by Cora Carmack
“Why don’t Nova and I stand back to be safe?” Jinx offered. She took a pouch from her belt and held it out to Sly. “Sly can be your second. She brought you around pretty fast down in the tunnel.” Jinx shifted her focus to the other hunter and added, “If she becomes more than you can handle, just a tiny pinch of powder is all she needs to breathe in to be subdued. Any more and she’ll be out for the night.”
After a bit of shuffling, they were all in position, and it was just a matter of Aurora dropping her walls enough to choose a soul to summon a storm. It was not something she had mastered by any means, but the process was basic enough. It reminded her a bit of threading a needle. Aurora could feel spirits around her always, some distant and meandering, some close and suffocating. She merely had to choose one and pull it through the Stormheart she held in her hands, and the soul took on the life of that storm.
It was simple.
“Very, very simple,” she mumbled to herself, and then slowly began to lower the walls she’d erected between her own spirit and the world around her. She imagined taking away one stone, only one, letting in just a sliver of the outside.
Even that small opening seemed like a floodgate, filling her mind with noise and feeling and sensation that was not her own. It felt like an invasion, foreign and overpowering, and her instinct was to try to claw it away like a spider’s web she’d walked through unsuspectingly. Instead, she held still, trying to adjust. The world outside was loud and unfocused and chaotic, and it enflamed her own thoughts until they too were loud, competing as if to say, I still exist.
“Don’t panic,” Sly said, her voice quiet and commanding next to Aurora. “You will only waste your energy.”
She was right. Aurora could not fight her own mind in addition to the world outside. Somehow, she had to trust—that she could do this, that she would find her way back. She inhaled, imagining the breath pushing all her own thoughts deeper inside her, safe and separate. Then on the exhale, she focused on that opening and took down a second stone, widening her exposure.
The storm’s consciousness rolled over her, and she felt it like a disease—thick and cloying and searching for its next victim. The soul was old—so much so that there was little humanity left in it. No memories, no yearning ache from its former life. She wondered if souls like this one even remembered why they still clung to this world, or if they only held on out of habit and hate.
She pushed it aside and tried to search for another soul, for one not so tainted, one that would help them and submit to her control without causing any harm. She closed her eyes and let the pull she felt inside drift where it wanted to go, but it was hard to navigate the chaos of the living souls outside the walls who were filled with desperation and panic and fear.
Aurora pulled back and tried to start smaller. In her immediate vicinity, she felt the lively presence of her friends, the unique buzz of each of their spirits. Beyond that, past the closed door, she found more living souls, though these were more subdued—caught in the fog’s snare, she guessed. She reached farther, searching for a gentle spirit mingling with the earth or the air, but they all had scattered in the presence of the monster ruling the skies.
When she searched as far as she could without losing touch with herself, she decided to risk opening herself up more. She began lowering her defenses, stone by stone, until she could reach out in every direction.
I need help, she thought. Pavan needs help. Please, if you’re willing, come.
She felt a few answering nudges, tentative and wary. She sent out feelings of warmth and compassion, and a plea for courage. It was such a cruel irony how much the spirits she touched differed. Malicious and power-hungry souls gravitated toward storms naturally. They often felt they were owed something by the world they’d once lived in, and they took that payment in destruction. And the rest—they were soft, more than vulnerable, like one might expect when a person’s truest self is shoved into the harsh world without even skin and bones for armor. It was these souls she had to coax and comfort. While they had not been able to let go of their old lives enough to move on, they had done their best to adjust, settling into the seams of nature where life and death were constant and less complicated.
Aurora thought of her magic like a song—soft and soothing—and she poured it out for those souls, asking for their aid. She found one, huddled low in the earth, avoiding the storms overhead. It sent her images of fire and chaos, and she sucked in a breath.
A firestorm wreaked havoc outside. No wonder the city was in such turmoil.
She promised the spirit shelter and guidance and urged it toward her. It came, but slowly. This soul was no fighter, not like the one that inhabited the firestorm. But she did not need it to fight, she could do that. She only needed it to submit.
She had it out of the earth and almost to the palace when suddenly another soul appeared. This one came from somewhere up above, as if out of nowhere. It moved fast and needed no cajoling from her. In her surprise, she released the other soul, which immediately scurried back to its hiding spot, so she faced the newcomer in her mind’s eye.
This soul was … different. Bold, eager, but not at all childish like the skyfire storm she’d encountered in the Sangsorra desert. This soul projected a sense of duty, and she wondered if he or she had been a soldier once upon a time.
You are here to help? she sent the thought its way.
It did not send anything back, no images or words; it only rushed closer, crowding her space.
All right, then. Thank you. I promise to release you as soon as I’ve cleared the fog.
Again, it pushed closer, a sense of impatience filling her, the first real communication she had received. Definitely a soldier, she thought.
Aurora lifted up the wind Stormheart, cradling it between both her palms, then with an indrawn breath, she took hold of the spirit before her and simply drew it through the heart.
Aurora had been going for a gentle breeze, but this spirit was so strong that she received a gust instead. It blew the heavy wooden door in front of her wide open before she even had the chance to gather her thoughts.
