by Cora Carmack
—The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram
11
Locke hadn’t been sleeping well. The first night on the road, he blamed it on his adjusting schedule. On the second night, he did the same. But now after three nights of restless sleep, broken by nightmares about a girl in danger who was somehow both his sister and Roar simultaneously, he had run out of excuses. It had been ages since he’d last had a nightmare. He knew having Roar here would throw him off balance, but it was even worse than he anticipated. It was still a while yet before dawn, and he nicked several jars of skyfire magic to give him light enough to work. Across his lap, he laid out several maps of the wilds between here and Taraanar. Normally, it was Duke’s job to do the navigating, but the old man hadn’t complained when Locke kept bringing him suggestions for safer routes that would hopefully postpone any run-ins with storms until he felt Roar was ready.
She would be furious if she knew, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t just about her. He trusted his gut, and something wasn’t right. And in the wilds, all it took was one mistake to wipe out an entire crew. He had to get his head straight.
They’d left the Ruined Road behind two days prior, opting to follow the river as it curved northeast, but yesterday in the late afternoon the river turned south again, bringing them back to Ruined Road.
As Locke studied the maps, it was glaringly obvious that there were no more safe routes for the next part of the journey. Hunters understood the wildlands and storms better than most. Duke was brilliant, and he could talk for hours about how nature and magic merged to make such beasts. The old hunter hypothesized that storms could form one of two ways: as a result of what he called colliding weather systems that changed the pressure of the air or from colliding natural magics. So like explorers traveling new lands, they kept notes and drew maps for everything they saw and experienced. In the Rock, Duke monitored the levels of magic in the air and kept lists upon lists of readings. They kept a separate map that marked locations of any storms they crossed or damage they saw from presumed storms. Over time, all that information allowed them to mark spots where magic was consistently more prevalent and the types of conditions or geographical features that made storms more likely.
He’d used those maps and figures to create their route so far, but they were approaching a valley called Sorrow’s Maw to the south, where storms formed with frightening regularity. The land there teemed with so much raw magic that it would be a miracle if they did not encounter a storm sometime soon. Normally, they might have spent a few days camped out north of the valley, using the storms that rolled out of the Maw to bulk up their supplies. But it was too risky to camp near a hotbed when they had a newcomer like Roar and a novice like Bait.
For the last three days, he’d made Roar run morning and night, and though he hated to admit it, she was more than capable of surviving that way if necessary. Already she was probably faster than anyone else on the crew save him. And skies knew she was stubborn. He’d pushed and pushed, and never once had she asked for a break or for him to slow down. Not even last night when he’d run her until she doubled over, heaving her supper into the grass. He’d gone too far then—even his own lungs had felt on the verge of collapse—but she’d simply wiped her mouth with the hem of her shirt, then kept going.
He sighed. It was well past time to start training her for real. Clearly, she would not be scared off by a little hard work as he had hoped.
He stowed the maps back in the Rock, and then set off toward Roar’s shoddily constructed tent. The thing stood haphazardly, leaning with the wind, but true to her stubbornness, she had refused to let anyone help her set it up.
He lifted the tent flap carefully, and called into the dark space, “Rise and shine, princess.”
Locke heard the shuffling of blankets, and a grumbled, “I will murder you.”
He fought a smile and crooned, “Come on, princess. Don’t make me drag you out of there. I guarantee I’ll enjoy it entirely too much.”
He narrowly dodged a waterskin she tossed through the open flap of her tent, but he heard her moving around. She was always a little grumpy in the mornings, and it entertained him to no end.
“You know storms wait for no one. They come when you’re sleeping or sore or tired, and those not strong enough to outrun them are those that don’t survive.”
“I’m coming. Calm your skies, hunter.”
He dropped the tent flap and walked several paces away to wait. When she climbed out of the tent, he lost his train of thought completely. Her hair was mussed and wild, and her mouth open in a yawn. She wore a large linen tunic that swallowed her slim form, hanging down to midthigh. Beneath it her legs were bare, the light of the moon casting them in a soft glow. The sight burned into his brain, never to be forgotten.
He really did push her too hard last night. Normally, she was already awake (albeit irritable) by the time he came to collect her.
“I’ll … leave you to get ready. Meet me at the campfire.”
He forced his feet to move away before he did something stupid. He grabbed an apple from his pack and sat down near the fire they had made the night before. A few orange embers still glowed, though they provided little heat. A moment later she came up behind him, catching him off guard. “Remind me again why no one else runs before dawn.”
She was dressed again in her usual attire. Her legs were covered by a pair of slim, brown trousers, and over her large tunic she had fastened on a leather harness that ran below her breasts and strapped over her shoulders. He could see the handles of several knives sticking up against her back. He stood, tossing the core that remained of his apple breakfast into the woods. He offered her one as well, but she shook her head.
“I’ll pass. I’ve decided to wait to eat until after we’re done running.”
