when it can’t be stopped.”

“What if I told you it can be?”

Darius held her gaze for a long while, watching the reflection of the flames dance in their blue depths. “Has the Thief King sent you?”

It was Larkyra’s turn to appear startled. A rare sight. “Excuse me?”

“You are part of the Mousai, are you not?”

She remained stone still.

“It is hard to forget a voice like yours,” explained Darius.

Larkyra watched him carefully. “And where might you have heard it before?”

“I was there the night the Mousai performed in the Thief Kingdom. In fact, it was the same night as your Eumar Journé.”

She stayed silent.

“Come now,” he said. “I thought we speak truths, Larkyra. Or is that even your name?”

Her spine straightened. “Very well,” she said. “If we are, then what may I call the masked man who sought an audience with the Thief King? Does he share the same name as the one who likes rifling through trunks in his family’s vault?”

Darius ignored the jab, his theory validated. “The peculiarity of you Bassette ladies makes sense now.”

Larkyra’s chin tilted up. “We are exactly how we need to be.”

“Odd?”

“Only as odd as a closed mind makes us.”

He surprised himself by laughing. He really was losing it. “Tell me, is your father ignorant of where you three run off to? Or does he have a position in the Thief King’s court? He must, given your gifts and wealth of—”

“I think it best we stay on the topic of you and your stepfather for the moment. Or would you like me to regret coming here and really sing your sanity away?”

And there she was. The imposing creature he’d seen who’d ruled over that den of heathens, who’d spun a room into chaos with the parting of her lips. Darius had no doubt she would carry out her threat if pushed. She might appear a delicate creature, but he was beginning to learn those should be feared most.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “That was unkind to threaten you with after what you have told me.”

“No, by all means, let your true colors shine, singer of the Mousai.”

Larkyra took a deep breath in, as though she was searching for great strength to remain calm. “You have every right not to trust me right now.”

“Agreed.”

“And to be angry.”

“Also agree.”

“But despite some of my missteps in trying to help up until this point,” she went on, “I am your friend, Darius. My intentions are those of an ally.”

Darius studied Larkyra for a long while: her unwavering gaze, the strength in her posture, the familiarity of her energy washing over him. And he knew, despite his current fury, she was speaking true. For she always had with him. Especially now, revealing herself and her family’s secret. It was not lost on Darius what this might cost her. “All right,” he began, a bit of his fight subsiding. “But can you blame me for having questions?”

“No, I do not.”

Darius did not enjoy Larkyra’s pitying look; despite what he suffered, he would be no victim. “So what else do you know about my stepfather that would need to be stopped?”

“I know of his addiction to phorria.”

“His what?”

“Addiction to phorria.”

“You just repeated yourself. How would that clarify anything further?”

“Magic can only be used by those with the lost gods’ gifts,” explained Larkyra. “Your stepfather is not blessed but has been injecting himself with magic that has been siphoned from those who are, which causes it to sour, become poisonous, turning it into a highly addictive substance called phorria. It acts as a drug to normal mortals, giving them a sense of ecstasy while allowing them superficial powers. It will corrupt the soul of any man or woman if taken for too long. Your stepfather, I fear, has been taking it for a very long time. I believe that is why you can’t remember how you’ve gotten your scars, Darius.” Her eyes softened. “He’s been placing everyone here in a sort of trance while he spells you to—”

“Enough.” The words came out a gruff command.

Larkyra stayed silent as Darius ran his fingers through his hair, leaning on his knees. Though he had been suffering the mystery of his injuries for years, now, as he was confronted with the truth, he felt too weak to hear it. That lost child of his past was threaded too tightly into his present, into the person he was today. Darius feared what would happen if he were set free.

“Phorria,”Darius heard himself whisper. “But why? Why would he have sought it out?”

“There are many reasons the giftless would turn to such superficial power, even though fleeting,” admitted Larkyra. “What I wonder is . . .”

“What?”

“I only ask because I’m trying to help, to understand, but can you remember when exactly your stepfather started to . . .”

“Be cruel?”

Her eyes shone with remorse. “Yes.”

“Everything changed after my mother died. I changed. So did the staff, this house, the land. It was as if the entirety of Lachlan fell into mourning. And for a very long time I welcomed it.”

“What made you stop?”

“My people,” he said. “I was still only a young man, but one day I took out a rowboat, needing to get off Castle Island, and found myself docked in Imell. The state of the town shocked me. Only a year had gone by, but one would have thought it was a decade of neglect. Once-prominent fish stalls had been shuttered; houses were abandoned; children younger than I were sitting hungry on the street. I did not understand what could decimate such a thriving port as Imell so quickly. It was when I returned home, now awake, that my eyes were truly opened to the state of things. Parts of the castle looked ransacked, despite the best efforts of our staff to keep up appearances. My stepfather had been throwing soirees, almost nightly, and his guests were the kind who did not feel at all bad about departing with a tapestry, an expensive relic, or a box full of silver in their carriage. I never knew where he found these companions, but they came in endless droves, stinking of the worst sorts of corruption. The duke had started to drink toward the end of my mother’s decline, but quietly and late at night. You could only smell it on his breath if you were very close. But a year later, he was an inebriated mess.

“After a month of this, I could no longer take it, seeing what little money our tenants could bring in squandered on his vices. I confronted my stepfather, right in front of his guests. That was the first time I had ever been slapped.”

“Oh, Darius . . .”

