by Cora Carmack
She turned her head and smiled at them and said, “Come in. Come in.”
Aurora stepped inside first, and her heart lurched so hard she lost her breath.
“I am told you know each other,” Zephyr said, appearing at Aurora’s side. “I was quite shocked myself when Locke found me last night.” Zephyr winced and added, “Excuse me. Kiran. Or do you prefer Thorne?”
“Either is fine.” Kiran’s deep voice was a punch to the chest.
“That will take some getting used to,” Zephyr added.
Aurora couldn’t move. She certainly couldn’t speak. Her heart felt smashed against her rib cage, like someone was trying to push it out through the gaps.
“He told me quite a tale,” Zephyr continued, stepping past Aurora to return to her desk in the center of the room, upon which Kiran leaned as if he’d been there a thousand times. The witch paused briefly to scratch the head of the wildcat who lay curled up on a plush pillow in the corner, before retaking her seat. Kiran’s expression was empty, matter-of-fact, and Aurora found herself struggling not to cry.
“Rescued from kidnappers in the midst of a storm. Goodness, you are one lucky girl.” Zephyr laughed again, and this time it did not sound quite so effervescent.
He lied for her? She had not necessarily intended to tell the whole truth, especially not to this Zephyr woman. But his gaze met hers with a hard intensity, and she found herself nodding along with his story. “Yes. Very lucky, indeed.” She could not help but add, “I could not be more grateful to have met him.”
He averted his gaze, and she did her best not to let the hurt show on her face. “How do the two of you know each other?” Aurora asked.
Zephyr smiled, and took a seat at her desk. “We have similar interests.”
Aurora’s stomach pitched, and she thought she might be sick. He left her the night before to come find this woman. Why? She was so hyperaware of the exact distance between the two of them that she hardly noticed when Taven closed the door and pushed her gently toward a chair.
“Zephyr was the proprietor behind the Eye,” Kiran said. “Though she tended to keep that secret. I did a special hunt for her a few years back.”
“Yes, it’s a pity the Eye is no more,” Zephyr said, her full lips pursing into a frown. “We have your almost-husband to thank for that.”
Finally, Aurora found her nerve to speak. “So it was Cassius who destroyed the Eye?”
The water witch shrugged. “His brother technically led the raid, but since Cassius oversees the military I am sure it was done at his command.”
“How did you know where to find her?” Aurora asked, turning her stare back to Kiran, hoping he could not see the hurt shining in her eyes. If he had known how to get in touch with the leader of the Eye, why hadn’t he done that to begin with?
For a moment, she thought he might ignore her completely, but then he shrugged. “Jinx mentioned the leader of the rebellion was a water witch. I only know of one in Pavan, so I went to a tavern where I knew I could get her a message.”
A quick look to Jinx confirmed this. But Aurora still did not understand. He had been so against her taking part in a rebellion, and then he went straight to the woman who led it? What was he playing at?
She wanted to bombard him with questions, but she would not do it here in front of the woman whose eyes traced over his back as if he were a particularly impressive work of art.
So instead, she forced her eyes to Taven and said, “Tell me everything.”
She listened for the next hour as Taven told the story of her kingdom’s fall, starting with the day of her kidnapping, and the exhaustive search that followed. She immediately felt guilty, for it was clear that Taven had taken her disappearance incredibly hard. It was why he had involved himself in the Locke military, so that he could be part of the search for her. The news was worse than she feared. It was more than the remnants outside who were suffering. The Eye had been burned in a show of force when the Lockes first took over. The only reason there was not massive loss of life was because Taven had managed to get a message to Zephyr in time for them to evacuate. That had been the beginning of his relationship with the resistance. He spoke of fellow soldiers killed for refusing to switch sides. He told her about the increasing number of volatile storms appearing nearly from thin air, and the people who suffered when the Stormlings were not fast enough to provide cover.
“And my mother?” Aurora asked. “How could she let this all happen?”
