The Nameless Storm: The Stars and Green Magics Book 5 (Audiobook)

NOTHING CAN STOP THE COMING STORM.

Dressa trusted the woman she married, the woman she loved, but that woman betrayed her. Imorie thought they could reclaim their life of power, but they gave it up to help a friend. And Rhys, unwitting envoy to the unknowable Kidaa, is navigating uncharted space with no compass. With the ruling family crumbling and the kingdom in an uproar, can these royal siblings navigate the coming storm?

The Nameless Storm collects episodes 151-196 of The Stars and Green Magics, previously published in serial form.

"I have had two fathers. And at times, I've found myself both exasperated with and immensely grateful for both of them."

--Arianna Rhialden, Melesorie X in The Change Dialogues

Iata woke to soft light, soft sounds, soft blankets. He was propped up, which was odd.

He wasn’t in his bedroom, or his own bloodservant’s bedroom, and that realization made his heart-rate spike. And that made a monitor nearby chime.

Haneri was curled in an awkward position in a chair beside his bed, her eyes closed. Her clothes, for once, disheveled.

He inhaled and smelled antiseptic, and…rust.

A pile of rusted metal flakes lay scattered across his lap, his left hand resting in the mess. His right hand was tied to an intravenous hookup. His torso, beneath the blankets, was stiff with med patches and healskin bandages. He didn’t have a shirt on.

“Ungh,” he said, which was about the most sound he could manage.

Haneri jerked and sat up, peering at him through bleary, golden-brown eyes. Her flawless brown complexion wasn’t dimmed, not even a little, by the wan overhead lights. And was it horrible—Adeius, yes, it had to be horrible—that his thought at that moment was how beautiful she was when waking up beside him?

Even if she was in a chair, and he in a bed that wasn’t his own.

Haneri’s eyes darted to the pile of rust on his lap—that had to have been a metal bar, and who had supplied that?—and then back to him.

He shuddered and broke into a cold sweat. If he had rust in his lap, if someone had given him metal to pull strength from, then his aura was showing. Who had seen it? How many, and could they be contained? 

Iata was in the palace infirmary, not in a public hospital, but even so. He took a breath and tried to push his aura back inside himself, but gasped as his whole body repulsed his attempt. Adeius, fire was boiling in his blood.

Haneri jerked forward. “Don’t—Homaj, don’t. They already know. There wasn’t time to get Dressa or the bloodservants to take you through the back corridors. We had to take you through the main ones.”

The infirmary was on the floor beneath the royal residence, near the back of the palace. Accessible through the back corridors, yes, but also through a service staircase and lift. He wouldn’t have been paraded through the court—at least he hoped not. Who had seen his—his unconscious body? His bleeding body?

Iata looked down at his chest again, trying to make out the colors of the med patches beneath the light blanket. Trying to assess the damage.

He focused inward—he remembered that he could focus inward, and took a bodily inventory. He’d had surgery. He’d been sedated and was still feeling the haze from that. He knew not to smooth that post-surgery haziness away—he’d need that energy for healing.

The injury. He blinked hard, and what had happened snapped back into memory.

Lesander.

The hug. The knife.

He could feel with his Change-trained senses the edges of the wound inside him, the most aggravated parts. He measured the precise fix of the surgeon’s intervention. His body had an influx of stored blood, so he had lost much.

The injury might have killed him if he hadn’t managed to call for help. If he hadn’t been a magicker, pulling strength from the wood of the floor around him to let his Truthspoken training maintain his body and heal. He had an automatic heal command set for when his body was in a dire state—that had kicked in. Now, he was pulling from several nutrient patches to replenish his system reserves, but he knew it would be several days before his body would make a full recovery.

Iata lay back again, his breaths coming short.

“You will recover,” Haneri said.

He nodded and smoothed away a burst of nausea. Maybe he would need that energy, too, but he had no wish at all to throw up.

“How—how bad is the court taking this—I’m still—”

“Homaj, I don’t know.” 

Right. Yes, he was still Homaj. He was still, from sheer habit, speaking with Homaj’s intonation, using his gestures. He reassessed himself with that in mind, made small adjustments. If he was Homaj now and others had seen his aura, then he had to keep being Homaj for the time being, no help for that.

“I’ve been here,” Haneri said, her voice gathering steel. “Someone had to make sure that you got the proper care. Ceorre is tending to everything else.”

“And Dressa?” he asked.

“Dressa is distraught.” But there was more there she wasn’t saying. An anger that boiled just beneath the surface.

Was he reading that through her body language? Or, with his aura out, feeling it?

He gingerly reached to brush the rust on his lap. “Did you bring the metal?”

Then he sucked in a breath, looked to her. “Are we safe to talk?” That she was calling him Homaj made him think they were not, but maybe she was being overcautious.

Haneri rolled her shoulders, tilted her neck to either side to work out the kinks, then reached into a hip pocket, pulling out a compact combination dampener-scrambler. It was one of the models, he saw, that obscured visuals, too.

Haneri flicked it on, nudged it in beside him, then pulled her chair closer.

