Song of the Forever Rains (Mousai, #1)

by E.J. Mellow

Pain for pain, it demanded.

Then perhaps you should tell your wife not to display it so prominently in the lower quarters,

And not only because she was in the midst of her Lierenfast—her time to be without her magic—

If I could just be free to feel! To laugh and scream and yell and call out a name, without the fear of her magic being laced into her words.

Keep steady, she commanded her magic as she breathed in and breathed out.

If any passersby possessed the Sight, as all who held the lost gods’ gifts did, they would have seen warm honey-colored mist pouring from each of Larkyra’s words,

Though the lost gods had abandoned Aadilor many generations ago,

the trail of their magic still lingered in pockets, in faraway isles and jungle-covered cities.

Usually hiding in plain sight. Like me, thought Larkyra.

“Life favors no one,”

“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.”

“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.”

“Our souls.”

“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.”

“You must fill your intentions fully with your desire,”

“If you cannot tame your power even on the ones you love, you have no hope of controlling it on strangers,” explained Achak.

the duke had a gift for making precious things disappear.

Surely she did not want our family’s lands to

end up as they have,