Chapter Four

Fourteen Years Ago

November 2, 2026

 

A HEADACHE THE size of Texas beat at his skull. Realising he was lying on grass, Storm pushed against the ground and attempted to sit up, confused and disorientated. The last he remembered he’d been sitting on a blanket in the field at his little shack, preparing for the ceremony to ascend to his true powers. He lifted his right wrist to glance at his watch, relieved the date and time showed it hadn’t been long since he last looked.

A strange swirling churned his gut, a hungry, desperate feeling that clawed at his insides. His magic had woken, demanding something he couldn’t interpret. Storm needed to get somewhere safe, familiar, then visit Gladys and figure out what had happened to make him feel unsettled in his own skin.

For now, he focused on trying not to vomit.

“What in the Mother happened to you?”

Startled by the low, deep voice, he looked up to find Rowan standing over him. Without conscious thought, words fell from his mouth in utter panic: “I can’t let them kill you.”

Rowan’s smirk morphed into a scrunch of eyebrows, then descended into a chuckle. He tipped his head to the sky and muttered to the elemental gods. The unfortunate tip of his head when he glanced at Storm gave a crystal clear view of startling cornflower blue eyes. Damn him. Storm had always had a thing about eyes, the supposed window to the soul. If that were true, Rowan needed to be scrubbed in vinegar because Storm had only ever been captivated and confused by the swirling depth of Rowan’s eyes that kept so many secrets.

“Good to know. Who is trying to kill me?” Rowan asked, folding his arms over his chest. That look grated against the barrier Storm had long ago erected against Rowan’s power to spellbind him with a glance.

Storm pushed those thoughts aside, as he always did, to focus on the question. “I don’t know. I don’t think—” Why couldn’t he find the words or the thoughts to make sense of what he’d said? He had no choice but to ignore the warning, refusing to give any Copry—no matter how pretty—the knowledge that pieces of his memory were missing. “What are you doing here?”

Squinting in concern, Rowan unfolded his arms and crouched to get within a comfortable eye level, apparently aware Storm wasn’t capable of standing. “Do you know where here is?” he asked, reaching for Storm’s forehead.

He’d normally swat the hand away, but the warmth was soothing and comforting against his skin. “Nope.” Those blue eyes evaluated him while Rowan absently nibbled on his lower lip, drawing Storm’s distracted mind straight to his mouth.

Storm let his gaze rake over Rowan for a different reason, surprised the son of his arch-nemesis didn’t appear to be in his usual mood. Something sad and deeply buried held him at a distance from his magic, and he was dressed differently: in black trousers, an off-white shirt and black suspenders. Gods be damned, the man looked like he’d stepped from a 1920s Hollywood movie, a vision he’d never expected to see, never mind anticipated could make his heart race. Rowan’s hair was perfectly placed but no matter how good he looked or how much the style suited his tall, lithe frame, accentuating the muscles of his broad chest and strong shoulders, sadness permeated his aura.

“You’re on our land. What are you doing here?” Rowan asked, a faint flush to his cheeks that said he didn’t know what to make of Storm’s appraising look.

Rowan was a year older, not exactly out of bounds romantically, but on his No-Go list for many more reasons than age. Storm cleared his throat and wondered why he couldn’t catch a break. He’d lost parts of his memory of the day, let Rowan see his attraction—something he’d sworn never to do—and couldn’t seem to get his head into shape.

“Honestly…I have no idea,” he confessed, hating saying the words to a Copry. “I think I had a vision.”

“Not a dream? Or a hallucination?” Rowan checked, without being condescending, unlike his father.

“No. This was vivid, about the covens and…the future.” Rowan shouldn’t be the one he was talking to about this. Storm shifted onto his hip, waited for the dizziness to pass and moved onto his hands and knees in an attempt to gradually get to his feet. He could only hope a defensive spell over the Copry land had confused and disorientated him; otherwise he was in trouble.

“Come on. I’ll help you sneak out before my father sees you,” Rowan said, moving closer to help Storm stand. “Damn. You have a bump the size of a watermelon and it’s bleeding.” He shifted his weight to support most of Storm’s, and together they managed to get him to two feet. Rowan held him by the shoulders and shook his head. “You were probably sleepwalking, having weird dreams about magic and fell and banged your head. Simple. I’ll get you presentable and you can get on your way.” Rowan clearly wasn’t convinced by his theory but the quaver in his voice said he didn’t want to know what else could have caused the wound, and Storm couldn’t disagree.

“I think I was going somewhere,” Storm said, eyeing the field he’d never been in, to figure out where he’d been going. He must have wavered off track or hit his head before drifting onto Copry land.

“Sleepwalking.”

