Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1)

by Karissa Laurel

  “Your permission is not necessary, though I would prefer it.” His hand cupped my cheek. I moved to push it away, but his eyes flashed, and I hesitated. “There’s no one else in the world more suitable for me than you. I hope you’ll come to realize that. I desire you, Evelyn. I want to possess you, and I will have my way.”

  He rose to his feet. “A month from this night is your birthday, and on that day we will be married. I hope that as soon as nine months from that day, we will bring our child into this world.”

  I could say nothing in protest or defense. Too much loathing and disgust clogged my throat.

  It won’t happen, I vowed. I’ll find a way to escape. I must.

  ***

  Jackie tried to court me at Thibodaux’s house. He brought me flowers, sweets, and trinkets. We strolled the garden, but I refused to engage in his conversation, so we spent much of the time in silence. The number of distractions available to us was limited without allowing me more freedom, and neither Jackie nor Thibodaux were willing to risk it.

  Several weeks before my birthday, I attempted another escape, but nothing in the room would shatter the glass in the window, and the door would not budge. I suspected Le Poing Fermé’s magic kept me trapped. One day, while Thibodaux was distracted with an unexpected business client in his study, I made a soundless dash for the door to the garden. I had hoped to escape through the exterior gate or even over the high brick walls, but my last memory was of reaching for the gate latch before I woke up in the late evening, locked back into my plush blue prison with a pounding headache.

  Martin and Marie, the maid, checked on me at such frequent intervals that I suspected they came to ensure I hadn’t attempted to take my own life. Things were not that desperate, not even when a dressmaker arrived to take my measurements, and not even when she reappeared for the final fitting of the gown I was to wear when I wedded Jackie in two weeks’ time.

  Perhaps I hadn’t acted with more desperation because I still denied the inevitability of Jackie’s plans. I had found no alternative, no way out, but I refused to accept that this was the intended path for me. Justina had said I would find a way back to my throne. But not like this. Any way but this.

  ***

  The morning of my birthday, the dressmaker arrived and helped me into my gown. She had designed its fit so precisely that she had to sew me into it. Marie dressed my hair and tried to hide my red, puffy eyes with makeup, but I cried it off again. At some point, numbness replaced the tears.

  Thibodaux expressed his pleasure over my appearance, but clucked disapproval when he inspected my swollen eyes and red nose. He escorted me to his carriage, taking the roll that the father should take. Thibodaux and Jackie had arranged the wedding in a special location, a place that had always belonged to Le Poing Fermé, and it had been a part of every one of their ceremonies for centuries.

  There was no orchestra, exuberant family, or cheering guests. Instead, Thibodaux led me to a grassy field that encompassed a circle of stone pillars, each engraved with indeterminable markings. The stones rose twice as tall as I and were twice as thick around. The standing stones encircled a flat rock, an altar, and Jackie stood beside it, waiting for me. He watched me approach and wore the hungry smile of a wolf.

  The other members of the cabal weaved through the pillars, chanting a strange tune in a stranger tongue. They wore dark cloaks and resembled a parade of wraiths, dancing a dour waltz.

  Jackie muttered something in my ear in the same ancient language his co-conspirators used. Everyone fell silent as he drew a blade from his black velvet cloak. Before I could jerk away, he pressed the tip against my index finger and broke the skin. He dribbled my blood over the stone alter. Then he sliced his own finger and added his blood to mine, using the blade tip to swirl the droplets together.

  “I am the blood of your blood as you are the blood of mine,” he said. “What has been joined together, today let no one dare untie.”

  Jackie circled his arms around me and turned his hungry face to me. “You are mine now, Evelyn. And no one can take you from me.”

  His face shifted from one of a stunning and beautiful man into a monstrous carnivore who gnashed his teeth as he lunged to devour me.

  The clash of those sharp teeth snapped me out of my nightmare. Instead of standing before an altar at some strange ceremonial site, I was lying in a bed in Thibodaux’s blue bedroom, alone. No wolves, no cabal, and no Jackie, either. No wedding dress, no ceremony.

