Upon waking, Aurora’s hands and wrists were once again bound in the manacles, and there was no remaining evidence of the snow that had blanketed this entire area before. Her throat was parched, and her stomach had that hollow empty feeling that went deeper than hunger. The last time she had taken a soul, she had slept for days afterward.
She looked around, trying to find some way to gauge how much time had passed. The Stormlord was nowhere to be seen, and the fire was long out. She did not smell even a hint of smoke or ash.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the usual lightning flash of the storm in her chest, only now the pattern had changed. Between flickers of skyfire, there were billowing spirals of pearlescent, snowy flecks that looked as if they were caught up in the wind.
Hesitating, she searched inside her for that new addition, and jerked back when she felt that same voracious, seething presence that she had sensed in the storm. It was weaker now, but it was there all the same, woven inside her own soul.
She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, tears chasing each other down her temples as she lay prone and shackled and forever changed in the dirt.
Eventually she became aware of someone approaching—two someones, in fact. Her heart leaped into her throat and for a moment she dared to hope.
Please, please, please.
But as they drew nearer, she felt the mass of dark spirits that could only be following the Stormlord. She was too weak to ascertain who the other person was, not without making herself vulnerable to all those spirits. Her heart hammered, fearing the worst. If he had captured Kiran too … She swallowed, trying not to be swept away by panic, and failing miserably.
When the Stormlord ducked out of the trees, dragging another half-conscious man with him, it was not Kiran he brought. But she did recognize the man. He had dark curly hair and bronze skin. Blood marred his nose and mouth, and the last she had heard, he had been captured by her friends.
Casimir.
The Stormlord had made contact with the rebellion. The question now was whether that contact had been amicable. He hauled Casimir closer, the man’s legs struggling and failing to keep up with his pace. He kept pulling until he drew even with Aurora, then he threw Casimir to the ground.
“Stay or you die,” the Stormlord growled, holding up a hand crackling with skyfire in threat.
Casimir’s jaw was locked tight, and his eyes shone with disdain, but he made no move to get up from the ground as the Stormlord crossed to Aurora, bent over, and began to unlock her manacles. Her heart faltered, then bounded off into a sprint as one leg came free, then the other. Without a word, he crossed to her hands. Hard breaths sawed in and out of her mouth as he released her, and gingerly, she pushed herself upright, her muscles protesting at the change after such a long time in one position. She looked warily between the Stormlord and the Locke prince. Her captor squared off between them, his arms crossed over his chest, and he stared at her.
His scarred eye narrowed slightly, and he said, “Well?”
“Well, what?” she asked, her voice a barely-there husk.
“You said you support the goddess’s will. It is time to prove yourself.” He stretched out his hand, and in his palm lay a knife.
Aurora’s hands trembled, and the days of dehydration made her mouth so dry she felt as if her throat were closing up. Or maybe that was just her unwillingness to speak.
“You want to be free,” the Stormlord continued. “You want to earn my trust and defeat the Lockes. Do this, and you will have taken a step toward all three.”
“You want me to kill him? Now?” She searched frantically for a way out of this, some escape.
The Stormlord shrugged. “If you want me to continue to teach you the ways of the goddess, I need to know you are on the right side.”
He offered the knife again, and this time she took it, wondering if she could use it against the Stormlord instead before he called a legion of tempests against her. She stood, her knees shaky from disuse. And she knew if she tried to run, she would probably fall. She was so weak.
Aurora looked at Casimir. He had been jovial when she first met him, but that had all been an act. She had heard him talk with Cassius behind her back, and he did not seem nearly so good-natured then. She’d seen the cruelty with which he treated the remnants, and knew he had been behind the burning of the Eye, but was that enough for her to justify harming him, potentially taking his life? What did she expect when she was queen? She would have to make these kinds of decisions—the hardest kind, of who was guilty and what they deserved—but she would not be the one to mete out the punishment. Did that make the blood any less on her hands?
Casimir lifted his chin and stared at her, blinking rapidly.
