Chapter 2
AMAIA
“There had better be leiso flour in that sack,” my mother grumbled when I stepped through the front door with the remnants of my dirtied clothes in a satchel.
I was winded, having climbed up the three sets of stairs to our home, the muscles in my legs threatening to give.
Hours later, with the sun slowly melting into the horizon line, I still hadn’t recovered.
The older I got, I realized, the more depleting the heartstone magic felt. I didn’t want to dwell too much on what that meant, so I pushed it from my mind. Besides, if my mother suspected I had used it again, especially with an audience, she’d have my head.
“Not quite.” I beamed, shouldering the crooked door closed before going over to her, stooping to drop a kiss across her cheek. “You’ll forgive me though. The young pyroki has a line of gold scales and is quite a talker. You’d love him.”
“Good omen,” said my mother’s friend, Avis, who was sitting at the low table, helping to fix a stitch on a leather sleeve. She nodded even as she squinted down at her mending. “Kakkari has blessed the little one. Now you cannot be upset with the washing, Mae.”
“I’ll do the washing tomorrow,” I said, falling down onto the floor next to them, my eyes flickering around the cozy space of our little home.
The long hours attending to the newborn had softened my ire at Kiron.
Besides, he’d said the choice was mine to make, and I’d already informed him what it would be. “Don’t worry, Lomma.” Mother.
“If you wait until the morning, that sack will stink up the entire building,” my lomma tsked. Despite her scolding tone, there was a light in her eyes. She was in a good mood, happy at the prospect of having dinner with her son. “Did Kiron find you? He said he would look for you.”
“Lysi, he did,” I replied, picking at a stray thread on my clean pants. I always kept a fresh set handy on birthing days. Avis slapped my hand away, and I bit back a smile when she pointed her needle at me in warning.
My mother, Mae, was a well-known seamstress in the Market District, often having a pile of orders dropped at our door most mornings, which I’d have to climb over on my way to the pyroki enclosures.
Usually Avis, our neighbor—who was truthfully more like a sister to my mother, would be over in the evenings to help her finish the batch in exchange for a meal.
“Good,” my mother said, smiling. At fifty, she was beautiful, with smooth, dark skin and bright green eyes.
Her silky black-and-silver hair was done up in a neat braid that hung over her shoulder.
“He should be here soon. Your father should be cooling down the forges by now. Go wash up and get that sack dumped in some water.”
With a barely concealed groan, I climbed to my feet, casting my gaze to the simmering pot in the hearth. “What’s for supper? It smells good.”
“I’m surprised you can smell anything past that stench,” my mother grumbled. Avis cackled and took another sip from her goblet of wine. “Wrissan stew.”
Kiron’s favorite.
These evening sewing sessions were more of a social circle.
Sometimes some of my mother’s other friends would join them and they’d be up until the quiet hours of morning gabbing and gossiping.
I’d fallen asleep to the muffled sounds of laughter and voices more times than I could count.
The sounds of people filling a home were always comforting to me, and I’d learned to be a deep sleeper, as had my father, who was the complete opposite of my outgoing and social mother.
It took me longer than usual to get my dirtied clothes soaking and to wash up—especially since I gave my hair an extra good scrubbing. I would sleep well tonight, I thought as I rubbed a clean cloth through my damp hair. I would feel like normal in the morning. Or at least I hoped I would.
When I emerged from the washroom, I saw Kiron had already arrived.
Even out of his polished guard uniform, he looked like an older, more severe version of the brother I’d grown up with.
He was smiling and chatting with Avis as my mother stirred the stew in the hearth.
The table was already set, but my father likely hadn’t returned home.
Kiron’s eyes connected with mine when I stepped into the family room.
Our childhood home was nothing like the Dothikkar’s palace, the halls of which Kiron now regularly roamed, and I wondered if he found it strange to be back in the cramped space, where we shared so many memories with our family.
It had to be jarring for him. As jarring as it was for me to see him here again.
My brother stood from the low table and approached me.
“Now I can claim that hug,” he told me, his voice warm. But as his arms enveloped me and I turned my cheek against his chest to rest there, a part of me was wary. “Can we talk before supper?”
The inquiry was quiet, slightly hushed. I felt it rumble against my own chest.