  It had all been a horrible dream.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. But then the hungry teeth snapped again, and I yelped and sprang from the bed, hand pressed over my racing heart.

  No toothy beasts appeared, but I did discover a ghost at my window, tapping furiously at the glass with a chisel and mallet. Another strange dream? It must have been. How else could I explain the vision of Gideon perched at my window ledge?

  He reared back with the giant mallet and struck the chisel again. A spider web of cracks crawled across the glass, but the pane held. I flew to the window and gaped at him. He seemed so real. But how? How?

  “Evie, back away,” said the ghost. “I don’t want the glass to cut you when it gives.”

  “Gideon?” I asked.

  He glowered at me oh-so-familiarly, and I backed away. He reared back and swung the mallet again. The glass lost its battle. The pane shattered, falling to the ground in knife-sharp shards.

  “Put on your boots and come,” he ordered. “Quickly!”

  I riffled beneath the bed for the Venitzian leather walking boots I had worn ever since the loss of my favorite old pair. “What’s going on? How did you find me?”

  “No questions. Just move. They’ll be after us any minute.”

  I slipped my feet into the boots, but didn’t bother lacing them before I dashed to the window.

  “There’s a rope ladder here,” Gideon said. “Step up on the window sill and take my hand.”

  With a bit of careful maneuvering on my part, and a lot of brute strength on Gideon’s, we managed to attach me to a rope ladder that, to my delight, was connected to the bow of the Tippany’s airship.

  “Oh, this is the best dream I’ve had in a long time,” I said as we climbed the swaying ladder.

  Before I reached the rail of the ship where Malita, Timony, and Niffin waited to greet me, Thibodaux’s strange voice called out into the night, yelling something unintelligible. I looked down to find him peering up from the shattered window. The familiar pain I had suffered during previous escape attempts swelled inside me. A haze clouded my vision, and I could not hold my grip on the ropes.

  “Evie, hold on!” Gideon demanded, but my body refused to obey.

  “Evie!” Malita cried from somewhere above me, and I wanted to try, if only for her, but the blackness in my head was so absolute and heavy. It might crush my skull if I fought it any longer, so I didn’t.

  I gave up.

  I let go, and I fell.

  BOOK THREE

  A GODDESS REBORN

  Chapter 28

  The ghost was back. He sat in an old chair that had seen better days long ago. Slumped over and holding his head in his hands, he looked so tired. He was close enough to touch, but who had ever heard of touching a ghost? I was compelled to try anyway.

  “Gideon,” I said, reaching for the his big, strong hands. “Am I dead, too?”

  His head popped up, and he looked at me with bleary eyes, but also with uncharacteristic concern. “No, you aren’t dead, but you had us guessing there for a while.” He shifted out of the chair and sat beside me on the bed.

  A patchwork quilt covered me and white lace draperies swayed with the gentle rocking of my room. I was thankful for the absence of blue. “Then this is a dream, and I’m imagining I’m back on the Tippany’s airship.”

  He nodded. “It is like a dream, flying like this.”

  “You don’t look like a dream... or a ghost.” I brushed a loose hair from his forehead, something I would never h
ave dared to do in real life. He grasped my hand before I pulled away and held it in his lap. “You don’t feel like one either,” I said.

  Gideon smirked. “Why do you think I’m not real?”

  “Jackie said Vesper Praston must have killed you or thrown you overboard. No one knew what had happened to you.”

  “He said that, did he?” A dark shadow crossed his. “Well, I’m no ghost, and this is no dream. We’re truly aboard a godsforsaken airship.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I said. “It’s impossible to escape Thibodaux’s house. I tried.”

  I sat up straighter and pulled my hand away. If this were real, then I couldn’t understand why he was touching me like this. The real Gideon was remote, aloof…angry. He would never touch me this way.

  He leaned closer and spoke, his tone earnest. “Impossible for a girl who survived falling overboard in a sea squall? Who escaped pirates and freed her friends from slave traders? Who found a job and made her hands bleed by washing dishes while protecting her friends? Impossible for a princess who befriended a bunch of enigmatic, elitist nomads and convinced them to carry her where she needed to go, earning their respect so well along the way that they were completely willing to throw in with my ridiculous plan to rescue you?”

