by Everly Frost
Responding to my tug, Jasper maneuvers around so that he’s facing me. It’s safe to talk now that we’ve ascended into cover and left the Elven Command far behind. “Princess?”
“I need to know what happened while Baelen and I were in the simulation.”
Immediately, Jasper shakes his head and tries to turn away from me, but I grip his arm. His muscles tense under my sudden touch, his forearm big enough that my fingers don’t make it all the way around. He’s a warrior, trained all his life to be part of the elven military. He could shake me off in an instant. But for a long time, I wasn’t allowed to touch anyone, let alone a male, so the fact that I won’t let him go right now makes him pause.
“I need to know what really happened.” As I speak, my other palm rests against Baelen’s cheek. His eyes are closed. His skin is warm to touch but his chest doesn’t rise and fall like it would if he were asleep.
To Jasper I say, “I only know what I saw in the simulation, but that was all a trick.”
“Are you sure?” Jasper’s serious eyes drill into mine. Always serious. He never smiles. Except once during battle and that was a scary grin that I don’t want to see again. He’s completely loyal to Baelen and for some reason wants to protect me from the things that will hurt me. What’s more, he seems to know what those things are before I do.
I give him a single nod. I’m more certain about this than I am about anything else right now.
“Okay, then…” He clears his throat as I let his arm go. He keeps his tone even and unemotional, as if he’s reporting facts that don’t mean anything to either of us. It’s so far from the truth. Everything he says cuts my heart into pieces.
“As soon as you and Baelen sat in the chairs of truth to enter the simulation, your faces went completely blank. We could tell you weren’t with us anymore. We kept watch over both of you because we were worried the Elven Command might attack your bodies while you were vulnerable.”
Baelen and I had gone to the arena to carry out the penultimate trial in the fight for my hand—what was supposed to be a simulation in which we would each fight a gargoyle. The trials were part of the marriage protocols that were designed to end in the selection of the strongest male to be my husband.
Baelen and I had made it through all the other trials involving tests of strength, endurance, and intelligence, leaving us facing each other in the final fight to the death. Leaving me facing the prospect of having to kill him, the only male I’d ever loved, or he would be cursed to kill me instead.
Jasper says, “At first it seemed like everything was going to be okay, but about an hour after you sat down, the crowd got restless. It was a long time to watch you sit still. One of the Elven Commanders—Elwyn Elder—told everyone to leave and come back later. This bothered me, but I didn’t do anything until…”
Jasper pauses, breaking my gaze to contemplate his hands. His knuckles are bruised. Welts crisscross the exposed skin on his arms and legs where his armor didn’t protect him. I had done that damage to him while I was in the simulation. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I thought I was defending myself.
I say, “Go on. Please.”
“When the crowd left, two of the Elven Commanders—Pedr Bounty and Osian Valor—locked the arena doors. Teilo Splendor was the only Commander who didn’t seem to know what was going on.”
I murmur, “He was the only one who wasn’t part of the curse.” Teilo Splendor’s daughter is a talented healer and his grandson, Sebastian, is one of Baelen’s most trusted friends. The Elven Command is made up of elected members of the five highest Houses: the Houses of Elder, Splendor, Glory, Valor, and Bounty. Technically, Baelen’s House—the House of Rath—is the highest House of all, but the Elven Command did everything they could to keep him out of their business, appointing Baelen as the Commander of the elven army so he couldn’t claim his place with them.
“Teilo demanded to know what the others were doing,” Jasper says. “But Elwyn Elder knocked him out. Sebastian and I ran over to intervene and that was when Gideon Glory cast his sorcery over the chairs of truth.”
Jasper shudders, rubbing his arms as if he’s cold. I know him well enough to know that not much fazes him. He takes everything in his stride with an immovable calm, but the spell that Gideon Glory cast wasn’t anything ordinary… I can still feel its effect, crawling under my skin. The way it had immobilized me after I emerged from the simulation.
I shake it off as Jasper continues. “You and Baelen were wrenched out of your chairs. They cracked apart as soon as you fell to the floor. That’s when you began to fight each other.”
He swallows. “You and he… your faces were still blank. It was clear you didn’t know what you were doing. Jordan tried to grab you. I tried to stop Baelen. You shook us off like we were nothing. You were going to kill each other…”
I stare at my own clenched fists. Inside the simulation, Baelen had appeared to me as a gargoyle—the kind that the elves had pedaled as our enemies for hundreds of years: vicious, unrelenting, horned, with salivating teeth. I met a gargoyle during one of the trials and discovered that they’re nothing like that. Female gargoyles are particularly beautiful. While their male counterparts resemble stone, the females look like humans with gossamer wings. I’d fought Baelen with everything I had, believing him to be my enemy, not knowing I was fighting him in real life.