Taven shook his head mournfully. “When the queen found out you were taken … it was not as though she had lost hope, but as though she had none to begin with. She was devastated, reduced to ruins by her grief. She took to her bed, and she has not left it since.”
“You’ve seen her?”
Taven nodded. “She looked right through me.”
“And she is there still?”
“As far as I know.”
Now Aurora knew her first priority. She had never known her mother to be overly emotional, but if she had never received Aurora’s note, she would have believed that Aurora really had been kidnapped for her Stormling abilities. And since Aurora had had no such abilities, kidnappers might indeed have found her worthless.
Aurora cleared her throat to make sure her voice did not crack. “And Novaya—is she well?”
Taven’s mouth dropped open slightly, and he stared. “Your Highness, I assumed you knew.”
She winced at the honorific, but pushed on to the point. “Knew what?”
“That she helped orchestrate your kidnapping.”
Aurora leaped from her seat. “That’s not true.”
Taven’s eyes widened. “She was investigated. They found a large sum of gold in her room, and the Stormheart that Prince Cassius gave you as a gift.”
She turned on instinct, and found Kiran’s jaw tightened into stone, his eyes fixed menacingly on the floor.
“I gave the Stormheart to her because it meant nothing to me. She did not steal it. And she had nothing to do with my kidnapping,” Aurora answered.
“You are certain?” Taven asked.
“Of course!”
He frowned, and his eyes turned solemn. “She’s in the dungeons. The prince put her there the day you were taken.”
Aurora nearly lost her footing. In fact, she did lose her footing, and the only reason she was not sprawled out on the floor was because someone had caught her.
Kiran.
She could feel him at her back, his large hands curled protectively around her waist. She wanted nothing more than to turn around in his arms and beg for comfort. But she steadied her footing and stepped back toward Taven.
“We have to help her.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Zephyr drawled. “To help them all. It’s not only your friends and family hurting.”
“I know that,” Aurora snapped.
“Then what are you going to do about it?” Zephyr asked.
Aurora lifted her chin and stared first at Zephyr, then Taven, and finally Kiran. She saw no hint of emotion in his expression, but he did not look away. This was the problem, and they both knew it … she wanted to help, but she did not have the first clue how.
She might have been good with a knife and decent at hand-to-hand combat, but she was not a soldier. Late at night, she still seethed with grief for the soul whose magic now lived in her breast. And that was a storm, a life already lived. How could she possibly think to fight a real war?
“I do not know,” Aurora finally answered.
Zephyr rose from the desk and walked toward Aurora. “The first thing you must do is decide where you draw the line.”
“What line?”
“How far are you willing to go to save your people and recover your crown? What are you willing to compromise? Give up? Betray? How dirty are you willing to get your royal hands?” As she asked the question, Zephyr raised her own hand, the one adorned with the menacing red glove.
Aurora wished she could respond immedi
ately, assert that she would do whatever it took, but she knew there was far more than her own life at stake in this decision.
“And once I decide that line,” Aurora said, “what comes next?”
“Then we use one problem to solve another. There’s no point defeating the Lockes only to be destroyed by the Stormlord. Nor will there be much use in deposing the Lockes if there is no kingdom left to rule. From what Taven has told us about the Stormlord’s interactions with Locke soldiers in the field, he seems particularly fixated on this family, even taunting them with his kills. If we are lucky, they are all he wants. So, the logical solution is to deliver the Locke family to the Stormlord, either by stealth or violent insurrection.”
It was a sound plan, even if it made her stomach turn. She wished a great many things on the Locke family, but did she wish them dead? Or worse, perhaps? The Stormlord was said to be mad and cruel. If it truly was the Lockes he wanted, what would he do with them? And what was to say he would stop once he had the Stormlings he wanted? But it was a plan, something tangible they could work toward, which was more than she had. That would have to be enough for now.
“How do we begin?” Aurora asked.