I pulled back to meet his eyes. I cast a glance at our lomma, who was still hovering over the pot of stew, neatly shaped leiso loaves baking on the hot stone next to it.
I inclined my head, and Kiron announced, “We’ll be right back, Lomma.”
She spun and frowned, hands on her hips. “Where are you going?”
“Just outside for some fresh air. I want to spend time with my sister,” Kiron answered, a charming grin spreading across his face, which appeased our mother.
“Don’t go far,” she said, waving a wooden spoon around. “Your pattar will be home soon, and you know how hungry he is after a day in the forge.”
“We’ll be back quicker than Naruk’s horde,” Kiron assured her, already shuffling me through the door with a palm on the small of my back, just over the bump of my would-be tail, which had never grown. Too much human ancestry in me, I supposed.
Naruk had been a horde king about fifty years prior.
After having been selected to lead a new horde from Dothik to the wildlands of our planet, his horde had caught a disease its first week, which had spread through the members like a fire.
They’d had to limp back home to Dothik, and Naruk had never led another horde, a permanent mark of disgrace on his name for eternity, only used in snickering jokes now.
Outside, the night air was warm, residuals of the heat of the day. A slight breeze made me shiver, however, as it wound and curved along the back of my neck, where my hair was still damp from my bath.
We lived on the top floor of a leaning, three-story building. From the balcony of our front porch, we could see Drukkar’s Sea, though we were facing the wrong direction to spy the Dothikkar’s gleaming palace. I liked that better anyway.
Leaning against the banister, listening to Kiron as he firmly tugged the door closed behind us, I waited for him to join me.
“I’ve missed you, Amaia,” he said, sliding into the space beside me. “I probably should’ve started with that this afternoon but…made a mess of everything. Like usual.”
I felt myself soften. Kiron had often been direct and awkward with his words, something he’d likely had to unlearn working within the palace.
“It’s all right,” I murmured.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. Those eyes turned on me, scrutinizing me in a way a stranger could not.
“A bit tired. It’ll pass.”
He sighed, a deep, heavy thing that burst from him.
“Your life is not worth a pyroki’s,” he told me simply.
I felt a spark burn in my chest, but I held it there. He would never understand. He could never understand the helplessness or the guilt if I could do something and chose not to. And why? Because of fear?
“You’re meant for much bigger things, sister,” Kiron said. And I heard the subtle shift in his tone.
“Just say it,” I said, sighing. “Then I can give you my answer. And let’s be done with it before Pattar returns home. I don’t want to ruin supper for Lomma’s sake.”
“Amaia—”
“I’m serious, Kiron,” I said, steeling my voice. Turning to face him, I leaned my hip into the steel banister. I threaded a hand through my damp hair, feeling the wavy, tangled strands catch in my fingers. “I don’t know what possessed you to think that I would agree to this and—”
“I need your help.”
My words died after the quick, hushed interruption. Dread built in my belly, and I took a fraction of a step closer. “Are you in trouble?”
His nostrils flared, his pupils shifted. “In a way, lysi.”
“Tell me,” I said, inching closer. Down below, a loud group of workers were heading to the nearby tavern for their nightly brews.
A bellow of a laugh momentarily cut through the tension between us, and Kiron waited until they’d passed, even though they wouldn’t have been able to hear us way up here.
“What do you know of the Heartstone Accords?” Kiron asked.
“What everyone knows, I suppose,” I answered. “What they’ve told us.”
Over half a year ago now, the Karag from across the sea had come to Dothik, demanding one of its princesses—Klara of Rath Serok and Rath Drokka.
Their shadowed king, who flew on the back of a mighty dragon, had claimed her as his bride, and he’d taken her from the city, to her almost certain death… or so we’d thought.
From that arranged marriage had come love instead, and so the Heartstone Accords had been struck: a tentative and shaky alliance between the Karag and the Dakkari, wherein they would both share the wealth of the heartstones that had been unearthed from below a thalara tree on the wildlands.
And in exchange, the Karag would teach us, the Dakkari, how to repopulate our heartstones, to grow them for future centuries.
Heartstones were life. Heartstones were power. Heartstones were…magic, infused in the soil that grew our food, sewn like thread into the trees, breathed in from a gentle wind dancing across your cheeks.
The Karag had thought the heartstones alone would be enough to appease the Dakkari.