Rage--A Stormheart Novel

by Cora Carmack

  And hope.

  The Time of Tempests was a long, catastrophic period of storms unlike the continent of Caelira had ever seen up to that point. Records from that time are sparse, but it was estimated to have lasted nearly ten years. When it ended, none of the original magic users were believed to still be alive.

  —An Examination of the Original Magics

  20

  It was another two days before Kiran made contact with Etel, and by then what little hope he had managed to scrounge up had been ground into dust. It took the rest of that day for them to arrange to smuggle him back into the city that night through the same route he had gone out.

  He packed up all the new magic they had collected, and tried not to fall apart at the idea of stepping into the river without Aurora in his arms. When he arrived at the dock, it was not only Zephyr and Raquim waiting for him, but the rest of his crew too, excepting Jinx.

  He had rehearsed in his mind what he would say during the journey through the river; he had thought out all the facts, all the most immediate problems. But as soon as his eyes fell on Duke, everything in him started sliding out of place.

  “I lost her,” he croaked, a sob wrenching in his throat. “She was there and then she was gone. How could I have lost her?”

  His friends were by his side in a moment, pulling the heavy weight of the satchel off his shoulders and steadying him with hands on his arms and shoulders and everywhere. River water still poured from his drenched clothes, and his limbs shook forcefully from the cold.

  “Slow down, mate,” Ransom said.

  Duke was in front of him, his face stark and worried. “Take a deep breath, and start at the beginning, my boy.”

  Kiran told them everything. None of it came out in the ordered, logical way he had planned during his journey. Instead, it was a jumble of memories and emotions and guesses and fears pinned together in no sensible order.

  When he finished they all stared at him, not one of them moving to speak.

  “Well?” he demanded. “I came for your help. I looked everywhere I could think of, but I could not find her. I need more bodies to help me search, unless you have any other suggestions.”

  It was Zephyr who finally broke the silence on their side. “Kiran, there is something you should know. There was an incident in the remnant camps a few days ago. A large number of on-duty soldiers were killed.”

  Kiran waved a hand. “Yes, yes, I know. I arrived the morning the bodies were discovered. It was because of them I had to wait so long to make contact with Etel. We cannot afford to waste any more time.”

  “The attack was committed by the Stormlord,” Zephyr continued.

  “I said I know.”

  “Do you know he left a note? For the rebellion?”

  Kiran froze. “What? What did it say?”

  “It said he knew we had a gift for him, and he wanted to offer a gift in return. We assume he means Casimir, but with the increased patrols, no one on our side has actually attempted to make contact with the Stormlord yet about offering him the Locke prince. We had thought that he had gathered the intelligence another way, perhaps using magic. But…”

  “But…” Kiran trailed off, piecing things together. “Now you think Aurora told him?”

  “It would make sense. Why she went missing, why you could find no trace, and how the Stormlord learned of something that was supposed to be top secret. Maybe Aurora brought it up as a bargaining chip.”

  Kiran needed to sit down. There were no chairs available on the dock, so he gave in, and sat himself on the wooden planks, needing to feel something sturdy beneath him. He needed to know that the world was not falling away, no matter how much it felt that way.

  “Can we do that?” Bait asked. “Trade Casimir for Aurora?”

  “We can try,” Zephyr said. “But truthfully, we do not even know if he has her.”

  “He has her,” Kiran murmured, finally giving in to the dark, churning dread that had been stalking him for days.

  “You do not know that,” Duke said, clapping a hand on Kiran’s shoulder.

  “I do. We did something different that day. She had been using only benevolent souls to call storms, but that day I needed to take a Stormheart, so we decided it would be better to use a darker soul. One less monster out there. It must have led him right to us.” He climbed to his feet, his adrenaline pumping even though fatigue clung to every part of his body. “We have to do something. I brought magic. We need to start planning an attack, a rescue.”

  Zephyr held out her red-gloved hand. “Take it easy, Thorne,” she said. “Let’s start with bargaining and see where that gets us.”

  His eyes strayed from the water witch to the members of his team, and he was glad to see determination and courage staring straight back at him. They would find her. They would not stop until they brought her home. He was certain. That was what family did.

  * * *

  Time twisted in on itself. Long hours passed with Aurora alone and the Stormlord off doing goddess knew what. With her body stretched and bound, she was at the mercy of the elements. The flesh around her lips grew dry and cracked. She could not remember the last time she had been given a drink of water. Yesterday? Maybe the day before?

  Her pale skin was no match for the blazing Caeliran sun overhead. It felt like she was baking. She tried to focus, to keep her boundaries, search out a trustworthy soul, and keep it all hidden from the Stormlord, but her ability to concentrate deteriorated rapidly.

  The first day, she had done so much thinking, so much worrying, but now she tired so quickly. She slept more often than she was awake. Dark spots marred her vision, and hunger had turned her belly into a gnawing, rumbling beast. Every moment she felt on the verge of tears, but she was fairly certain there was not enough liquid left in her to cry. She recognized the signs of dehydration from her first tangle with Zephyr, only this time the symptoms did not come on suddenly. They overtook her slowly, making her jealous of the quick misery she had experienced at the water witch’s hands.