Aurora saw the moment he recognized her, his narrowed gaze going wide with shock.
She tried to convey with her eyes that she did not plan to hurt him.
Not like this. She thought she had accepted the rebellion’s plan to hand Casimir over, but now that she had spent goddess knew how many days in the madman’s company, she knew there was no justice in that kind of fate, only cruelty.
She opened her mouth to tell the Stormlord no, but his attention broke abruptly away from her to the way he had come. He cursed, and a moment later the sky ruptured. From a clear blue sky an explosion of wind spread in every direction. A pinhole of darkness grew into a vortex of thick dark clouds that pulled at the universe around it, dragging in clouds and trees and everything nearby. A twister began to form as darker clouds bulked up in the sky, and the roar of it on the wind drowned out everything.
She did not even hear the Stormlord move. Everything happened so fast. She only felt him jerk the knife from her hand, saw the glint of the blade in the sun, and looked up just in time to see him drag it across Casimir’s throat. She watched the prince’s eyes go wide, felt the spray of blood across her face and the front of her body.
She did not know when she had started screaming, only that she was. But it, like everything else, was lost to the monstrous twister that was sucking up everything in its path not far away.
The Stormlord tucked the knife away at his belt, and then crossed toward her. She scrambled backward, her hands scraping over dirt and rocks. She managed to push herself to her feet, and then she ran. Impossible as it was … she ran toward the twister. She only made it a few paces before a hand caught her wrist, hauling her back.
She sent out a scream for help—audible and inaudible—and jerked hard, the socket of her shoulder twisting painfully. In the distance she saw that the twister had expanded in size, and for a moment, she could have sworn she saw a person caught up in its vicious winds, but then the shadow rotated beyond her view, and she could not be sure.
Something rumbled ominously in the distance, and the Stormlord growled in frustration behind her. As she watched, the rotation of the twister began to slow. The winds screamed as if in protest. In the moment of distraction, Aurora used her free hand to grab the still-bloody knife from the holster on the Stormlord’s belt. And with unflinching surety, she plunged the blade into his chest.
His fingers loosened around her wrist and she broke free, running for the trees. She did not stop until she made it to the edge of the clearing, and only then did she glance back briefly to see how close her captor was.
The clearing where he had kept her was empty, except for the prone body of the dead Casimir Locke.
She clung to a nearby tree, unsure whether she should keep running, or whether she should turn now and run in the other direction, considering the twister tearing through the forest ahead. She had her answer a few moments later when she felt a burst of magic, and the forest went quiet—no more howling winds, no more whirlwind of debris. Only the calm after the chaos.
Someone had dismantled the storm and come to rescue her. And even though every muscle in her body wanted to give up and slide to the forest floor, she pushed herself off of her current tree and toward the next. She did that again and again, stumbling over tree roots and past shrub bushes, determined to set eyes on the loved ones she had missed so dearly.
Soon, she heard the crack of a twig up ahead, and her breath caught, tears preemptively falling down her face. She searched the trees, waiting for the moment Kiran would appear between them, praying to the goddess that no one had been hurt in the fight with the storm.
There were a thousand other things that shadowed form could have been besides a person caught up in the twister’s winds. She had to believe that. It had to be true.
Another crunch of boots, and then a tall form appeared. Aurora clutched at the nearest tree, giving up on walking the rest of the way.
But for the second time that day, the person who walked out from the trees was not who she expected. He was tall, with dark hair and eyes and light brown skin not unlike Kiran’s. And the moment he laid eyes on her, he started running, yelling commands at someone she could not see. She lost her grip on the tree, sinking to her knees, but he was there to catch her before she hit the ground.
“Aurora. Gods, Aurora, are you all right?”
She looked up into the face of Cassius Locke, and she told the truth. “No. I am not.”
Cassius fell to his knees, dropping his sword completely to cradle Aurora Pavan’s thin, bloody form as she crumpled into unconsciousness. He felt as if his mind had been swept away by the twister they had encountered moments before, because he could not seem to grasp what he was seeing. She was here, in front of him, after all this time.