Zephyr laughed. “What’s to say I even want you involved? You are just another Stormling who will stomp all over the rest of us. This is my revolution. If you want to be part of it, you will need to prove your worth.”
Aurora tipped her chin up, and met Zephyr’s gaze with a hard stare of her own. “And if I decide I would rather start my own revolution? Taven will side with me, won’t you?” The soldier looked uncomfortable, but he gave Zephyr one solemn look before nodding his head.
“My life is to protect yours,” he replied.
“Not to mention,” Aurora continued, “I spent eighteen years exploring the halls and rooms of that palace. No one knows it better than I. And the skyfire that runs through my veins will open the palace gate.”
That point was a bit of a bluff. She hoped that the skyfire in her chest would work just as well as a normal Stormling affinity, but she did not know for sure.
“You do drive a hard bargain,” Zephyr said, her pretty, dark-red lips curling.
“I have not offered you a bargain, yet. But I am prepared to.”
Zephyr’s eyebrows raised, and the lazy, uninterested slouch disappeared from her posture. “Do tell.”
Aurora took a deep breath. “Help me save my kingdom, help me restore the Pavan throne, and you may reopen the Eye, this time as a legal venture, safe from prosecution.”
Everyone in the room stared at Aurora as if she’d grown a second head.
“You will, of course, still risk prosecution for the darker endeavors that sometimes go round the market. Cutthroats and thieves and any other purveyors of violent crime shall be tried according to the law. But I promise that magic will no longer be viewed as a crime.”
Zephyr appeared almost dumbstruck for a moment, but she recovered with a quick blink and stuck out her gloved hand, claws first. “You have a deal, Princess.”
And just like that … Aurora had joined the revolution.
Not our king. Not our refuge.
—painted by a rebel on the city wall
8
That night Aurora told the entire crew about her identity and her intent to involve herself in the rebellion. She had been prepared for the worst, for them all to hate her for lying and luring them back to Pavan. But to her surprise, no one yelled or raged as Kiran had done.
Bait was the first to throw in his support. “Does this mean we get to fight? With magic? You do not know how long I have been waiting to put all that storm magic to a use that does not include powering the Rock or weakening another storm. As long as I get to blow some things up, count me in.”
Aurora was thoroughly surprised when Duke was the next to rise from his seat. He had not been shocked by her announcement, but he looked at her strangely, as though he saw an entirely different person standing before him. “I don’t know how much use an old man would be, but I have never been part of a revolution. Seems like something I should do before I die.”
Aurora swallowed a lump in her throat, suddenly all too aware of how frail the wise old man seemed. His hand clasped her shoulder, and she laid hers on top of it. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then looked past her to the hunter looming against the far wall of the room.
If possible, Kiran looked more angry than he had the night before. It showed on his face as clearly as a thunderstorm building on the horizon.
“Are you really planning to legalize magic besides Stormling magic?” Jinx asked. “All magic?”
“All magic,” Aurora affirmed. “I’ve seen what you can do, Jinx. And while I might not know as much about it as I would like, I’m certain that all the lies I was taught as a child are just that. What you do is not evil or against nature any more than what I can do. So whether our abilities came from the goddess or something else entirely—we should be treated the same, you and I.”
“Then count me in,” Jinx said.
Surprisingly, Sly was the next to follow. She still did not appear any friendlier toward Aurora than she had been to Roar, and she did place a condition on her participation. “No more lying,” Sly insisted. “From this point on, we deserve your trust and your truth.”
“You will have it,” Aurora promised.
Ransom was the last to speak, and he too glanced at Kiran before he answered. “I was getting a bit bored anyhow,” he said. “Little bit of treason ought to break things up nicely.”
She waited, unsure if she wanted to address Kiran in front of the group, or wait until they could be alone to talk. But he surprised her by stepping forward and addressing the group as a whole. “Well, now that you have all agreed. You should know I volunteered our remaining magic supplies to the cause when I met with Zephyr last night.”