Ignoring the truth was pointless, with such a strong feeling of wrong in the pit of his stomach. “No. I was going somewhere important. I have to…do something,” he admitted, allowing Rowan to slip his arm over a strong shoulder to steady him. When Rowan took a first step, Storm matched him. They tested three, with Storm pausing to shake off the dizziness after each step, before he was able to match Rowan’s pace.

The field backed onto Tera land, six acres occupying the house he’d never lived in and the shack he’d taken over when he was fourteen. He loved living in the shack, being away from the chaos of the covens, with only Gladys capable of breaking through the magical protections Storm had set around his home. How the hell had he walked three or four acres in his sleep, to bang his head and drift onto Copry land? Cesa had erected a six-foot electrical fence between their land the moment Storm’s parents moved in and he discovered they were of the dark arts. How did Storm get past the fence? Why would he bother?

Rowan heaved a sigh when they turned a corner at a row of tall bushes that hid a summer house that looked dilapidated, probably abandoned since Rowan’s mother died when he was a child. Storm didn’t want to go inside. He was afraid that in the state he was in he’d see something he couldn’t avoid. He didn’t want to insult Rowan by mentioning what may haunt the inside. He doubted he’d want to know if his mother’s ghost remained in her favourite part of the grounds.

Shoving open the glass-paned door, Rowan helped him shuffle over to a nearby chaise, old and well worn. “You’re disorientated by the head wound and because your magic goes screwy on the day of your ceremony. Once you’ve bonded with your full abilities, things will be better,” Rowan said, grabbing a footstool to drag in front of the chaise.

Storm wasn’t sure why he cared or what he was afraid to say, but he needed to rest and not have to think. Rowan fetched a first aid kit from a cupboard, returned, and started treating his head wound. While he worked, Storm looked closely and discovered the summer house wasn’t abandoned. The original furniture remained: the chaise, the footstool and a coffee table. Rowan had claimed the space with a stereo on a desk in the corner, a few cushions, blankets stuffed into an armchair and books piled high beside the desk.

This looked a lot like his shack, like a sanctuary, an escape, a private place others shouldn’t have been invited to share. Why had Rowan brought him here?

*

ROWAN INSISTED STORM stay for an hour to make sure his wound had healed and he wouldn’t fall asleep. Due to witches and mages healing at an accelerated rate, his head wound was almost closed by the time he left with more questions than answers.

When Rowan had asked how he felt, how his magic had responded, what he’d been doing before he lost his memory, Storm didn’t have answers. His magic had swirled in his gut, but he hadn’t connected to anything willing to give him information. The wind had been silent, there had been no rain, the trees hadn’t whispered, and that all amounted to an answer that made Rowan more nervous than the sleepwalking story. Whatever he suspected, he wasn’t sharing. He simply told Storm to be careful and set his watch alarm to beep every five minutes so he didn’t fall asleep and walked him home.

As weird as it had been to sit and talk to Rowan like a real person and not think of him as a Copry, Storm was confused. As an elemental, Rowan was unlikely to have any hint of seer abilities. He didn’t have the sight dark magic gave Storm, and he shouldn’t have any psychic ability. Rowan’s talent revolved around the elements, and he could read the tarot better than anyone Storm had ever met. Yet, Rowan hadn’t offered to read him, hadn’t glanced at the black bag sitting on the desk they both knew held his personal deck.

At home, seen safely to the door by the sole Copry son, Storm was so on edge by what Rowan wouldn’t say that sleep was impossible. He’d set his watch in front of Rowan, but sitting in his shack—three tiny rooms that held everything he owned—was claustrophobic. He wouldn’t feel better sitting there doing nothing. The space felt too small, as though the walls were bearing down on him.

The living area was bare, a tattered sofa he’d salvaged from the skip, a square wooden table and a single dining chair, with only the tablet Gladys had given him for his sixteenth birthday providing entertainment, filled with e-books and C-dramas. A few potted plants on the side window and each side of the door, both black-leafed plants to promote spiritual awakening, cleansed the air. He’d carved runes into the door frame to ward off the ghosts haunting Gladys’s house, to make sure they never followed him home and no demons could get in while he slept. The single door opposite the front door led to his bedroom, housing a mattress on the ground, a few wooden crates lined against the wall and at the end of the bed to hold his clothes, and a door leading to a fully plumbed bathroom. The shack was a few renovations away from the cabin his dad had intended, but Storm had everything he needed in life. What he needed now was fresh air and open spaces.

Grabbing his satchel from the dining chair, he tucked his tablet inside, added paracetamol from his medicine stash in the bathroom and left, shutting the door tight behind him. The minute he stepped outside his head felt lighter, unburdened.