The others did not seem to mind the hurry. They rushed up behind her, and in moments the four of them were out of the door and into the open hall.
Aurora focused, directing the wind at the heavy clouds of fog that hugged the walls ahead of them, and the thick white masses rolled back like waves under the assault.
Once the hallway was clear, the soul returned, swirling around her with delight and approval. The wind seemed to move through her, brushing away the fear and lifting up her spirits. The air tugged at her clothes and her hood, ruffling through her hair. She could not resist the urge to join the whirlwind in a spin. It felt almost like they were dancing.
“How is she doing that?” she heard Nova ask Jinx, drawing her back to the moment.
Neither of them ever got the chance to answer because a bellowing growl mixed with a nightmarish shriek pierced the air. Aurora winced and covered her ears moments before something cracked and crunched, and that sound that had seemed too loud before became deafening.
The next moments unfolded faster than she could process.Things began falling around them—plaster and wood and stone—and all of it covered with fire. She tilted her head back to see what was happening, but then a gale of wind seemed to wrap around her middle and haul her backward, sending her toppling onto her backside and sliding only a few paces away from the fiery beam that crashed down right in the spot where she had been standing.
Aurora heard screaming and looked up to see Nova and Jinx on the other side of the flames. Sly had been blown backward by the same gust of wind as she, leaving their group separated. Aurora dragged herself to her feet, her back aching from her collision with the ground. As soon as she was standing, she nearly toppled again as she felt the magnitude of two giant storms roiling in the sky overhead.
It was a twister that had torn open the top of the dome, and it had sucked some of the firestorm
’s embers into its rotation, hurling them with frightening force inside the palace walls.
Part of Nova’s threadbare cloak had caught fire, and Jinx was trying to stamp it out with her bare hands while Nova shoved her away, yelling something that Aurora could not hear. In fact, she was struggling to hear almost everything around her because the souls above had taken to her mental walls like battering rams, and she felt like she might lose the contents of her stomach. She dug her nails into her temples until the point of pain and groaned.
Sly appeared at her elbow, trying to force her hands away from her face, but the pain was the only thing keeping her sharp at the moment, keeping her in control.
Then, a third storm arrived. Aurora did not know from where or what kind, only that it was swift and sadistic, and it was going to break her. She wouldn’t last. She looked to Sly, gasping. “Do you—do—Rezna’s—do you have it?”
The hunter’s face fell and she shook her head. “I don’t. I dropped it when the beam fell. I don’t know where it is now.”
Aurora smashed her lips together hard and screamed into her closed mouth, willing herself to hold out.
Sly took hold of her shoulders and in the most soothing tone Aurora had ever heard from the girl, she coached, “Focus less on them, on keeping them out. Instead, direct all your energy at knowing the boundaries of your own soul. Know yourself, know you are incorruptible. Be so bright that they cannot even look upon you, let alone touch your spirit.”
Aurora ached from soul to skin and back again. “I am not sure I know how.”
“You have to.”
So that’s what Aurora did. She stopped trying to construct a wall that had already crumbled. She stopped desperately shoving and pushing at the intrusions she felt and turned inward instead. She did not know what the boundaries of herself were, her journey through the wilds had made that much evident, but she tried anyway. She focused on her love for her mother and for Nova and Jinx and Sly too. She thought of her memories in this palace, good and bad. She thought of her brother, who had been so brave and bold. And even though it hurt, she thought of Kiran, and the confidence she had gained in being loved by him. Aurora might not know everything she was, but she knew what she was not.
She was not going to let these storms take control from her, not when she still had a mission to complete. She was not going to leave this city vulnerable and broken and caught up in a war that was not theirs. And she was not afraid to do whatever it took.
Ever so slowly, Aurora felt herself drawing back from the brink. Her bunched muscles loosened, the fingers she had gripped tightly about her head fell away, and she opened watery eyes to take in the hallway around her.
The world was still a tumult of fire and fear, but she was not losing herself, not today, not now. She approached the beam that blocked her from Jinx and Nova to see that their situation had only worsened during her temporary distraction. Nova’s clothing was no longer alight, but now they were surrounded by four soldiers in blue Locke uniforms, soldiers she had probably freed from the grasp of the fog storm only minutes before.
She turned to Sly. “Rainstorm? Do you have any? Heart or magic, I’ll take either. We have to get to them.”
Before she could answer, four more soldiers arrived, doubling their number. “Hurry,” Aurora demanded. Impatient, she reached for the windstorm she’d had before. It would not put out the flame blocking their path, but perhaps she could redirect the fire just long enough that they could leap over.
Once again, Sly tugged on her elbow. “We can’t. We need to go while we still can.”
“What? And leave them? No. I’m not leaving either one of them.”
Aurora turned and charged for the beam, but Sly latched on and pulled her back hard. Sly was a handspan shorter, and a good deal lighter, but somehow she continued muscling Aurora backward no matter how hard she fought. And it only took a few moments for Aurora to expend what little energy she had left.