Her clothes were ragged and muddy, and she was splattered with blood. Her hair was shorter—tangled and dirty. Her cheeks looked hollow, like they had long forgotten their last meal. He searched furiously for any injuries that could be the source for all the blood, but after a few moments determined it was not hers.
The neck of her shirt was torn open, and he could see mud-streaked skin and what looked like flashes of light. He stared, entranced and confused, as displays of magic he had only ever seen in the sky moved where her heart should be. It was impossible; only the Stormlord bore those kinds of marks. It was him they had come seeking, after all. One of the remnants had reported seeing a suspicious man with someone she was certain was Casimir Locke. Considering his brother had made it his mission to torture the remnants into leaving, he did not know why anyone would want to help, but it was the first real lead they had had on his brother.
And now he found Aurora here instead? It made no sense.
Someone called out ahead of him. Then more shouts followed. He hefted Aurora into his arms and went toward the noise. She was too light in his arms, her skin too cold, but a warmth he had not known in a long time began to spread through him at the certainty of having her safe in his hold.
Then he came into the clearing and saw what had drawn his soldiers’ attention, and what little warmth he had gained left him.
His brother lay strewn across the grass, his neck open, a crimson puddle forming below him. He looked away, blinking hard to rid himself of the sight. But that red pool lingered on the black of his eyelids.
He had never been particularly close to his brother. That was not how his family worked. But gods damn it, he was so tired. Violence lived beneath his very skin, it was part of who he was, but that did not mean he did not want to claw it out sometimes. He wanted to turn that violence inward and burn it all away until there was nothing left but ash and he could finally rest.
He forced his eyes open and scanned the rest of the area around him. His eyes landed on a pair of manacles staked in the grass, about two strides apart. He looked down where Aurora’s arms lay limply in her lap and saw the raw abrasions around her wrists. He tilted one arm up and saw the same was true of her ankles.
Then that violence he knew so well came screaming back—black and burning.
If she had been held captive out here too, then the bastard still had to be out here somewhere.
“Search the woods,” he demanded. “Search every bleeding tree if you have to. Find him.”
He took a deep breath, his thoughts torn in too many directions—wanting to be in on the hunt, knowing he needed to get Aurora to a nurse, and dreading facing his brother’s lifeless body again.
He turned to two soldiers who were still kneeling by his brother and gave them instructions. “Wrap the body, and return it to the palace. Somewhere discreet until I can break the news to my family.”
The men nodded their assent and set about fulfilling his orders.
Then there was only the girl left in his arms, who was entirely too still.
She, he would be seeing to himself. He set her down for a moment, shucked off his coat, and settled it over her, taking great care to hide the slim slice of flesh that glowed with inexplicable light. Then he lifted her back into his arms and began the walk back toward home.
He wanted to run, to get her to safety and help as soon as possible, but he knew the distance was too far—he might hurt her more by jostling her. So he held her with as much care as he possibly could as he walked back through the area where he had defeated the twister that had come out of nowhere. He would have to send more men back to search here too, for he was certain men had been swept up in the winds.
For now though, he ignored the twisted and downed trees and the mangled mess that the storm had left behind. He was having trouble tearing his eyes away from the thin bones of Aurora’s arms. Had she always been so frail? In his memories, she was strong and confident, but the girl in his arms now looked withered and so very breakable.
He wanted to turn back around and hunt that Stormlord bastard down and make him pay.
He would. Cassius swore if it was the last thing he did, that monster would pay.
Aurora could not remember the last time she slept so well. She stretched, her arms and legs reaching across smooth, cool linens. The mattress and pillow beneath her were made of such heaven that she never wanted to move. She reached out, expecting to find Kiran’s hard, bare shoulder nearby in this magical dream world, but all she found was an empty bed.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, and blinked in confusion at the familiarity. The bed was wide and extravagant, with plush white linens that reminded her of clouds. It had been a very long time since she had dreamed of being back in her old bed. She smiled, stretching into the soft mattress until a wincing pain at her wrist caught her attention. She pulled her hand closer to her face, staring at the red marks she saw with bewilderment for a moment before recent events came back to her like a horrid nightmare, and she realized she was not dreaming.
