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Title: The Loyal Whispers
Series: The Life Siphon, Book Three
Author: Kathryn Sommerlot
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: May 25, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 78900
Genre: Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, sports, romance, lesbian, bisexual, demisexual, ice hockey, coach, teammates, slow burn
Synopsis
Ravee: a pious Rad-em merchant’s
daughter sailing with her family’s goods
Mairi: the Runonian king’s advisor
seeing the outside world for the first time
Alesh: an alchemist’s apprentice in
Joesar with a past rapidly catching up to her
Three women find themselves caught in
the threads of change as the world threatens to fall apart around them. From
across the Oldal Sea, the southern kingdom of Dusset has declared war, and if
anyone is going to survive it, the alliance between Runon, Chayd, Rad-em, and
Joesar must be solidified.
But there are forces at work that could
undermine all the progress King Yudai and Tatsu have made. Peace treaty
negotiations between the four realms could crumble at any time beneath the
building tension.
As the women’s paths converge, they must
navigate the true meaning of loyalty to themselves, their countries, and their
families, while at the center of it all, a shattered king, hellbent on revenge,
threatens the world balance.
Excerpt
The Loyal Whispers
Kathryn Sommerlot © 2020
All Rights Reserved
One: Ravee
Choked with debris, the waves lapped at
the fire-blackened hull boards left behind, and worse yet, bodies bobbed in the
spaces between splintered wood. They quivered up, bobbing with each crest,
clothing billowing around motionless limbs, and Ravee had to turn away with one
hand pressed to her mouth to keep her meager breakfast down. The air smelled of
burning softwood and singed flesh interwoven into an overpowering and
inescapable tang which did nothing to help her constantly queasy belly.
“Gods above,” Captain Wret hissed under
his breath. When Ravee peeked over her shoulder, she couldn’t miss how his
knuckles had blanched white, his fingers clamped around the deck rail. “What
happened here?”
The answer seemed very obvious: the
worst. The lingering fear of anyone who took to the seas was a shipwreck,
whether it be by pirate attack or by the unforgiving elements, and the evidence
of just such a tragedy lay strewn around their vessel in the whitecaps. But no
storms had darkened the sky in the past week, only a clear blue horizon with
favorable winds. Pirates tended to strip the ships of both treasure and
hostages before destroying them. Broken shards of porcelain dishes floated
among the wood, and anyone searching for profit wouldn’t leave something of value
like that behind. The knowledge should have helped to ease Ravee’s nerves, for
they were far less safe with their trade cargo if pirates roamed the Oldal Sea.
Still, the uneasiness was slow to dissipate.
As her stomach settled and stopped
roiling at the grisly aftermath, Ravee turned back to peer over the ship’s
side. If it hadn’t been pirates and couldn’t have been the weather, few other
possibilities made sense. Ships didn’t simply spontaneously break apart, and
the sea serpents had already entered their dormant months. A horrible stillness
settled over the remains, as though not even the sun’s bright rays could touch
the bloody mess.
“Look!” one of the deckhands yelled.
“Rad-em colors!”
The man’s outburst prompted a scrambling
of boots across slick boards as the sailors searched for something to reach the
silk with. Eventually, the cloth floated near enough for a man to fish it out
with one of the long deck mops, and while Ravee’s heart skipped at the sight of
her countrymen’s flag, the shock paled in comparison to what came up after it.
More silks, strung together on the single rope line, tangled together in a mess
of clumped, torn fabric. Ravee had never heard of the countries sailing under a
united banner, not even in the oldest orated history lessons. She whispered a
prayer under her breath as the crewman struggled with the cord, grateful her
hands weren’t visibly shaking.
Captain Wret pushed the sailor aside to
grab at the bulk, and his hands were steadier than the deckhand’s had been. He
pulled the Rad-em colors free, and then the rest one at a time, peeling the
sopping layers apart until four flags lay spread across the deck. Four silk
banners, fraying and burned on the right side as though they’d caught fire as
the ship went down and only the briny seawater had stopped them from being
completely devoured.
Four silk banners representing the
kingdoms of the southern coastline.
Ravee’s stomach twisted again with a
painful throb.
“Rad-em,” Wret said, pointing, “Chayd,
Runon, and Joesar.”
“Impossible,” one of the men argued.
“They’d never sail together like this, and under united colors?”
All the flags had been displayed on a
single vessel, and to have such a bold showing could mean only one thing.
“They were on official business,” Ravee
whispered, speaking before she could stop herself. Wret’s head snapped in her
direction, his eyes sharp, but he didn’t stop her from continuing, which was
something. “In an official capacity.”
“Yes,” Wret said. “They were traveling
as ambassadors. Peaceful ones, likely, given the treaty negotiations.”
“Who would attack a ship containing
peaceful representatives from all four of the coastal kingdoms?” the sailor
nearest to Ravee asked.
Wret’s gaze shifted to the broken,
charred pieces of the ship still floating out on the sea. “The easiest way to
answer that is to figure out where they were going.”
Then his expression morphed, cycling
through surprise and shock before hardening in resolve. He crossed to the rail
with long steps and hesitated only for a moment, scanning the water before
shouting, “Get a lifeboat dropped! Someone’s alive down there.”
In the resulting chaos, Ravee was pushed
back, shoulders bumping into her arms with such force her skin would bruise.
She couldn’t see around the sailors to confirm for herself, and she knew better
than to try to fight it; Captain Wret was displeased enough already to have her
aboard his ship accompanying her family’s goods and hadn’t bothered to keep his
feelings quiet. Making her presence known could result in banishment to the
belowdecks sleeping quarters afforded to her.
