Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1)

by Jean Lowe Carlson

Dawn's thoughts blushed the eastern peaks of the Kingsmountains rich rose and gold. But the hopefulness of the lightening sky could not brighten Elohl's despairing heart.

Elohl's twin was as fine as her blades, her slender height honed into effortless grace.

Huddling in his worn oilcloak, he and Ihbram slogged through the sleeting spring rain to the lakeshore, Elohl trying to drown countless emotions beneath the empty glacial calm he'd perfected over the years.

Ghrenna. Twin lakes of cerulean mystery washed over his vision, the suddenness of it sweeping him away for a moment. Her eyes always came to him in times like these.

With eyes closed, she embraced the peace of dawn in the Roushenn Palace practice yards. One expansive moment to taste the new day upon her tongue, to hear it in her ears. A sliver of morning sunshine, just above the mountains now, streamed down through the cedars to warm her skin.

Fenton narrowed his eyes, piercing. Fenton den’Kharel was terribly shrewd in his quiet composure. It was one of the reasons Olea had promoted him. And now he saw through the sham levity and bravado she promoted, down deep to the bitter dungeon that her thoughts paced today.

But as always happened when Ghrenna was willing herself to be unseen, a strange coolness rose in her mind. And now it came smoothly, licking out like the spun tendrils of a spider’s webbing. Ghrenna felt something like a touch; a gossamer breath where her mind seemed to ease into the maid’s. As if her mind spoke, whispering through the maid’s thoughts.

Elohl sobered. These questions plagued him too deep, dipped too far, upsetting his newfound sunshine, his tenuous ease. These questions dove inside him like knives, piercing, slashing. Opening wounds best forgotten. Too many memories surfaced from each slash. Too many failures.

The glacier that protected his heart had shifted from the bliss of their sun-drenched afternoon, and it shouldn’t have. Roiling emotions were too close, too surfaced from the deeps, fished up by the innkeeper’s uncanny acceptance, her torpid prodding.

Elohl snarled in raw passion. It was a man he didn’t know, a beast of pain long submerged pulling at him, a leviathan seeking to drown him beneath that formerly-placid blue lake.

Taller than he, the behemoth of stone was covered in moss and last years' leaf litter. Dherran’s inner turmoil eased as he considered it; its cool groundedness, its solidity. Shadows smoothed across the bluegrey stone from the balewick trees. The sun’s rays picked out emerald highlights in the moss that grew over shady patches like living hair. As he stared at those winking green glimmers, his vision began to expand from its hot, narrow spear. And at last, it opened up all together. Dherran inhaled fully, a breath without the constriction of his rage at last.