  “Well, when you put it that way....” I laughed and realized that it was the first time I had done such a thing in a while, so I did it again. Gideon smiled, showing his dimple, and it made his face into something almost too lovely to bear.

  “Evie, I....” He paused and his brow crumpled. “I can’t believe it. What you’ve done... I never would have believed you capable.”

  “You thought I was a spoiled, useless princess, didn’t you?” I laughed again, and he almost blushed. Almost. “You’re right, I was. But I’ve learned a lot about myself lately. I like the person who was inside me all this time. I wish I could have met her sooner.”

  “I like her, too,” he said. His tenderness made my pulse buzz in my ears, but in a good way. “How did you do it? How did you manage?”

  I pondered that same question so many times, and I had yet to find a satisfactory answer. “I guess I have more of my forefathers’ abilities in me than I thought.”

  Gideon peered into my eyes as if he intended to see all the way to the source of my power and find the answer himself.

  “Tell me what happened while we were apart,” I said and tempted fate by sliding my hand back into his big paw. His hands were rough, but strong—the kinds of hands that worked hard and promised protection. He hadn’t died, and he had saved me again. The relief of it felt like a rebirth of some kind. My hope sparked back to life.

  Gideon didn’t pull away. Instead, he curled his fingers over mine, took a deep breath and said, “Obviously, Vesper Praston did not kill me.”

  Chapter 29

  Gideon’s Tale

  Gideon couldn’t have testified in a court of law—he never actually saw Vesper Praston in the moments before something heavy clobbered him on the back of his head and dashed him into unconsciousness. But no one else aboard the LaDonna had Praston’s means, motive, and opportunity. The explosion of Evie’s lightning woke him from his stupor, and he found that, in his rush, Praston had done a poor job checking him for hidden blades. He retrieved a knife from his boot and cut his bindings.

  By the time Gideon recovered his wherewithal and slipped free from the ropes, Evie’s dip in the ocean had turned into a lengthy soak, and she had passed out of sight. Fortunately for Praston, the same lightning bolt that saved Evie had fried him to a crispy shark snack—fortunate because if Gideon had managed to get his hands on him, death would have taken much longer, and he would have suffered a great deal more pain.

  That left Gideon and Jackie staring agape at the port side railing, searching for any hint of an Evie shaped buoy. “She’s a survivor,” he told Jackie, though he said it more for his own reassurance.

  “What should we do?” Jackie asked.

  “I’m not sure. She knows we meant to go to Pecia. Maybe a fishing boat will pick her up.”

  “You think she’ll make it?” Jackie asked, sounding doubtful.

  “Maybe. She’s tougher than I first thought. I’ll wait a while in Pecia, see if she shows up.”

  Gideon was actually quite sure Evie would perish in the ocean, but without her, he had lost his purpose, and he had little other option for how to bide his time. Besides, he didn’t care for Jonathan Faercourt, and he decided at that moment to discover the truth about the sly character who had charmed his way into Evie’s affections.

  The LaDonna landed in Pecia early the next morning. Gideon made overtures of parting ways with Faercourt, but promptly set to spying on him. In the beginning, his story appeared truthful. He spent his first day with his sister and their aunt in her Pecian townhome. As the days passed, however, Jackie spent more and more time at the home of another man.

  In a variety of seedy locales, Gideon first heard Ruelle Thibodaux’s name, and, in hushed references, Le Poing Fermé. When he pressed his fellow bar patrons, no one wanted to speak of the secretive cabal. When they ventured to speak of it at all, none of their words eased his worries.

  Gideon knew nothing of Le Poing Fermé’s plans for Evie. When several weeks had passed with no sign or word of Evie’s survival, he began to lose the small seed of hope he had clung to after that fateful night on the LaDonna. Eventually, he made arrangements to purchase a horse and travel on to Dreutch, to the contacts he had there.

