Queen of Storms

by C. N. Crawford

  The Nathair was ripping my magic out of me, violently.

  Then, he pulled his magic back. I came crashing down to the earth, and he caught me before I slammed into the ground.

  My body shook and ached with the remnants of pain, but when I touched my chest, it felt fine. Sweat soaked my body. I smelled faintly of pee, though at least the rainwater hid the fact that I’d pissed myself. In any case, my body was still shaking too violently for me to care. I wanted to vomit onto the Nathair’s expensive shirt, but I didn’t have enough in my stomach to make it happen. I retched instead.

  “What the hells?” I rasped. The storm clouds and rain disappeared around us. “Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

  I hated him. My gods, had I ever hated anyone so much? When I looked at him again, I saw something unexpected in his expression—a line between his eyebrows, as if he were confused. My magic had perplexed him, apparently.

  For once, he seemed at a loss for words. “For an outlaw living among humans, your power is tremendous.” His velvety voice was calm—nearly a whisper—but I caught the knife-sharp edge under the surface. Despite his gentle grip on my body, he was furious. “You’re not who you say you are. Are you, Cora Thursday?”

  I swallowed hard, wriggling out of his arms to stand on my own. I’d collapse into a heap before I let him prop me up.

  I clutched my chest. It didn’t hurt anymore, but the memory of pain lingered. “Doesn’t matter who I am,” I said through labored breaths. “I have magic you want, don’t I? Who cares what my last name is?”

  His pale eyes now held an intensity I hadn’t seen before. Something about this had unnerved him.

  I leaned against the rough stone wall. “You could have just asked me to demonstrate my power.”

  “But a clever person would never show their hand that way to someone they didn’t trust.” That infuriatingly tranquil voice. “And you seem clever enough.”

  I hoped he couldn’t see the shaking of my legs. “Was that the training session? Are we done here?”

  “No. Your raw magic is powerful, but I want to make sure you can actually use it. Tonight, you will be tasked with identifying a creature with no physical body.”

  “Like a spirit?”

  He arched an eyebrow. He seemed to have composed himself again. “Exactly. Somewhere in this room, there is an ephemeral muttering a phrase. Your training task is to learn the phrase, say it aloud, and I will return for you.” He turned back to me, a wicked smile on his lips. “The problem is, when you face your trial tonight, you won’t be in an empty room. You’ll be assailed on all sides by the other unsworn, trying to take you down. Perhaps another level of challenge is in order.”

  He disappeared into the darkness.

  And as he did, rocks started hammering me from all sides, slamming into my limbs and back.

  Screw you, dragon.

  I chanted a shielding spell as fast as I could, and a dome of silver magic rose around me. Then, I focused on expanding it. I pushed the shield out from me until it pressed against the walls themselves. Now, I could move around the room freely, while the rocks were trapped against my shield.

  Still, I had to concentrate to keep it up, and my caffeinated mind was going a million miles an hour.

  I traced my fingers over my ribs again, still stunned to find myself uninjured. I felt completely rattled from the Nathair’s invasive investigation into my skills. But if I were going to pass all my trials, I needed to master control of myself no matter what was going on around me.

  I closed my eyes, thinking of strolling along Brighton Pier in the summer, getting donut sugar all over my lips. I breathed in deeply, my body calming.

  “Alright, then,” I said, my voice echoing back at me. “Now I need to make a ghostly friend.”

  The candle had snuffed out, leaving me in complete darkness. I could do a spell for light, but juggling too many spells at once wouldn’t be ideal. Magic was like a power tool; it would get the job done quick and easy, but if you used several at once, it got tricky.

  With the shield around me, I concentrated on chanting the spell for the dead.

  Slowly, even more magic spilled from me, enveloping me like a fine blue mist. Thunder grumbled distantly. The smell of burnt ozone hit my nose, and I could’ve sworn a soft breeze filtered through the closed room. Then I heard it.