Immediately, she jolted upright in bed, her stiff muscles protesting the movement fiercely. Her eyes widened as she took in the room around her, her room—it looked exactly the same, and yet it felt completely different. She could not explain how the room had changed. It had always been this decadent, always slightly cold with the stone floors and walls and the dramatic windows. But it no longer felt like hers.
A knock at the door set her heart racing. Her last memories were hazy. She clearly recalled the Stormlord slitting Casimir’s neck and fleeing as someone approached. She remembered he’d sent a tornado to slow them down, and she had been so worried that someone had been hurt.
Then … then she remembered Cassius. And nothing else at all.
The knock sounded again, and she glanced around wildly, unsure what she could do other than see what he wanted. She was here now. There was no changing that. And in truth, she would rather be here than back with the Stormlord. But she had no idea what would come next.
She lifted her chin as bravely as she could manage and called out, “Come in.”
The wooden door creaked open, and again it was not who she was expecting, though the person who slipped through the door was one she had seen come through that entrance many times. Instead of the tall form of the Locke prince, she saw the tentative smile of her best friend.
A sob was out of her mouth before she even knew she had made a sound. Aurora tried to scramble from the bed, but her limbs would not cooperate, and she stumbled, nearly sprawling on the floor.
Quickly, Nova closed the door behind her and hurried across the room.
“Stay in bed. Rest. You need it.”
Aurora sat back on the bed without arguing, mostly because she was dumbfounded. “How are you—how?”
“The prince sent me.”
Aurora gaped. “From the dungeon?”
Nova’s mouth slanted, and she shrugged. “He returned me to my room over a week ago.”
Blinking, Aurora asked, “And Jinx?”
Nova shook her head. “He said by participating in my attempted rescue, she was a known affiliate of the rebellion, and he could not release her.”
“But he wanted to release you?”
“Not immediately. Eventually he said he believed me that I had nothing to do with your kidnapping, so he did. But he banned me from leaving the palace, or I would have come and found you. We have to get Jinx out. They did not hurt her while we were together, but I know nothing of what’s happened to her since.”
Aurora grabbed hold of her friend’s hand, and when that steadiness felt good, she wrapped her other hand around Nova’s too. “I know. I will fix this. Do you understand? Whatever I have to do. I am so sorry I did this to you, Nova. There are no words for how much I regret the hurt I have caused you.”
Her friend climbed up on the bed beside her and pulled Aurora into a tight hug. She had not realized how desperate she was for the contact until she had it, and then she was clutching at Nova, so glad to not be alone anymore. Then, the whole story came pouring out of her—every good and awful thing that had happened to her since she had left Nova behind months ago with her fool’s idea to fake her own kidnapping. She told her friend about all the incredible things she had seen that she had wanted to share with her oldest friend. She talked about how it felt to fall in love with someone who did not know anything about who she was or her family or the expectations she was supposed to fulfill.
Nova asked her endless questions about her feelings for Kiran, and Aurora told her about their fight when he discovered her true identity, and she blushed hotly when she glossed over how they had made up while out in the wilds.
“So the two of you are back together then?” Nova asked.
“Yes,” Aurora answered. “Well, technically, I am here, and he is out there somewhere, probably worried sick because I have not seen him since the Stormlord kidnapped me.”
“We will find a way to get word to him,” Nova promised. “I am watched frequently, but perhaps I can get a friend of a friend to smuggle a message out.”
At some point, there was another knock on the door, and Aurora tensed again, fearing Cassius, but it was only a maid bringing up food. The cavern of Aurora’s empty stomach echoed painfully as soon as the smell hit her nose. They moved into her sitting room to eat, and Aurora noted that there were still lingering signs of Cassius’s presence around the room. She had not noticed anything of his in the bedroom, and she hoped that meant he had slept elsewhere, using only her sitting room in her absence.