Storm walked in the direction of the field he’d been studying in, hoping to find his books where he’d left them. People didn’t normally drift onto Tera land, but as he’d proven today, anything could happen.

“Foley, come back!”

A few feet from the poppy field a mile from his study area, Denver’s familiar voice made him pause. Straining to listen while wondering what he was doing here, Storm inched closer. He wavered as the wind slashed his mind, filling his head with a snapshot of confusing images: Foley standing beside Denver’s prone body, screaming and crying; Denver lying on the ground, in the mud and the rain, unseeing eyes staring at the sky; a young boy’s voice in his head, saying words that made no sense: Denver. Foley. Ithen. Storm. Take him to his ascension. Save us!

Shaking off the memory…dream?…nightmare? Storm waited until his knees stopped shaking and took another step. He reached the hulking great tree of Adam’s Grove, a tree his dad’s great-great-grandfather had planted when the Tera first claimed this land. From his vantage point, hidden from view by the three-foot-wide trunk and his friends not expecting him, Storm could observe but remain unseen.

Denver stood by the den they’d made when they were kids, eyes downcast, his whole demeanour radiating disappointment and sadness. Instinct told Storm to go to his friend but something deeper said not now. The wind whispered, “See…look…watch.” He couldn’t trust his mind, but he could always trust the wind.

His friends were arguing about their parents, not an uncommon occurrence but something he thought they’d settled years ago, when Foley first became their friend. As elitist witches, his parents thought Foley shouldn’t befriend a human and a necromancer. Foley had never cared but Denver’s parents hadn’t known magic existed until Foley accidentally created a magical fire in their living room, four years ago. Gladys had been forced to explain that witches, mages, and demons existed, and that their son had befriended the Chosen One, someone destined to raise the dead.

Storm couldn’t blame them for not being welcoming. Ever since, Foley and Denver joked about tattling to their parents whenever the other acted out. Why had they resurrected the argument?

“We can’t ever tell them. I thought you would understand that,” Foley insisted, sounding pained but resigned, as though they’d had this argument before.

“Why would I understand being kept a secret?” Denver shot back, making it clear they’d been keeping secrets from more than just Foley’s parents.

Storm’s stomach plummeted, realising they must be in a relationship that Foley didn’t want to tell his parents about. Back when Storm accidentally revealed his crush, Foley had said he wasn’t ready to date. When Storm asked Denver if he fancied anyone, he insisted he was focusing on his schoolwork rather than dating. They’d been clever never to give outright lies, knowing Storm would sense them. The wind would have ratted them out without hesitation, without thinking about the consequences.

Betrayers, the wind whispered.

Storm swatted the word away, using the physical motion to distract his thoughts while dragging his gaze from his two best friends. Not wanting to get caught eavesdropping, he walked to the left, around the other side of Adam’s Grove. He’d go the long way to the field, collect his books and go to his shack until the ceremony.

What a birthday! He’d suffered a mysterious head injury, Rowan was keeping secrets, there were ominous portents around every corner, and now his best friends had revealed their secret relationship.

This did reaffirm something Gladys had told him, that he’d thought nothing more than an old woman’s worrying for her non-biological son. Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she’d said the day he came home from school when he’d confessed his crush to Foley and faced his first rejection. Sometimes people stab you in the back. Sometimes they lie to your face. All you can do is endure, survive and become stronger.

Love is the harshest lesson in the world because we only learn its true power after we’ve had our hearts cut out, Gladys had warned. Necromancer or not, that had been scary to hear. Protect your heart and be cautious. You can’t afford to give your heart freely. You are stronger and more powerful than all of us. Don’t let anyone use your power.

Storm smiled as he walked, remembering how snarky he’d been, how he’d flashed Gladys a big smile. I promise. I just wish there was someone who wanted to use me for my power.

Gladys had smacked him over the head in her way of showing affection.

Gods, he would miss her.

Faltering in his next step, Storm frowned and wondered where that thought came from. Gladys was about sixty, but she was far from dying. She was as sprightly as she’d been ten years ago, yet the sense of impending loss was strong. He rubbed his chest and focused on the feeling, recalling a distant memory of Gladys knocking him on the head when he was older. Except…that was impossible. The image was clear in his mind, something about…teasing him? About…magic?

“Awfully reassuring.” Storm frowned and curled his hand into a fist. He was sick of these fleeting thoughts and impossible memories since he’d hit his head, of feeling like he was an imposter in his mind. Rowan knew something, his brain knew something, and both were trying not to tell him what that was.

Once this ascension ceremony was over, he would camp out in Rowan’s summer house until he told Storm what was happening and why. Storm wasn’t leaving without an answer.