For the briefest moment, Aurora’s eyes met Jinx’s through the leaping flames before the witch spun, executing a complicated move to block an oncoming soldier with one blade while swiping at another to keep him back.
Aurora thought she heard her shout, “Don’t be stupid, novie!” but she could not be certain because Jinx did not meet her eyes again. She was too busy holding off attackers.
“Please no, no. This is not how this is supposed to happen. We cannot leave them,” Aurora begged.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you went on a rescue mission without a plan.”
A sob caught and burst in Aurora’s throat. How did she always do everything wrong? No matter her intentions, no matter that she wanted to make things better, she only seemed to make them worse.
“Enough,” Sly snapped, whirling Aurora around a corner and slamming her none too gently against a wall, not a hint of a comfort in her tone. “Life happens how it happens, and you either move with the maelstrom or die wallowing about the change in the winds. You still have your mother to save. Not to mention ourselves. This whole place could come down if those storms aren’t handled soon.”
Aurora and Sly had never been friends exactly. The hunter had mistrusted her from the moment they met, rightly, Aurora supposed. Sly had seen through her persona as Roar and knew that it had not been the whole truth.
Truth, she realized, was the only thing Sly dealt in. And it was what she needed to hear in that moment. They would get her mother, then maybe in the chaos of the storms there would still be time to go back for Nova and Jinx. Maybe she could still make this right.
Maybe.
Maybe.
With renewed determination, the two traversed through the palace and back to the storm shelter beneath the royal wing. Aurora could feel the skyfire storm in her chest sending frantic bolts of energy from her fingertips to her toes as they neared the room where she’d left her mother. She held her breath as she pushed open the door, and relief blazed from her every pore when she saw her mother’s prone form still laid across that tiny bed.
Goddess, so much had gone wrong this day, but this was still something. She would get her mother free of these people, and she would make certain the queen woke. She had to. Because Aurora did not know if she was capable of being what Pavan needed right now.
Aurora leaned over her mother, pressing their foreheads together for just a moment before she pulled the older woman up into a sitting position. Almost simultaneously, she felt a sudden release of pressure from her mental shields, a dark weight dissipated.
“The firestorm is down,” she told Sly.
Aurora still had not felt Cassius’s familiar barrier go up, so someone else must have dealt with the fiery beast. A vision of Kiran appeared in her mind, and she sent up a silent hope for his safety.
The firestorm’s defeat would make their escape less dangerous. She had been trying not to think of how she would carry her mother from the palace in the midst of the raging tempests outside without taking them all directly to their deaths. But at the same time … if the storms were being controlled, she had far less chance of getting back to Jinx and Nova.
But maybe they had got out on their own. Jinx was a warrior, an earth witch, one of the strongest people Aurora had ever known. Maybe.
The trek up the secret passageway to the royal wing was far more difficult than the way down had been. The incline was steep, and the queen’s unconscious form hung heavy between Aurora and Sly, whose differing heights made the job even more challenging. Normally Aurora would have taken the majority of the weight, but the day had begun to take its toll on her. Her feet felt like lead as she forced them up and up the path, and the mental and physical exhaustion had begun to blur into one heavy weight that lay atop everything else, slowing her down.
It did not even matter when she felt the second storm unravel, and then the third. The damage was already done. She was beyond depleted, and the only thing she knew to do was put one foot in front of the other again and again.
She would have kept walking right out of the passageway and into the open hallway if Sly had not stopped her, and held a finger to her lips.
There were voices in the royal wing. And as soon as she began paying attention, her skin broke out in bumps at the familiar deep voice she heard just a few steps away.
“No,” Cassius Locke snapped. “Don’t kill either of them. I want to question them. And don’t put them in the dungeon either, not until we know how they got the girl out before. Go. I’ll follow shortly. I want to be the first to speak to them.”
Aurora locked eyes with Sly and her stomach sank. She heard the heavy footsteps of the departing soldier, but nearby a door opened and closed quickly. She took the chance to undo the latch and slide open the wooden door of the passageway, and she curled her fingers carefully around the tapestry that hid their position.
A quick peek revealed an empty hallway, but only moments later the door to what had been her private rooms for eighteen years opened sharply, and the tall, dark form of Cassius Locke emerged. His hair was longer than the last time she saw him, less regal, edging on unkempt. He wore all black, just like she had remembered, but patches of his tunic had been singed away, revealing reddened, burned skin. His hard face was smeared with ash, but his eyes were set with determination as he closed the door to her rooms and stalked down the hallway.
To interrogate the friends she had left behind.
She released the tapestry as though it had caught flame like so much of the rest of the palace, and clamped her palm over her mouth until her lips ground painfully into her teeth.
When the hallway had grown quiet, Sly said, “We should go.”
Aurora did not have any other answer. She was tired of leading. Clearly, it was not something she did well. So she did as the other hunter said, and they slipped into the hallway and moved quickly into her mother’s room at the end of the hall.
Luckily, it was empty. No waiting soldiers. No unconscious maid.
No Jinx either.
Aurora held up her mother while Sly ducked out to check the balcony and confirm what they feared—their escape route was long burned. Sly came back, and her eyes fixed on the bed.