  The voice was faint, barely more than a whisper. I concentrated hard on it, trying to pick out where it was coming from, what it was saying. It was a man, I thought. Someone chattering, maybe, or babbling. It had to be the spirit. Sorry, the ephemeral.

  I shut my eyes again, trying to visualize the face of the person talking. Flashes came, like lightning in the dark behind my eyelids. It was an impression—less than an impression; barely more than a suggestion of features. A tall, gaunt spirit huddled against the wall. He was talking, but it was in a language I didn’t understand. Spanish, I thought. I opened my eyes, my senses cleared and open, and then I saw him.

  He crouched against the far wall, his back to me. His body glowed faintly blue. It looked like he was wearing a uniform—tattered cloth with red and white trim. His hair was a disheveled mess, his beard thick and unkempt.

  “Hello?”

  His muttering seemed almost neurotic, like he couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop. But the Nathair hadn’t asked me to try and talk to him. He’d asked me to repeat the phrase.

  The words were coming quickly, almost too fast for me to catch them—not to mention the fact that they were in another language.

  Then, the man in the corner stopped muttering entirely. I watched him as he rolled his shoulders and ran his fingers through his black hair. That was when I saw the iron shackles around his wrists. Slowly, he turned around, and when I saw his face, my throat tightened. A huge gash on the side of his cheek bled profusely onto his coat. His skin was the color of curdled milk, and his eyes … they were two great, big, black holes.

  The poor wretch.

  “Sálvame,” he pleaded.

  My breath quickened, and I took a step closer.

  “Sálvame, por favor, sálvame….”

  I hardly spoke any Spanish, but now, the meaning was clear. Help me, please, help me.

  I took another step closer. “How?” How could you help the dead?

  He screamed the words now, the sound of his voice reverberating inside of my skull. His face turned purplish, the black orbs of his eyes seemed to deepen, and his lips stretched over his yellowing teeth. It was enough to make me lose my concentration, just for an instant. The shield grew weaker for a moment, and a rock hurtled into my back before I slammed the shield up again.

  “How do I help you?” I asked.

  What was I doing? I wasn’t here to help ghosts. I was here to become a knight and get into the dungeons. And yet he sounded so pitiful.

  “Sálvame, por favor, sálvame….” He rose and started shambling toward me, his manacled hands stretched.

  Taru, bless me with the gift of your healing.

  The words, even though I’d said them in my mind, hummed through me. I shut my eyes, clenched my jaw, and sent whipping arcs of healing magic directly into the ephemeral in front of me.

  The room filled with magic and light. It crackled and rippled around me, striking the ephemeral, the walls, the floor. The entity screamed, a blood-curdling sound that made my stomach freeze. After a moment, when the magic had died down, I could smell burning all around.

  That was … unexpected, but apparently healing magic only worked on the living. And I had nearly dropped the shield again.

  “I can’t help you,” I said. “No puedo … I don’t even speak Spanish. I can’t help you. You’re dead. Muerto. I’m sorry about your current muerto situation—”

  Was I losing my mind? I had the phrase now.

  The ghost disappeared once more into the shadows.

  “Sálvame,” I called out. “Nathair! Dragon Boy. I’ve got your phrase. Sálvame, por favor, sálvame! Ahora!”


  I clutched my ribs where one of the rocks had hit me. The door swung open, and there stood the Nathair—an enormous silhouette with light filtering in behind him.

  “Well done. You completed the task.” Was that a hint of mockery in his voice? “And it only took you … four hours.”

  “Four hours? It didn’t feel like that long.”

  Then again, time could pass differently when you used powerful magic—and I’d lit this room up with my magic today.

  “You’re going to have to be faster than that if you want to win tonight.”

  “Taru’s power will help me.”

  A slow, infuriating shrug of his shoulders. “Win on your own merits, not by the grace of the gods. When you accept their help, you accept their ownership.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I said between clenched teeth. He had no idea how much I knew that lesson.

  “Touched a nerve, did I? I knew you were keeping some interesting secrets, Cora Thursday. I’ll just have to find out what they are.” He turned and walked calmly from the room.