As they ate, Aurora continued with her story while gorging on the small feast that had been brought for them. Strangely, she felt as if she had been plucked out of time. All the pain and stress and worry of the last few weeks melted away in the presence of her friend, and for just a little while she felt normal again. She told Nova about her magic, and what she could do with it—the good and the bad, filling in the specifics that they had not had time for during the rescue attempt. She did not hesitate to peel back her shirt and show Nova the shifting likenesses of the two different storms she now carried inside her.
Aurora almost told Nova about the darkness of the second soul she had taken, but could not bring herself to break the happy mood of their reunion. Someday she would tell her friend how much she feared the soul that was now part of her own, that she worried it would taint her, manipulate her, prune her into something she did not want to be.
But that could wait for another day.
“And you?” Aurora asked. “You do not have to talk about what happened to you if you do not wish. Especially to me. But if you want to … I am here to listen.”
Nova’s large eyes lowered, and she smiled. “It was not all bad.”
A deep, rosy hue began to spread up her friend’s neck, but before Aurora could pounce with questions, there was another knock at the door. Assuming it was another maid, Aurora called out, “Come in.”
The door swung inward, and as soon as she heard the thud of a heavy boot on stone, she knew this was no maid. She was still wearing a simple dressing gown, something she did not even remember putting on for herself the night before, and she was sitting at a small table with Nova, her plate scraped clean of food. She clenched her fists around the edge of the table, and sat ramrod straight as Cassius Locke appeared in the room.
He was different from how she remembered him.
He was still handsome—though his short cropped hair had been left to grow slightly wild, and he looked tired. There was still a brooding menace to his presence that reminded her this man was capable of terrible things. But the way he stayed at the door, almost unsure … that was entirely new.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, remaining near the open door.
“Better,” she answered honestly. The sleep and food had done wonders, though she would not be against crawling back into bed for another day or two if she were not potentially in grave danger. Too tired to tiptoe around the subject, she asked him outright, “What do you want with me?”
His brows lifted in surprise. “To save you? It’s all I have been trying to do from the moment you were taken. I searched for you everywhere, for months. Anywhere I thought you could be, I sent soldiers there.”
She knew that. She had met a few in the small village of Toleme before they had been wiped out by a twister she had accidentally called.
“And my mother? I do not think you were trying to save her by drugging her into unconsciousness.”
He took a step farther into the room, his long legs eating up too much space in that one stride. “I had nothing to do with that. It was my father, he—”
“Oh please. And Nova? Was it your father who had her imprisoned for my kidnapping too?”
Cassius gritted his teeth, the muscles in his neck jumping with strain. His eyes flicked behind her to where she knew Nova still stood. “No. That was me. I was trying to find out what happened to you, and—”
“I ran away because I did not want to marry you! There was no kidnapping. I left of my own volition because I saw just a glimpse of the coldness and cruelty you and your family are capable of, and I decided I deserved more. But I am the fool who did not realize until too late that I was leaving my mother at the mercy of wolves.”
“Aurora, I never meant for any of this to happen. I wanted to rule beside you, not let my father run another city into the ground. Once we were wed, I could prevent him from attempting a coup. I can still do that. My father could not stand against you and me together.”
Aurora gathered the dressing gown tightly around herself and shook her head. “I did not want to marry you then, and I will not marry you now. Not ever.”
“Then I guess there is no point in keeping you, is there?” The voice came from the still-open doorway, but when she looked no one was there. A moment later Cassius’s father leaned around the corner, his gaze hard, and his lips fixed in the same sneering smile she had seen on Casimir.
“Welcome home, Aurora,” he said, stepping into the room, and closing the door with a quiet snick. “You caused quite a stir with your disappearance, though I can’t say that I minded. It worked out rather well, in fact.”
“You are deplorable.”
The Locke patriarch shrugged. “Someone has to be.” Then he turned to his son and asked, “Do you want to kill her? Or shall I?”
