Chapter 7
TERRAN
I knocked. And waited.
Respecting your enemy was more difficult than not doing so, a lesson my father taught me before his mind had become twisted with hate.
He had been, in fact, a wise and fair ruler.
I’d never have used the word “kind” or “caring,” even though my mother once described him as both, sending my brother and I into uncontrollable laughter… but wise? Aye.
But the man he’d become since Mother died? He was as much a stranger to me as Kael who had fled to Aetheria without a second thought, leaving his men, leaving me, behind.
“You are looking particularly dour this morn.”
Lyra, on the other hand, was not. She was breathtaking, as always.
Her fitted bodice dipped slightly at the neckline, edged with fine silver threading. Long sleeves tapered at the wrists, where sheer, cloud-like fabric draped delicately past her hands. Her gown moved like air with layers of soft blue and pearl white that billowed with each step.
“Preparing myself,” I said as she stepped aside, “to navigate the web of half-truths you are no doubt preparing to offer me.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, the corners of Lyra’s mouth raised just slightly.
“A meal arrived moments ago. How much do you believe I eat?”
The table was set with thick slices of dark rye bread, toasted and slathered with salted butter.
Beside them, a platter of roasted vegetables and dried stoneberries along with a carafe of spiced black tea which steamed gently, flanked by a stronger drink: dark, bitter kova poured into small, hammered-metal cups.
“Gyorians eat well, despite what you may think.”
We sat in the same chairs as the night before, pulling food onto our wooden trenchers. It was something oddly… fitting, despite our mutual distaste for one another.
“What do you believe I think?”
“Of my people?”
“Aye.”
“What all Aetherians believe,” I said. “That we are inferior in every way to your clan.”
She finished chewing a stoneberry. “I don’t believe that.”
My laugh was immediate, and laced with bitterness. “Your first lie of the morn.”
Lyra said nothing but watched me, as she often did. “Do you believe all Aetherians so pretentious?”
I pretended to think on it. “Nay. Though I do find them elitist and condescending.”
The look she gave me proved my point.
“All the same.”
“You would know,” I shot back. “You have the books hied away in your libraries and the minds, the greatest thinkers, to understand such nuances of language. I’ve naught but brute strength to recommend me.”
Not true, of course. But that’s what her people believed.
“Terran,” she said, her voice not the only thing that lowered. “You’ve much more than that to recommend you, and know it well.”
Her perusal of me was as blatant, leaving little to the imagination. Her tone, too, had taken on a flirty edge.
“Do you aim to seduce me, Lyra, into forgetting to ask about your midnight stroll? Or the true reason you’re here?”
“This again?” Her question was tinged with impatience.
For a moment, I could almost believe her compliment was true. But this was an Aetherian who sat across the table from me. And not just any Aetherian but one from a noble line known for their cunning.
Her lips squeezed another berry, inviting an unwanted vision of those very same lips wrapped around me. Would a woman such as she even engage in the act? More likely, she would toss her silvery hair back and demand to be serviced instead.
And service her I would.
“Terran,” she warned.
As if I would heed a warning. Instead, I took a bite of fresh-baked bread and sat back in my chair. “If you’d prefer I pretend to be unaffected by you, then so be it.”
I was certain Lyra was unaccustomed to such directness. Her startled look told me as much.
“Kael said I would have difficulty gaining your trust.”
My hand froze. My body stiffened. If she was attempting to put me off balance, Lyra knew precisely how to do it.
“I would prefer not to speak of my brother.”
“He also warned you would say as much.”
I poured another cup of kova and drank deeply.
“He told me once,” I shot back, “you were the most troublesome of all Aetherians.”
Kael served on the Council with her for many years. Determining who could, or could not, pass through the Aetherian Gate was considered an honorable position, until my father closed it, of course.
“Because he found it difficult to manipulate me. Still does.”
I hated wanting to ask but did so anyway.
“He is… well?”
“Happily partnered? Aye. In love? Very much. But well? I would not presume to use that word. Kael misses you, and his men, very much. He longs to belong, something Aetheria cannot yet give him.”
Each word was like a dagger pushed deeper into my chest.
“Misses,” I mumbled. “I am here. As are his men. Waiting, for what I do not know? He abandoned us both easily and will not be returning.”
“Easily? I think not. Kael, it does not have to be this way.”
Her words were spoken so softly, I could have missed them. Except I didn’t because I happened to be staring at her lips. They were fuller than any others’ and demanded attention. Even when my attention should be elsewhere.
“There is no other way,” I said. “As long as the Gate remains closed, my people will be hated by yours, by the humans. Elydor has been broken for some time.”
Lyra blinked, watching me.
Was I baiting her? Aye. If her coming here, along with the other strange happenings these past months, did not have ought to do with the Gate, I would be surprised.
Since Princess Mevlida came through, and was apparently unable to return, I could only assume her father’s attempt to reopen it had intensified.
Yet Lyra revealed nothing. I might as well have been asking her if the meal was to her satisfaction.
She was good.
Very good.
“Terran—”
“Why are you here, Lyra?”
She’d been about to weave a tale. How I knew, I couldn’t be certain. But she had, and my patience for her was at an end.
“Your father is not well, Terran. Kael knows it. You know it. His hatred of humans has poisoned Elydor—”
“Your king opening the gate and allowing them here poisoned Elydor.”
It was an age-old disagreement that would not be solved at this table.
“They’d not have been allowed in if the humans weren’t worthy. They were called through the gate for a reason, Terran. Not by accident, not by whim. Magic chooses what logic cannot. You may not trust my king, but do you truly believe the magic of Elydor itself is wrong?”
It was an argument they’d used many times. One I rejected.
Lyra made me want to choose something I’d never been given permission to want… myself.
“My mother was not the only one they killed.”
“Life hangs on a thread, Terran. For them. Even for immortals. We may live longer but can be killed just as easily by one another.”
“If they’d not have come—”
“What threatens our world now is not the humans but what we’ve become while hating them.”
She spoke firmly, and I’d be lying if I said part of me wasn’t enthralled by this version of her. Less measured. Perhaps a bit of passion simmered underneath that cool exterior after all?
What I would give to find out…
“The Stone of Mor’Vallis. Whatever legend you were told, there’s more to it than as a relic that intensifies the king’s power. It’s reacting to something old. Something dangerous. I didn’t come here to start a war. I came to stop one.”
The Stone of Mor’Vallis.
That’s why Lyra had come.
The relics had existed long before the Gate was ever opened, before the humans set foot on Elydorian soil.
Forged by ancients to temper the raw, wild magic of this realm…
A stone that could strip power from the strongest mage, a crystal that stirred the skies and a pearl that spoke to the tides.
Only able to be used by the most powerful in each clan.
And yet… something had shifted.
The Stone of Mor’Vallis had grown restless. I’d felt it. Subtle, but pulsing, like a warning in my blood. The land felt different too. Off balance. As if the elements themselves were waiting for something.
I didn’t know what Lyra wanted. Not fully. But as much as I wished to completely discount Lyra’s words, I couldn’t.
“What do you want, precisely, Lyra?”
She looked at me, straight in the eyes, the words she was about to utter likely true if I were any judge of character.
“I want you to take the Stone of Mor’Vallis from your father.”