  Chapter 14

  My footfalls echoed off the tunnel as I navigated the rock in my high heels, thinking back on my day.

  Something strange had happened that afternoon. I’d found a dress on my bed when I’d returned from training—a beautiful, sheer dress dappled with tiny black pearls. Someone had left it on my bed with a note in tidy, elegant handwriting: Make yourself presentable for tonight.

  The Nathair had let me use his bathroom to bathe and fix myself up. Just like his bedroom, it had been lush, but not extravagant—sleek rock, a single, stark shard of reflective glass for a mirror. Steam had filled the room from the burbling bath as I’d soaked myself.

  When I’d stepped out of the bath and dried myself off, I nosed around and discovered that he had a facial routine I found pretty enlightening. They say you can learn a lot about a man by the contents of his bathroom. Today, I learned that the Nathair cared about the way he looked and that he liked a good bath bomb. On that, at least, we could find a bit of common ground. He also shaved with a straight razor, one with an ornate silver handle.

  That razor was sharp enough to cut clean through a neck, and I had a feeling he’d left it out on purpose. Like everything about him, it was elegant with a lethal edge. It hadn’t been an accident that it had been there, so I decided not to touch it. It was probably a test, and I wasn’t in the business of failing those.

  Now, I walked by his side. Once again, my traitorous magic was straining for his. It felt like an unsettlingly intimate touch, and I sensed a bit of sweat beading on my forehead.

  He wasn’t wearing a cloak tonight, but a black suit that had been tailored to fit his muscled body perfectly. He smelled disturbingly good—a mixture of musk and ginger—and his strange magic pulsed around my body.

  A golden orb of light gilded the masculine planes of his face, and I stole a quick glance at him. Maybe dragon-bloods had been made from corrupt magic, but his beauty was downright unnerving—the dark sweep of lashes against his pale eyes. Straight, dark brows. Lips gently curled at the edges. Cheekbones that could cut a girl’s heart into pieces if she was dumb enough to let them. A stark and cruel beauty.

  In his human form, the only indication of his draconic heritage were the small, black scales on the backs of his knuckles, and a gleaming black scale on the back of his neck. I wondered if those scales stretched all the way down his spine. A brutal, red scar ran over the back of one hand. Taru had burned him—the scars from the Storm God could never fully heal. I wondered how many he had on his body.

  The Nathair might have been looking slick, but I wasn’t looking so bad myself right now. The dress I’d found was made of the sheerest of black fabrics, plunging to a deep V at the front and dipping down the back to expose my tattooed back. The cold tunnel air kissed my exposed skin.

  The dress’s silky material skimmed against my waist, its fabric oddly sensual and distracting. It fit me like a glove. I had no idea how they’d known my exact measurements, but it was like it had been tailor-made for me.

  In fact, the sensual brush of the material over my skin had a strangely mystical feel to it, like a magical signature. I ran my fingers over the fabric at my hips, and a hot thrill rippled along my hipbones and into my fingertips. I tried not to think about the fact that that was where the Nathair had touched me in my dream.

  My pulse raced at the strange sensation. Golden light dazzled off the tiny black beads.

  “Where did this dress come from?” I asked.

  “I left it on your bed.”

  “Where did you get it from? How did someone know my size?”

  “I created it, and I ascertained your measurements by observing you.”

  My pulse was moving faster. “This is your magic?”

  “Yes.” Mockery danced in his gray eyes. “Enjoying it, are you?”

  My lip curled. It was oddly perverse that the magic of a draconic executioner should feel so sensual. “No,” I lied. “It feels invasive.”

  “Really?” He sounded infinitely amused. “That’s not what your racing heart says. Perhaps you like the feel of my unnatural magic on your body. What was it that you called me? Corrupted?” A dangerous edge to his quiet voice. “You seem like a pious girl, devoted to Taru, but maybe you desire corruption.”

  I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to shut down any mental images his comments might evoke. “You think very highly of yourself, don’t you? Your arrogance is probably the most impressive thing about you.”