A lifeboat splashed down into the sea
and a few of the sailors started up nervous muttering, but it wasn’t until
several moved to the rigging that Ravee felt confident enough to slip through
the small crowd to the railing again.
The sailors in the lifeboat were pulling
a body out of the water, and despite Wret’s earlier outcry, the man looked very
dead to Ravee. He didn’t so much as twitch as the sailors rowed toward the
ship’s side and prepared the dinghy to be lifted back up. When one of the crew
hauled the man over the rail and deposited him onto the deck, his head lolled
lifelessly to one side. Bits of his shirt had been eaten away by the flames and
a nasty-looking cut sliced across his forehead, the red of the still flowing
blood mingling with the sea water clinging to his skin. The sailors spent a
long moment staring at him in silence.
In the stillness, the air above the
ship’s deck shimmered as shivers ran the length of Ravee’s spine in a familiar
tremble. Bithlad, God of healing, appeared behind her with all four of his
hands ghosting over her biceps as he whispered, He’s alive. Help him.
Ravee darted in between the sailors,
nostrils burning with the lingering smell of the less fortunate passengers and
her feet propelled by the murmured command. She pressed her head to the injured
man’s chest, shoulders sagging at the muffled breath sounds. He was alive, but
only barely so.
“How did you know?” she asked Captain
Wret, who had advanced to hover uncomfortably over her shoulder.
“He was clinging to one of the bigger
pieces of the ship’s hull, and his position was too unnatural to have been the
result of post-death rigor.”
Ravee studied the man’s body. “I doubt
he would’ve lasted much longer out there in this state.”
“He may not be the only one. The
lifeboat’s already prepared—we should search the area for more survivors,” Wret
said, and he walked away to bark the orders at his crew.
Ravee stayed where she was kneeling with
one hand on the man’s shoulder, wishing she could will him to wake up. His eyes
stayed closed, though it was comforting to see his chest rise and fall, even if
the breaths were shallow. The lack of movement gave her a better opportunity to
check him for injuries. Though bleeding steadily, the cut on his head wasn’t deep,
but as she peeled back the soaking layer of clothing from his torso, she
exposed a fresh wave of crimson. Along his side darted a dark gash, and it
seemed his shirt had been the only thing holding what remained of the skin
together. Ravee clasped her hand against the wound in shock.
“Please!” she called, and one of the
crewmen thrust a rudimentary first aid kit into her open hand.
At least she had a needle and thread,
even without time to sterilize the metal. Ravee sent up a quick prayer to
Urutte, God of fate. Her family sold leather goods, and while she’d never had
to sew flesh before, her needlework skill ranked high. Her hands trembled so
badly she pricked her own finger trying to stitch the wound, and all she could
think of was how thankful she was the man remained unconscious. It would’ve
been agony if he’d been awake to feel the needle threading through his already
flayed skin.
She wanted to vomit, and somehow managed
to keep all the bile in until she’d finished. Running to the railing took two
heart-pounding moments, and she only barely made it in time to avoid her
breakfast splashing across the deck. Her cheeks warmed, but there wasn’t time
to be embarrassed; the lifeboat was hauling another body from the sea, and
Ravee wiped her forehead with her shirt sleeve before moving to the newest one.
Bithlad’s presence behind her faded, but she murmured a prayer the God might
watch over the rest of the poor souls fished out from the brine.
By the time the entire area had been
scoured, the sailors had found two more survivors, and Captain Wret called the
search off as the sun set bright behind the wreckage. Fewer pieces of the
unfortunate ship remained than had floated earlier along the whitecaps, and
even many of the dead had been pulled beneath by the undertow. Wret’s men found
four survivors total, including the first man: two more men and one woman. The
crew carried the limp bodies to the bulkhead closest to the rudder and did what
they could with the extra bedding supplies. But it wasn’t much, and as Ravee
stood looking over the remnants of the ship’s unfortunate passengers, she could
hardly breathe.
The man whose side she’d stitched closed
seemed to have stabilized, and the woman had surface burns seemingly unrelated
to her head trauma, but the last one, an older male whose arm had been severed
at the wrist, was unlikely to make it through the night even with the
tourniquet and linen wrapping they’d employed. Knowing the background of their
survivors was impossible. They could have been crew on the ship, servants
accompanying the envoys, or the dignitaries themselves, but until one of them
woke with a clear enough head, Wret’s Sheersilk was sailing blind.
An entire ship destroyed, with nothing
stolen and the passengers left to bloat.
“Where was their course?” Ravee asked as
Captain Wret’s heavy footsteps sounded down the wooden stairs behind her.
“This far south? Dusset, probably, the
same as us.”
Ravee swallowed hard. “You said earlier
we’d know who did this by studying their heading. What does this mean?”
Wret’s face, almost unrecognizable
without its usual sneer, was grim. “It’s possible someone has declared war on
us all.”
The man missing his hand let out a low
moan, and Ravee wrapped her arms around her chest to try to fight the sudden
chill sweeping through the bulkhead.
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Meet the Author
Kathryn Sommerlot is a coffee addict and craft beer enthusiast with a detailed zombie apocalypse plan. Originally from the cornfields of the American Midwest, she got her master’s degree and moved across the ocean to become a high school teacher in Japan. When she isn’t wrangling teenage brains into critical thinking, she spends her time writing, crocheting, and hiking with her husband. She enjoys LGBTQ fiction, but she is particularly interested in genre fiction that just happens to have LGBTQ protagonists.
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