“No.” He held up a hand, stopping any more of Larkyra’s pitying words. “It was a good lesson. It was apparent Hayzar no longer cared for anything, not even for what I know my mother would have wanted: Lachlan’s well-being. So I took it upon myself to know everything about how to properly run my lands, despite not having any authority to do so. My stepfather disappeared for a time then, and I hoped for a small moment that perhaps he would never return. But when he did, he was very much changed.”

“How so?”

“He seemed . . . stronger and younger in some ways. He no longer shuffled about the castle in stained and rumpled suits but dressed impeccably again. But most of all, it was the way he looked at me, like he does now—”

“Like you’re prey.”

Darius met Larkyra’s eyes, not wanting to confirm her words but not needing to either. He had never felt such fear as he did during those first few years after Hayzar had returned.

“The storms began after that,” he said. “And eventually the . . . wounds.”

A long stretch of silence filled the room then. He could tell Larkyra wanted to say many things. Her gaze alone poured out an abundance of emotions: sorrow, anger, regret, a promise of retribution. But she kept quiet, as if she knew that what he’d just shared was for himself rather than for her, a release of trapped breath, and he was forever grateful for it. Darius had never told that story to anyone. Had never even confessed to Boland his fear of his stepfather. But Larkyra, this woman who was still practically a stranger, had him sharing even his darkest of thoughts.

Could this phorria really be the thing that had turned Hayzar into such a beast? Not the duke simply having a dead heart that hated the stepson he’d inherited, was jealous of his wife’s love toward her child. Or perhaps it was all of it, a tangled mess of grief that fueled his actions.

But what did any of it matter, really? thought Darius. Who cared when or how or why the duke had become the man he now was?

What needed to be done to set things right would not come any easier if Darius felt empathy for the man. Which was why he had stopped asking such questions, stopped seeking such answers. The history of his scars and how they’d appeared had stopped mattering. The only things Darius cared for were his people and his land and how to break free from the beast that ruled over both.

A new resolve filled him like a dam had broken, strengthening his weary mind, and his gaze locked onto Larkyra. “But back to this phorria,” said Darius. “You’re suggesting all this”—he waved to their surroundings—“the storms, the duke’s . . . behavior toward me, might have been all because of some drug?”

“Regarding his escalating rage, yes. This is my theory.”

“But how does knowing that help me?”

“We’ve been trying to find his supplier,” explained Larkyra. “Buying and selling phorria is illegal outside of the Thief Kingdom.”

“I would think the Thief Kingdom hadn’t any rules to break.”

“A fool’s notion. It has more than most places.”

“All right . . . ,” said Darius as he watched Larkyra carefully. Watched the woman who seemed to have changed the trajectory of his life the moment he’d reluctantly swept her into his arms to dance. “So is that your sole reason for being here? To find this supplier, or do you have another?”

“Darius.” She shifted to the edge of her seat. “I am also here to help.”

“Yes, you keep mentioning that. But how?”

She glanced away for a moment, and something in the way Larkyra appeared to weigh her next words had him understanding.

The Thief King’s decision made,thought Darius. He hated the sting that came with wondering if Larkyra was saying all this not out of her own feelings or desires but instead out of an obligation, a task given.

“And what is the king’s price for his help? Doesn’t he know Lachlan has no money to spare for payment?”

Larkyra frowned at that.

“Yes.” Darius grinned sardonically. “All those trunks you saw are mostly empty or filled with food I’ve been able to collect from our kitchens over the months to give to my tenants. Luckily, my stepfather did not know of my ancestors’ silver, and it’s been kept safe. It’s what I’ve been using to aid my people in paying the taxes they can no longer bring in, with the rains washing out our farmlands and damaging the fishing boats.”

“But what of the mines? Lachlan’s precious minerals that secured the trade agreement with Jabari?”

“It would be a great agreement if Hayzar did not claim every coin for himself. As it is set up now, it shackles my people, for they will see no payment for their labor. The duke is determined to ignore the consequences his actions have on this land, even though it is Lachlan that keeps him in his fine clothes and apparently pays for this addiction you speak of. We can barely pay the few servants in the castle. The ones you saw upon your arrival were borrowed from Imell for that week only.”

Larkyra was quiet for a long moment, running a thumb over her palm where she had sliced it open. “Then we must do as I suspected.”

“Which is what?”

“We must get rid of your stepfather.”

Darius blinked at her words before he found himself laughing, a deep belly laugh that made tears spring to his eyes.

“You find this humorous?”

“Indeed.”

“And why is that?”

“This is the very thing I told the Thief King, and his answer was to send you.”

Larkyra pursed her lips. “My talents lie in many different areas, my lord, besides healing wounds and singing creatures into a tizzy.”

“This I do not doubt.”

“Then why do you laugh?”

“Because,” said Darius, holding her blue gaze as he willed his next words, “when you came here, I believed you to be my ruin, but in fact, it appears you’re to be my salvation.”

A blush filled Larkyra’s cheeks, and Darius felt a strange pleasure stir alive in his chest again at having rendered her speechless. His own thoughts were muddled in his fight between his desires and his duty and his hurt, but lost gods help him from speaking his mind when this creature was near.

“Yes, well . . .” Larkyra played with the material on her dress. “While I may be strong, my magic does have limits.”

“I believe you capable of anything you put your heart into.”

She glanced up at him, a warmth seeping into her eyes. “Still,” continued Larkyra. “What I thought I could do alone, I cannot. We cannot.”

That seemed hard to believe, but Darius kept from contradicting her again. “Then what do you suggest be done?”

“We must take a quick trip.”

“A trip?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Larkyra smiled for the first time since he’d awoken. “To see my sisters.”