  “You hardly know a thing about me.”

  I couldn’t let his needling sidetrack me—or the sensuous feel of his magic. I had to focus on my actual purpose. I had a number of onerous tasks tonight. Win the trial, get the herbs for Wren. Survive. If I was correct, this tunnel would open up to the same place where I’d come in yesterday.

  Had it really been just yesterday? Bloody hells.

  In any case, I’d stashed the herbs at the end of this tunnel. I couldn’t exactly grab them in front of the Nathair, but I could at least check if they were still there.

  At last, we reached the end of the tunnel, and the rocky door slid open on its own accord. Moonlight streamed into the tunnel. Would I be able to get out of here if I needed to? I’d probably have to blast my way out.

  “Does that just open automatically for knights when you approach?” I asked.

  His gray eyes were sharp as a knife’s edge. “I can’t think of a single rational reason why you’d need to know the answer to that.”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I was just curious.”

  He cocked his head. “Your cheeks flush a little when you lie.”

  Bloody hells, he didn’t miss a thing, did he? “I-I-I just go red sometimes,” I stuttered.

  I braced for the inevitable comment on my stammer, but he didn’t say a thing. Instead, he shrugged and crossed out of the tunnel into the humid night air.

  I followed after him, casting a quick look at the shrubs. My heart leapt at the sight of the little plastic bag under the leaves.

  I breathed in deeply, the air heavy with the wholesome scent of olive trees. At night, from this vantage point, we had a view of the glittering lights of the city rolling away beneath us. Across the bay, Spanish lights twinkled.

  Headlights lit up the road, and a black car pulled up—a Porsche.

  When it had slowed to a stop, the Nathair opened a back door for me. I slid into the seat and smoothed out my dress. While the Nathair got in on the other side, I fastened my seatbelt. With dark glass in front of us, I didn’t have a view of the driver. He could be a three-foot-tall pixie, for all I knew.

  The car began to roll down the Rock, following winding roads flanked on both sides by trees and wildlife. I ignored the disturbing feeling of the Nathair’s magic licking my body through the dress. “Will you tell me where we’re going now?”

  “We are going to an exclusive club in the heart of the city. There, you will
face your first trial. I hope you haven’t forgotten what you learned earlier.”

  “What did I learn earlier? How to talk to ghosts jabbering in Spanish?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “How to juggle holding a magical shield while using other types of magic at the same time. We both know your magic is powerful, but I don’t imagine you’ve practiced many spells in the middle of a battle before. If you had, the Storm Fae would have found you sooner.”

  “Right. And why are you all dressed up?”

  “It’s the kind of place women can’t go unless they’re on the arm of a man. Blend in a little while you get the lay of the land. Once there, your task will be simple: Find the ephemeral and trap it before the other unsworn do.”

  I had a feeling he was leaving out some key details. But whatever the case, Wren was counting on me.

  The car rolled down the hill, until at last it pushed into the city proper. Here, the buildings looked old, crammed over narrow streets. Made of stone, many were painted in fading pastels, giving the impression of bygone grandeur.

  We pulled past bars and parked cars crowding the road, and I had the sense of a subtle kind of ambiance floating through the air—a feeling of things going on out of sight. This seemed like a place of secrets, with strange sigils on doors, shadows shifting from one dark nook to the next.

  All I knew was, there was a lot more to this place than met the eye.

  When the car pulled off the main road, it slowed to a halt in an alley. The Nathair stepped out first, then moved around the car to open my door. I tugged up the hem of my dress, then slid out of the car. As soon as I shut the door, the car started slowly reversing away from us. A briny scent tinged the air here, and I surveyed my surroundings.

  Across from where I stood, a sign on an ancient fortress read King’s Bastion. I’d heard about this place as soon as I’d showed up in Gibraltar. Once, centuries ago, it had been a seaside military fort complete with cannon, arsenals, and soldier’s barracks. Countless people had died fighting here. And now? You could drink beers in the bowling alley inside, or watch the latest movies in the cinema within its walls.