  It was on the same night before his planned departure that a band of Fantazike men entered the bistro where he often dined. They were in a celebratory mood, for they had been released from a short tenure in prison. The retelling of their experience with the politzen reignited his small flame of hope. The Fantazike men spoke of a girl who had been captured along with them. She had traveled with them from Espiritola and earned her way with her powers over the storms, filling their energy cells with lightning, as they needed it.

  “What happened to this girl?” Gideon asked after buying the Fantazikes a round of drinks. His command of Gallandic was fluent—he’d always had a knack for languages. “Did they let her go when you were set free?”

  “Oh, no,” one of them answered—an older man with salt and copper hair and with eyes the color of smoky quartz. “She did not go to prison with us. They kept her and took her somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Gideon asked.

  The Fantazike shrugged. “I do not know. Maybe the politzen captain kept her for himself.”

  Gideon suspected otherwise. He dashed from the pub and ran all the way to Thibodaux’s house, assuming Evie’s appearance in Pecia had already come to Jackie’s attention. That night he watched a festive crowd arrive at Thibodaux’s residence and recognized Jonathan Faercourt among the guests. Something had obviously inspired their excitement, and Gideon believed Evelyn Stormbourne was that something.

  He would have secured Evie’s escape sooner, but it took him nearly another week, and quite a bit of bribery, to find the Fantanzikes and convince them to talk to him about Evie. When he investigated enough to learn that she had traveled with the Tippany family, he finally found the willing accomplices he so desperately required.

  Malita and Niffin regaled Gideon with tales of Evie’s escapades in the time since she had gone missing and together they hashed out the details of her rescue. What he learned from them meshed with the opinion he had formed as he and Evie traveled through Inselgrau together. In his days as horse master on her father’s estate, Gideon—when he had thought of her at all—had assumed her to be a spoiled, useless princess.

  She had since proved him wrong, and he vowed never to underestimate her again.

  Chapter 30

  Gideon told his tale while stretched out on the bed beside me, his last few words slurring as though he were drunk—no doubt a side effect of his fatigue. “I don’t know what kind of glass Thibodaux used in that window,” he said, “but I had a hell of a time breaking it op
en.” His words fell off into quiet snores.

  “He stayed up all night by your side,” Melainey said from the doorway. “I’m sure he’s exhausted. Come with me, and I’ll find you something to wear besides that nightgown. Then we’ll go to the kitchen. Puri would love to feed you.”

  When we entered the kitchen, Puri assaulted me with hugs and kisses. Malita and Niffin also embraced me, patted my back and wiped away tears. The old lady fed me gnollitas, stuffed grape leaves, ground bean fritters in spicy yellow sauce dotted with tiny red peppers, and plenty of her fresh baked rolls. I stuffed my gut until it groaned with the strain of holding it all in.

  Timony stuck his head into the tiny galley and winked at me as I wiped up the last bite. “If you’re feeling up to it, there’s a storm brewing just off the port bow. We could use a little refueling.”

  I swallowed a burp as I rose to my feet. “Happy to oblige.”

  He grinned. “I did not want you to think this was a free ride.”

  I returned his smile. “I didn’t think the Fantazikes knew the meaning of the word.”

  The thrill of exercising my powers restored my good cheer, and I danced around the deck with Niffin, helping him stow away the lightning rigs. Gideon showed up on deck at the moment Niffin announced the energy cells could take no more. “Get enough rest?” I asked him.

  “How could I sleep with all the commotion?” His face was still soft from sleep and he looked much younger, more like his twenty years than usual. He wore one of the oiled slickers, but no goggles and the wind batted his hair about his face until he looked like a wild and vital creature from a mythical tale.

  “I haven’t asked them where we’re going,” I said. “I assume you’re taking me to Dreutch as you originally planned?”

  He glanced away. “Yes.”

  “Will you tell me now what’s waiting for us there? Why that country of all places?”

  His solemn, granite gaze studied the horizon as he prepared his answer. “You know the legends say that the peoples of Inselgrau descended from the peoples of Dreutch?”