He bit his lip to keep from laughing and said, “The others are sleeping because they paid their dues. They’ve all fought storms and survived. They know what it takes. I trust them to take this seriously and prepare themselves in whatever way they see fit. But you—if you’re not ready the first time I put you in front of a twister, that’s on me.”
Her voice shook slightly as she asked, “You’re starting me with a twister?”
Good. It was about time the girl showed a healthy dose of fear.
“Don’t sound so excited now, do you?”
Roar shoved hard at his chest, but he was used to holding his footing against winds far stronger than her. His lack of reaction only angered her more. “You’re an ass,” she hissed, whirling to leave him.
But he was quicker, and he snatched a wrist, tugging until she fell into him, one hand on his chest, two fingers’ width from the accelerating beat of his heart.
“And you are scared,” he said softly.
“Of course, I’m scared. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re reckless. You get an idea, and you commit to it fully. But you don’t think through all the options. Instincts are important, but not when they’re untested and ill informed. You’ve done your best to show no fear since you left Pavan. I want to know what it was about what I just said that shook up your façade.”
Roar ducked her head, tucking a dark strand behind her ear. She had tied it back at the base of her neck, but already strands were escaping to frame her face. She replied halfheartedly, “Forgive me if I’m not ready for verbal sparring first thing in the morning.”
He tracked back through their conversation, pinpointing the moment she’d first let her walls slip. “It was my mention of a twister, wasn’t it? You’ve been in one before?”
“Would you stop reading into everything I say?”
He shook his head. He would never stop. If she wouldn’t give up her secrets, he would discover them on his own. “No. Can’t be that. If you’d been in one and survived, you would have used it as a selling point while trying to convince me and Duke to let you on the crew.”
“Duke. I was trying to convince Duke. He’s the one in charge.�
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“Of strategy, yes. Of this team, unequivocally. But in the field, when we’re in the belly of a storm and Duke is in the Rock reading measurements? I’m in charge. He might be king, but I’m the general that keeps everyone alive. And I need to know what you can and cannot handle. So why is it a twister that scares you?”
He still held one of her wrists, and she tugged, trying to break free. His grip was secure; but, never one to give up easily, Roar twisted her body nearly all the way around, trying to worm out of his grasp. He loosened his hold, worried she’d hurt herself. But the moment she broke free, he seized her again, wrapping his arms around her middle, arms trapped at her sides, her back to his chest.
He should let her go. He knew her well enough now to know that manhandling her would only make her fight harder. But he was too distracted by the way her body fit against his own. Her soft hair tickled his neck. Even more startling, she had stopped fighting him completely. Her body sank against his, her back pressed against his chest and abdomen. He became acutely aware of where his arms wrapped around her shoulders and her midsection. She sucked in a breath, and the rise and fall of her chest moved through both of them.
He knew he should step away, but it was like he’d been mesmerized. He stood there, stock-still, his mind filled with nothing but her. If she were a storm, she could destroy him, and he would never lift a finger to protect himself.
If he did not learn to block out the instincts she roused in him, destruction could be exactly where they both were headed.
* * *
Heat from Locke’s breath tickled over Roar’s ear, then her cheek, and if the thought of a twister shook her up, his closeness threatened to send her heart into convulsions. She wanted to scream and shove free from his grasp, to fall back on another argument that would give her the precious distance she needed. But it felt better than she would ever admit to lean back and let the hunter behind her be the thing that held her up for a while.
She had thought Roar would be a fresh start, a chance to be free of all the things that stifled her in Pavan, but even after days of travel in the wildlands, her life was still not rid of secrets. And those manacles had always been the tightest of all. It wasn’t just the physical toll of the torturous runs with Locke that had her drained but the stranglehold on her tongue when it came to sharing about herself.
But this … this was one secret she could shed.
“My brother,” she rasped, out of breath for reasons she could not discern.
“What was that?” Locke’s arms uncoiled, and he bent his face closer to hers. His breath touched her cheek as she answered, “I haven’t been in a twister, but my brother was.”
His grip went slack, and she decided she had leaned on him long enough. She lurched forward and out of his grasp.
“Was? Did he—?”
She did not look up as she nodded. There was no harm in admitting this. The Prince of Pavan was hardly the only person to die in a twister.
“It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love,” Locke said. “And to lose them to a storm makes you feel all the more helpless than if you could put a name or a face to your enemy.” He moved in closer, his voice nearing a whisper in the dark. “But that’s why you’ve got to trust me with your training.” She was not sure she even knew how to do that. To trust. Especially not when lies from her mother and Cassius still shadowed her thoughts. “Trust me not to put you into that kind of situation until you’re ready. Until you’re able to do what your brother could not. You are not going to die on my watch, princess. I promise you that.”
On his last words, he flicked a strand of hair near her jaw. It flew up, then down again, settling onto a cheek that felt so deeply flushed, it ached like a bruise. She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I told you not to call me that.”
He stepped back, giving them both plenty of space. “Live up to your other name, and I will.”