Aurora’s mouth dropped open.
“You did what?”
He’d been vehemently against her taking part, and now he volunteered his own services? She had not thought he could be more infuriating than he’d been when he first started training her, but this surpassed even that. All the torment he’d put her through the night before, and now he was simply on board?
But when he looked at her with those same cold, unfeeling eyes, she knew that he wasn’t doing this for her.
“I have been waiting a long time to punish the Lockes for what they did to my sister. To punish Stormlings for what they’ve done to thousands of families just like mine. This seems like it might be my best chance.”
If Aurora’s heart had not already been broken, that would have done the trick. He looked at her as if she and the Lockes were the same. And after the way she had acted, thinking only of herself, and not what would happen to her mother or Nova or the hunters she had made her unwitting accomplices—perhaps she deserved that.
“Well then,” she said to the group. “We meet the rebellion under the cover of the next storm. So be ready.”
Thirteen Years Earlier
The first child died of a fever after a few days of endless rain and wind. She was young, too young, and when Cruze had gone to sleep the night before, curled into the hollow of the rock he had claimed as his own, she had been delirious and shivering, but alive. When he woke the next morning, she sat with her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, her head laid against her knees, and her eyes flat and unseeing as she stared out at the forest.
Kess tried to wake her, but at the slightest touch, she fell over, her limbs stiff and locked into place the way she had died. Another girl, a friend perhaps, tried to pull her out of the knot she was in, but her body was stuck in her final position—huddled for warmth that would never come.
That had set off a round of wailing and blubbering that made Cruze’s head ache and his eyes twitch, so he once again stalked off into the woods, searching for something, anything to distract him from the situation.
Cruze was not worried about dying, though perhaps he should have been. In
stead, he dreaded the slow march toward death he would have to endure with the others. It was clear to him that these children would not last long in this harsh environment. There was no doubt it was their captors’ intention, to let nature dole out the cruelty for them. But he refused to be dragged down by the weakness of those around him. The dark whispers had advanced in frequency, and he found himself fighting off bursts of temper. He worried that he would snap if he had to listen to them cry for another day.
He had to find a way to survive on his own.
That was when he felt it—another of those provocative whispers that had been trailing him since his arrival. This one was closer though, more like a brush of the wind. This time, he did not ignore it. Instead, he sought it out.
He spun around, searching the jungle around him. There was green everywhere he could see—in the vines and leaves and trees overhead, along with the undergrowth at his feet. The trunks of the trees stretched on and on, until his eyes blurred when he tried to focus on any in the distance.
“Who is there?” he called out.
The whisper curled around his ear again, murmuring indistinct words of passion and determination that made something in his chest rise up in response.
“Where are you? What are you?”
No voice answered, not this time. But a tickle crawled up the back of his neck and then he saw a flash of something in his mind’s eye. It was this same forest, but not. In the image, skyfire burst overhead, trees were toppled around him, and there was screaming, so much screaming.
The sight lasted only for a moment before the present came rushing back, and he spun around searching for the source as the screams still echoed in his ears.
Another vision came, this one longer. There were children running, sliding in the wet mud, desperately trying to escape something. The vision panned backward, as if he looked over his shoulder, and he saw the trees, alight with fire that flew like a flock of birds from branch to branch, chasing him, crackling an awful warning the closer it got. He ran and he ran, but the fire was faster. Then trees started dropping; great towering beasts older than he could imagine slammed to the ground, rattling the very earth. The fire spread like a monster’s breath, lighting up the undergrowth and decay that sat beneath the canopy like it was nothing more than kindling. Before he knew it, the flames were in front of him and beside him, as well as behind him. He turned and turned and turned, certain that somewhere there was a gap, if he could only find it. But the smoke was getting thicker, and his head ached and his lungs burned with every breath. He huddled in the middle of the small clearing with a few other children, back to back, as the fire encroached ever closer, waiting.
