Song of Blood & Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles #1)(58)

Downcast eyes met him from every seat at the table. He stormed from the room, rubbing his chest where his wound had suddenly began to ache.

Or maybe that was just his heart.



In the distance, the clouds have not yet begun to form, but I feel them coming. A raw wind races across the mountain ridge, but I want to feel it so I do nothing to block its bite. The sensation of the air whipping against my skin grounds me.

Above my head, Eero turns circles in the air. I briefly wonder who taught him the trick, but no one needed to. He has been a quick study. He swoops before me, hovering just out of reach. I grab for him anyway, knowing it will make him smile, and he races away.

“You will burn yourself out,” I call up to him, making sure my voice carries as his form becomes smaller and smaller. Within minutes, I sense him weakening. He has just enough Song left to land gracefully by my side, laughing, his face full of joy.

“A little more please,” he says, holding out his hand.

“More? So you can waste it flying through the air like a deranged bird? There is a reason you do not see any other Songbearers tearing through the skies disturbing the clouds.”

He snorts. “Because you are stodgy curmudgeons with no sense of adventure.”

I roll my eyes. “No, because we respect the energy and do not squander it on frivolity. If you needed to fly to escape danger or forestall some terrible event, that would be one thing.”

His resonant chuckle echoes off the mountain peaks behind us. “If you give me a little more, I will endeavor to seek out some poor soul in peril and give aid straightaway.”

I turn away from him and cross my arms.

“My dearest, most beautiful and talented sister.” He leans into me and makes his most pitiful face to engage my sympathy.

“Your only sister.”

“Yes, and a more wonderful sister there could never be. I promise not to squander it. I shall give the Song the respect it deserves. Please?”

I want to hold my ground against him. But in the weeks since Yllis discovered the spell that allows gifting a portion of a Song from one to another, Eero has been happier than I have seen him since the loss of our parents. Perhaps happier than I have ever seen him.

We thought it best not to make the spell widely known, and so we are all sworn to secrecy. Eero and I come up into the mountains above town to let him practice so as not to be spotted. When I gift it to him, I give him just a little, but he has been using it up faster and faster, asking for more and more. Some part of me advises caution—having been born Silent, there is no telling how the power will affect him—but it brings him such joy.

With a sigh, I turn back to him and hold out my hands. The power is always there, humming inside me, a leashed beast waiting for release. I set a trickle free and sing it into my twin, deep into the core of him where it would last him quite a while if he didn’t waste it.

“No more until tomorrow,” I admonish. His eyes shine as he nods his understanding.

With a flick of his wrist, he pulls the moisture from the air until it forms a tiny dense cloud hovering above his palm.

“What are you going to do with that?” I ask, holding back a laugh.

His grin is mischievous, and he winks at me. “Just a bit thirsty is all.” He opens his mouth and the little cloud becomes a stream of water that arcs, landing on his tongue.

I shake my head and turn back toward the ocean. “The storm will be here in a few hours,” I say. “We had better head back down.”

He squints into the distance unable to see what I see. “You cannot stop it?”

I shrug. “If we stopped every storm, nothing would ever grow.” A greater unease pushes at me, but I brush it away. One storm at a time is all I can deal with.




Jasminda opened her eyes and sat up from where she’d sagged into the bench on the balcony of her room. The view of the ocean was beautiful, almost exactly the same as the one she’d seen in her vision. But the city of the vision had been only one-tenth its current size. Rows of small, wooden structures lining dirt roads stood where the clusters of magnificent stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs were today. She’d seen the Rosira of another time, a past where Earthsingers were called Songbearers and were vastly more powerful than they were now.

She knew without a doubt that if Oola had needed to cross a mountain during a snowstorm, she could have easily stopped the snowfall to do so safely. Or even flown across, if needed. Little Osar who had saved them from the avalanche was one of the most powerful Singers any of the Keepers had seen, except for perhaps Darvyn, and even the boy could not control the weather.

The glimpses she saw of the past made her long even more for that faraway time when life seemed calmer and easier.

“Miss?” Nadal called from inside.

“Out here,” she replied, wrapping up the caldera and placing it in her dress pocket.

“Would you like lunch on the balcony, miss?” the maid said, already searching for a place to set down her tray.

“No, I’ll eat inside. And can you arrange for a driver for this afternoon? I need to make another trip to the refugee camp.”

“Certainly.” Nadal nodded and breezed back through the door.

Jasminda tried to mesh the Rosira of her vision with the one that lay out before her. When had everything gone wrong? Why had the city and the country transformed into a place that feared magic and hated anyone who could perform it?