Aurora’s mouth went dry, and she knew if either of them looked closely enough they would be able to see the light of the storms flashing furiously in her chest. Let him come. She was not helpless. If he touched her, she would pump enough skyfire into him to stop his heart or char him from the inside out, whichever came first.
When Cassius did not respond, the older man turned to her, crossing the room with a calculating look in his eyes. She let her arms hang loose at her sides, but she could feel the buzz of energy already collecting at her fingertips.
He lunged at her, and she raised her hands up, bracing for impact, but it never came. Instead, Cassius tackled him from behind, and the two men crashed into a table, sending a vase and other knickknacks crashing to the floor. Aurora gasped, and Nova grabbed her hand, pulling her back toward the wall, and out of the way of the brawling father and son.
They rolled over and over each other, grappling for dominance, and eventually Cassius ended up on top. He reared back and landed a hard punch across his father’s jaw. The king grabbed one of the broken pieces from the vase, slashing it across Cassius’s cheek with an enraged snarl. Streams of red splattered the rug, and Cassius scrambled back, out of reach. The two stood, breathing heavy, circling each other.
“You would fight me over her?” the king growled.
“I have been waiting to fight you all my life,” Cassius said. “It is what you built me to do—to conquer whatever stood in my way.”
“I am not standing in your way. I am trying to give you a kingdom without another powerful heir to challenge your claim.”
“You do nothing but destroy. You will ruin this kingdom, like you ruined ours. I do not need or want your help.”
The king lunged again, and Cassius grabbed the arm holding the shard that cut him before, spinning and bending the arm back painfully until his father’s grip loosened, dropping the makeshift weapon. The king reached back with his free hand and grabbed Cassius’s hair, and then the two of them smashed into the wall—twisting and punching and trying to gain the upper hand.
The king broke free and grabbed the water basin nearby, dumping the contents, and then swinging the piece of pottery at his son’s head. Cassius ducked and rammed his shoulder into his father’s midsection, sending them sprawling on the floor once more.
“You ungrateful—”
A hard punch cut off the rest of his words, then they were rolling again, knocking into furniture and ripping at each other’s clothing. The king ended up on top, his fist connecting hard with Cassius’s face, once, then twice, then several more times, each with an almost joyous bark of glee, and just when Aurora was about to run over and throw herself into the fight as well, the older man stiffened, and jerked, his arm hanging in the air for a moment where it had been poised to strike again. Then his whole body was shoved sideways, sprawling flat on the bloodied rug with a dagger buried to the hilt in his chest.
Cassius, bloody and breathing heavy, sat up to look at her—his face swelling from his father’s punches. Between heaving breaths he said, “He made me paranoid as a child. Now I keep weapons stashed everywhere. Including here.” He thumped a hand underneath the settee next to where they had been fighting. Cassius reached up and wiped away some of the blood that had been running down his face, then he looked at her with purple, swollen features.
“Now will you believe me when I tell you I mean you no harm?”
Aurora stared, stunned and relieved, and a part of her—that new, dark, hateful part—relished the violence she had just seen, that had been done for her.
She jerked, horrified by that feeling, and quickly declared, “I am still not marrying you.”
“Fine,” Cassius grunted, climbing to his feet with a wince on his bruised face. “But maybe a different kind of partnership? You might have more gifts than I realized,” he said, gesturing toward her heart with a knowing look. “But I am willing to bet you cannot take on the Stormlord on your own. Face it, you need me, Aurora.”
What she needed was Kiran. And her mother. And Duke. And Jinx. And every other member of her newfound family. But she looked at him, at the earnest expression on his face, and the blood he wore like a badge of honor. He had killed his father to protect her. That had to earn him at least some measure of trust.
Finally, she answered, “I’m not looking for a partner, but I’ll take a soldier, if you’re willing.”
She held out her hand, and Cassius took a step forward. He towered over her, and even covered in blood and bruises, the man looked dangerous. He ignored the hand she offered and knelt before her instead.
“As you wish, my Queen.”