  It was the helplessness that was the most maddening. She could not scratch an itch or adjust her position when her body ached or avoid the sun blazing overhead when her head pounded. She tried to force her mind to go somewhere else, to forget about the pain and thirst and hunger, but the constant hum of spirits around her was too distracting. She worried if she let herself get lost, she might never find her way back. So she lived with the pain, every single moment.

  She never would have expected to yearn for the Stormlord’s appearance, but she did sometimes. He was rarely at camp, and when he was, he still was not entirely with her. He existed in a reality she could not see; he interacted constantly with the souls around him, but he was so much more skilled than she that he blocked her from hearing any of it. Then he would march off with a determined look in his eyes, and she never knew how long he would be gone. The first time, he left her for nearly two full days.

  She had still been aware and rational enough then to worry about all the things that could go wrong in his absence. She was easy prey for any animal that wanted to wander along. If a natural storm occurred, she would have no way to seek cover, no way to protect herself at all. The sheer madness of not being able to swat away bugs that landed on her eyes and nose made her want to scream and beg for his return. Maybe she did, mentally, and she did not even realize it, because he came again not long after that. His clothes had been smeared with blood, and he had not even bothered to look at her. He simply trudged straight past her and into the river to bathe.

  She tried not to think about what that blood could mean. Was Kiran still out there, searching for her? Had he gotten too close? Goddess, the cramping hunger pains combined with the wrenching discomfort of fear, and she realized she still had tears to cry after all.

  When the Stormlord rejoined the camp, he had donned the coat of a Locke soldier, though it was charred black in spots, and littered with holes. She did not want to look weak, but her desperation outweighed her
calculation. “Water, please,” she croaked.

  The Stormlord jerked at her interruption, as though he had forgotten her presence entirely. But he did as she asked, pulling out a waterskin and stalking toward her. He held it up to her lips as she drank. She was weak and clumsy, and water dribbled down her chin, but she did not mind. It felt good on her sunburned skin. She drank until the skin was empty, and she only barely resisted the urge to ask for more.

  “I-I thought you were going to teach me,” she murmured, falling back against the earth, exhausted just by the act of lifting her head up to drink.

  “I will,” he said. “When it is time.”

  “Can you free me? If only for a little while. You have been gone so long, and I need … I need…” The list of what she needed was endless, but the only thing that popped into her head at that moment was Kiran, and the blood-soaked clothes the Stormlord had worn as he strode into camp. She needed to know he was safe.

  “You need to feel helpless and alone,” he snapped. “That is how it starts. It is only when you are truly alone, when you have been given up by those who love you and left by the ones who should protect you and abandoned by your companions … that is how you will learn the worth of your gift.”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “The Lockes made certain of that. Left me to die in the jungle. They did not know I am never alone. Thanks to the goddess.”

  He left again before she got the chance to ask for food, and her stomach contracted sharply in protest. She waited and waited, hoping he would come back with another fox or a rabbit or a bird, but when she gathered her energy to search the souls in the surrounding area, she did not find his distinct and confusing signature.

  That was when she screamed. She howled up to the sky, her throat raw and everything in her spasming with unrivaled fear and fury. She screamed until the birds flew from the surrounding trees, and the maelstrom in her chest dwindled into exhaustion. It felt good. But all it did was draw her into sleep again.

  When she woke next it was to darkness and rain, both of which were trying to swallow her whole. The earth had grown muddy beneath her, and the torrent was so strong, she felt like she was drowning on land. Every time she tried to breathe, she was inundated with water instead; she turned her head to the side, gasping, but that only worked for a little while as a puddle began to form, rising higher and higher until her entire body was nearly underwater, and she had to strain her neck up to breathe.

  Did he mean to kill her? If that was his aim, she wished he would do it and be done. What kind of person left someone tied up like this, completely vulnerable, and then disappeared for days at a time?

  A madman, that was who. She had heard the rumors the same as everyone else. But calling him insane seemed like a way to excuse his cruelty and all the fear and destruction he had wrought. Yet, nor had she been able to think of him completely as the evil villain. In truth, she’d tried to think of him as little as possible before all of this. Because that meant she had to question her own similarities to him. Was madness the inevitable result of someone who spoke to the spirits more than they spoke to the living? If so, what did that mean for her?

  The pound of rain against her body and face kept her alert, and had her blood pumping fast in her veins. It was the most awake and alive she had felt in days, so she directed all that desperation at something worthwhile.

  She thought back to the soul who had helped her in the palace, the one who had been bold and strong and honorable. He had not given her much. She knew not who he had been in his life, nor why his spirit had not moved on. But she remembered his fierceness, and she needed that now. So she focused on those memories, on every detail she could remember about the spirit’s presence, and then she called to him, only him.

  Aurora called to her soldier soul again and again throughout the night, every time the cold wracked her body, or the fear climbed as high as the water that washed around her, but she heard no answer.

  When the rain died down, she slept in fits and starts, but none of it provided any real rest. It was merely her body giving out when it reached the point where not even her misery could keep her awake.