“You’re asking, I think, if everyone thinks you just manifested? There is speculation. Oh Adeius, there is speculation. We’re not going to get around that. But I talked briefly with the First Magicker. He said it would be best if we all broadcast that this was your manifestation, this injury. It’s a trauma, that’s plausible.”

“Haneri, my rank isn’t low—”

“And neither is your social rank. I think that follows.”

“But Imorie’s rank—”

Her hand closed around his. The monitor beside him was chiming again, and his heart hammered in his chest.

He closed his eyes, damning the stabs of pain that his breaths were bringing, and separated the pain from himself. Iata slowly, slowly brought his heart-rate back down, but the effort left him sweating.

He opened his eyes and squeezed her hand, unable to stop tears of sheer frustration.

“Imorie will be fine,” Haneri said with her usual bluntness. “I need to know that you will be fine. You’re Homaj. Can you continue to be Homaj?”

He turned up his other hand, his rust-covered hand, and she frowned, standing to pull the soiled blanket off of him. He finally got a good look at his exposed torso and grimaced. Yes, that matched what he felt inside.

Haneri brushed off the remaining rust, grabbed another blanket, and covered him again.

There was a pile of blankets beside her chair, and how many times had she done this? How many metal bars had he crumbled?

“Mariyit brought the metal. He said it would give you more strength, but not to use more than he brought.”

“How many bars?”

“Ten.”

Fuck.

“How long—”

“It’s afternoon, day after.”

Startled, he tried to push up.

Haneri pressed him firmly back down.

“Homaj. You will absolutely rest until the physicians say you can safely leave the bed.”

“But—”

“Ceorre has the kingdom in hand for the moment.”

“But Dressa, my Heir—”

Haneri tilted her head. And even though the dampener was on, she lowered her voice.

“Where is Iata?”

He looked between her eyes, but knew that if he was Homaj, she was asking after Maja. And her question earlier about if he could remain Homaj might plausibly be asking if he could Change or not. Just in case every other security precaution was failing, because no dampener or scrambler was ever one hundred percent secure. Nothing was ever totally secure. Not even his study. Not even his judgment.

“Hestia,” he croaked, and she grabbed a bottle of water, put it to his lips.

He coughed before managing a few sips. “Haneri—you don’t need to—”

But she waved him off, recapped the bottle. “So, is this a temporary thing? It’s already been almost three weeks.” Three weeks solid of being Homaj, barring his Change when Imorie had arrived.

He swallowed again, clearing his throat. Okay. So now she was going to throw security to the wind, but she wasn’t wrong that she needed to know. 

And at that moment, he was too fucking tired to really care. The dampener would have to be enough.

“It was supposed to be temporary—I was supposed to step up fully—”

Haneri’s brows shot up. “Am I still married, then?”

Asking, then, if Maja had abdicated yet, which would follow that he had to abdicate if Iata was to rule. All of which was…complicated.

He turned his hands up. “Legally, yes. Technically…” He tried to sit up straighter again, and this time, she didn’t stop him. “Haneri, my magics—my manifestation of magics—what is Ceorre saying? How is she handling this?”

“She’s saying you were attacked. We had to”—she made a face—“we had to blame it on Iata. That got out first, unfortunately. Some of the staff or some of Jalava’s people saw Iata going to your apartment before this happened. It got out too quickly, though Jalava is trying to find the leak. I’ve tasked Vogret with that, too, and she is effective.” This said with a tight nod. “But the danger, too, was that Imorie would be blamed. As a magicker associated with the deaths of other nobility. Or Eti, though I’m sure it would have been pinned on Imorie.”

Iata groaned and sat back, closing his eyes until the room stopped spinning.

“So, you’re publicly a magicker,” she said. “You’re being painted as the victim by everyone on your side—which you are a victim—and that the attack made you manifest. You’ll need to be clumsy in your magics at first—”

“I know how a manifestation works,” he snapped.

At her sudden and eloquent silence, he opened his hands.

“I am the Seritarchus,” he said, and didn’t know if that was a declaration or an apology.

Haneri, her mouth tight, nodded. “And you’ll remain as such. You’re not going to abdicate just now, if you were considering that. Not when Dressa’s associations are…in question.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Dressa didn’t do this,” he said quickly.

“Oh, I know. Ceorre is sorting that out.”

“I want to see Lesander—”

Her eyes glinted. “No. Not yet. Not until I’ve had the chance to talk to her.”

He opened his mouth, was going to say that Lesander hadn’t wanted to do this to him. That had been painfully clear. She’d been crying. She’d embraced him.

Unless his senses had been so locked down, his magicker senses too frayed to tell the lie in that, too.

He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “Tell Ceorre. I want to see her. When she can.”

Haneri laid a cool hand on his brow, and, startled, he opened his eyes again.

“Do I have permission to touch you, Husband?”

She’d called him that before. But here, knowing she knew who he was, knowing she knew now that even Maja wasn’t truly her husband anymore, it made his back and neck prickle.

He nodded. And he knew that she was trying, in whatever way she could, to give him strength. He wouldn’t take it—but he knew he already had, when she’d offered. When he’d been dying.

He took her hand, pulled it from his face, gripped it tightly.

“Thank you.”

She nodded. “Just rest, Homaj. Please. Rest.”