She threw up her hands on a growl and stalked off into the darkness.
“I suppose that was a little closer to a roar, but it still needs work,” he said, before passing her by at a brisk jog. “Come on. We’re doing things a little differently today. We’ll see if you can keep up.”
“I will.” She just hoped she could do it without spilling the contents of her stomach in the grass. One time was enough.
She fell into pace beside him and he asked, “First, tell me which direction we’re running.”
She rolled her eyes up toward the dark sky, dotted with pinpricks of light. She saw the familiar constellation of Rezna’s Gate. That collection of stars was the closest thing they had to mark true north. There were other clusters of stars surrounding the goddess’s constellation, many of them named for types of storms.
“North,” she answered. “Was that supposed to be difficult?”
“No. But this is. Follow me. Do everything I do.”
He set off, but this time he wasn’t simply running. He picked up speed, dodging left around a boulder. She planted a foot, pivoting, and followed. He hiked up a knee and leaped on top of the boulder before jumping off the other side and setting off at a run once more. She gritted her teeth and did the same, only she had to use her hands to pull herself onto the rock, and she didn’t so much jump off the other side as roll. Her still-healing arm ached from the strain, but there was no time to think about that. He took her up hills and between trees, hurtling over an obstacle course of raised roots and fallen limbs. Her legs started to burn with each leap, but she kept as close to his heels as possible. They crawled beneath raised tree roots and rolled down a sloping hill. She scraped her knees and elbows nearly raw.
Locke disappeared into the line of trees that surrounded the river. She burst through the outer layer of branches, only to find him gone. The stream was below her, trees all around her, but no movement that she could see. She tried to contain her breathing and listen, but she could not hear the fall of his feet or the quiet huff of his breath.
The skin on the back of her neck prickled with awareness a moment before she heard his voice behind her.
“You’re running from a storm. You’ve just found these trees for shelter. What do you do?”
She ignored the anxiety of having him at her back and said, “Depends. What kind of storm?”
“Good.” The word came out so close to her neck that she felt his breath crash into her skin. “Let’s say skyfire.”
She snorted. “I would turn around and leave. Being near a body of water is a bad idea.” She made the mistake of following her own directions; that left her eye to eye with Locke, their bodies so close that her shoulder brushed his chest when she turned.
“And where would you go?” His voice was low and deep in the darkness, and he leaned closer as if she might not hear him, as if she wasn’t all too aware of every sound and movement he made.
“I would … look for shelter.”
“There is no shelter.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. She swallowed, but it went down like sand. He wasn’t interested in her that way, so she had to be imagining that glint in his eyes. Which was good because she was not interested either. He was attractive, certainly, but she was here for only one thing, and it wasn’t to put her heart in danger again.
She broke their gaze and said, “I’d look for the lowest point on the land. A valley or depression. Then make myself as small a target as I could. Crouch into a ball and touch the ground as little as possible.”
“And if the land is flat?”
She chewed at her lip. “Then as a last resort, I would come here. But stay away from the water. And I’d look for a cluster of shorter trees, since lightning is more likely to strike the taller trees. And again, make myself as small as possible.”
“Excellent.” Her stomach pitched with pleasure. “And if it were a firestorm?”
“The water.”
“Then to the water we go.” He edged past her and sprinted down the bank. “Then what?” he yelled as she followed.
“If I’m in
immediate danger, beneath the water.”
“You’re currently ahead of the storm.”
Heart hammering, she plunged into the stream, water lapping at her legs. It wasn’t freezing, but it was cold enough to make her muscles tighten with stress.
“Then I run. Through the stream in case the storm catches up or the trees catch fire, and I need to dive under the surface.”
“Which direction?”
“Umm … umm…” She looked one way down the river, then the other. She spun around, reminding herself which direction she’d seen Rezna’s Gate. “Firestorms usually form over dry climates and don’t move into areas with more moisture in the air. But this stream might not be big enough to make that much of a difference.”
“Good. But remember we’re not hiding in the stream, we’re using it as a means of escape. So which direction do you run?”
Her legs began to shake in the knee-deep water. “Most rivers run toward larger bodies of water. So I’d run the same way as the river.” She pointed to where the Napatya turned around a bend and headed southeast.
“Then run.”
She did, picking up her knees as much as she could, so that she wasn’t bogged down by the water. But even with all that effort, the water made her slow and tired. Already fatigued muscles grew heavy and numb, and it became more and more difficult to lift her knees. She decided that it would be better to run on the bank, close enough to the water that she could dive beneath it with one jump, but with firm enough ground that she didn’t have to work so hard for traction. When she moved to do that, her boot connected with a flat, mossy rock, and her foot slipped. Tumbling forward, her knee hit the riverbed just before her face plunged beneath the surface.
She broke into the air, coughing and sputtering. She was still struggling to catch her breath when Locke came to a stop beside her. She was already embarrassed, and she knew he would make it worse.