  When next she woke it was daytime, the soil beneath her was still soggy, but the sun was shining, and the warmth felt like salvation against her skin. It took a long time for the heat to seep down to the layers of cold that had claimed her so completely the night before. She could hear the clank of the manacles every time a shiver coursed through her body.

  The Stormlord was by the fire, some kind of game already roasting above it. Her stomach seized painfully, and her mouth began to water. He looked up at the air, talking to another soul, she guessed, then immediately turned his head to her.

  “You are awake.”

  She did not know how to respond. So she nodded, the world spinning dizzily with that simple movement. When her vision settled, she eyed the meat with naked desperation. The smell of food so near had nausea rising in her throat, and she knew it would only take one bite to make it go away.

  Finally, he took the stick on which the roasted animal was skewered and came toward her.

  “Today, you have your first lesson. So you need to eat.”

  He held the stick directly in front of her face. She waited for him to release her hands or tear off a piece, but when he did neither, she gave in to her hunger. Craning her neck upward, she tore at the meat with her teeth. Juices splattered over her face, but she was too hungry to care. Again and again, she gnawed at the food he presented, tearing big strips away with her teeth. Her jaw was tired after only a few bites, but she kept chewing.

  Whatever his idea of a lesson was, she knew she would need all her strength for it.

  When she had eaten enough that she began to feel ill, she stopped and nodded for him to take it away. He did, throwing the entire thing back on the fire rather than eating any himself.

  Then to her surprise, he knelt and began undoing her manacles. The first touch of air on her wrists burned, and she pulled them down to find raw, red abrasions where the irons had been. The Stormlord moved quickly and efficiently, standing to undo the manacles at her ankles next. When he had freed her completely, he stood up and looked at her.

  She curled her legs up to her midsection, her bare feet scraping through the dirt.

  “What’s the lesson?” she asked and was relieved when her voice barely shook.

  He gestured toward her chest, and she looked down to see the frenetic flash of her skyfire through the material of her shirt.

  “If you are going to be any use to me, you need more than one storm at your call.”

  Aurora froze, trying not to let the horror show on her face.

  “You—you want me to take another soul?”

  “Yes. And I have selected the perfect one.”

  At his words, a chill stole through the air, followed by a soft, slithering hiss of sinister intent. The wind grew around them, building to a howling crescendo, and Aurora forced herself up onto her feet. Her legs wobbled painfully beneath her weight, and the rapidly dropping temperature sliced at her bare skin. The wind grew fiercer, tearing at her clothes and hair and bringing tears to her eyes. Above them, the sky was churning, clouds darkening as if they had been beaten and bruised.

  Slowly, she began to notice tiny tufts of white caught up in the gusts of wind. She squinted, trying to discern what they were, but after a few moments, she did not need to see. She could feel. The cold kiss of snow touched her forehead, then her cheek, then her bare hand. She blinked, and the scant little flakes became an avalanche.

  Bits of snow and ice claimed the wind, turning the furious gusts into reaching arms of piercing cold. The ground around her was covered, and her bare feet felt as if she had walked into a pile of needles.

  She sucked in a breath, and the cold burned deep into her lungs. Her eyes and nose too felt like she had stuck her face into a fire instead of a snowstorm. The air around her had been swallowed up by white, and she could bare
ly see more than a few paces in each direction.

  She tried to search out the Stormlord, but she could no longer see him in the hazy winter he had created. Her body shook violently, the thin layers of her shirt and pants doing nothing to stop the stabbing pain of the frigid air around her.

  Aurora tried to think of what Kiran would do in this situation. She needed to find the storm’s heart or she would never be able to end this. And given enough time, these temperatures would kill her. She was not sure if the Stormlord would interfere before then, but considering his tendency to disappear, she did not plan to rely on him for help.

  Find the heart.

  How did she find the heart?

  She had to either get to the middle of the storm, which was impossible considering the apex of the storm was high in the sky above her, or she needed to trick the heart into coming to her. The hunters did this by convincing the storm that another tempest was nearby with the use of Stormhearts. She did not have one of those. But she had something better.

  Closing her eyes, she tried her hardest to shut out the cold and focus on the electric heat of the skyfire storm inside of her. It leaped to her attention as soon as she reached for it, and she let it fill her. For a few moments, it completely drove away the cold.

  She opened her eyes, skyfire sparking from her hands, and screamed into blustering wind, “Well? What are you waiting for? Come and get me!”

  She stretched out her arms and used what little strength she had to send bolts of skyfire streaming up toward the seething storm above. In response, she felt a searing rush of hostility and hatred bear down on her from overhead.

  She ignored it, blasting another round of skyfire into the air, though this time she could only manage one. A savage shriek carried on the wind, but when she looked up, she saw something incandescent in the sky above her coming closer.

  It was so different from the last time she had been this close to the heart of a storm. Then it had been an innocent, cheerful skyfire storm that bore the soul of a child. This soul … the closer it came, the more she wanted to run. The spirit’s presence was foul and potent—she did not feel anger or greed or bitterness or any of the other usual emotions that rolled off the darker souls. Instead, it exuded a cruel curiosity. This soul wanted to cause pain not out of revenge or envy, but because it liked it.