Jasper clears his throat. “It turned really bad when you got hold of Baelen’s dagger. You lit up like a lightning storm. That’s when everyone got involved. Your Storm Command and all of Baelen’s soldiers—all of them tried to stop you. Sebastian’s mother saw what was coming and she grabbed me and Sebastian, shouting at us to find shelter.”
All it takes is a touch of metal and I can harness lightning as a weapon. I close my eyes, trying to banish the memory. The simulation had made my friends appear to me like a swarm of gargoyles. I was desperate to defend myself against them. I’d slammed the dagger’s electrified hilt into the ground, sending a wave of deadly lightning through the very elves who were trying to protect me.
He sighs. “There wasn’t any shelter. Everyone went down. Even your advisor, Elise. She was trying to counter the simulation with magic but the electrical shock knocked her out cold. Then… something changed. You and Baelen stopped fighting. You talked to each other for the first time.”
I nod. “We figured it out. Well, Baelen did. He recognized me because of what I did with the lightning. He realized we were actually fighting each other.”
“You were looking around as if you couldn’t see us. You couldn’t see the Elven Commanders sneaking up on Baelen… I tried to run back to you, but they got to him first.” Jasper swallows and the unemotional tone of his voice fails, disappearing as the intensity of his feelings breaks through. “Gideon Glory strengthened their weapons with sorcery. It’s the only way to pierce Rath armor. All four of them stabbed Baelen at the same time.”
Like the corners of a square. I can see the four cuts in Baelen’s chest plate as he rests beside me now, each cut several inches long, the edges of the metal burned where the sorcery sliced through.
Jasper stops speaking, clears his throat, clearly struggling now. My heart wrenches, but I need him to go on. I need to know what I couldn’t see.
“Their swords went right through and would have impaled you too, but Baelen… he pushed you away so you were safe. You ran back to him. You tried to stop him falling and then… he wrapped you up in his arms like he was protecting you.”
Inside the simulation, Baelen had cocooned me inside his gargoyle wings, telling me to stay where it was safe, holding me until the simulation ended.
Jasper takes a deep breath and lets it out again. “I think you know the rest.”
My cheeks are cold where the wind beats at my tears. But I’m not sad. I’m angry. I’d surfaced from the simulation to discover that I’d been tricked into disabling all the elves who were there to protect us. I’d done exactly what the Elven Commanders w
anted me to do and left Baelen vulnerable to attack. They knew they could never get to me as long as he was alive.
Jasper’s back is straight, tense. The lightning welts across his arms are red and raw. I’d hurt him. I’d hurt all my friends. There aren’t enough apologies to make up for it. “I’m sorry, Jasper. I’m sorry for what I did to you.”
He nods, accepting my apology, but a question enters his voice. “You said you gave Baelen your storm power.”
My power to control the storm was the Elven Command’s ultimate prize. I am the first Storm Princess who can use the Storm as a weapon. They believed I could pass that power on to the first male I touched. They were right, but so wrong about the timing.
“I gave my power to Baelen Rath seven years ago on the night I became the Storm Princess,” I say. “Nobody knew, including me. When the Storm chose me, it poured lightning into my body. Baelen was nearby and I poured lightning into him too. It was through that act that I passed him my power.”
I shake my head with remembered horror. All the nightmares I’d had after that night. The helplessness I’d felt watching Baelen suffer. “I thought I killed him that night. I didn’t know it meant he had my power.”
The Storm said she didn’t know how Baelen and I had stayed away from each other. Looking back, I know it was only because of guilt and pain. I blamed myself for what he went through. I blamed myself for the scar running the length of the side of his face. I wanted to keep Baelen as far away from me as possible so I didn’t hurt him again.
And now… now I trace the line of the scar from his right temple down the side of his face. It splits at his jawline, one side curling behind his ear, the other under his chin. If I listen carefully, I can hear his heartbeat inside my mind, beating out a slow rhythm. I close my eyes, clinging to the repetitive thud-thud while my fingers tingle where they rest against his cheek.
The sound of his heartbeat is the only thing keeping me sane right now. But it’s not enough. It will never be enough. I can finally touch him without fear that I’ll hurt him. I can touch him because I want to more than anything else in the world. Finally… but he’s not here. Not really.
After the Elven Commanders attacked him, a moment before he died, Baelen used the power of the thunder to pause everything, including himself, halting the progress of the deadly wounds. He paused his own death. He gave me the chance to save him. But it’s tearing my heart out being so close to him and yet so far away. It’s like having part of me ripped away and thrown into darkness.
I spiral downward inside my mind, tears dripping down my cheeks from beneath my closed eyelids. I search for the light, the warmth that I always felt when he was close to me, the dangerous response of my lightning to the nearness of his body. I understand it now. It was my storm power trying to connect with his.
My eyes are still closed, but I sense my fingers grow warmer against his skin and so do my calves where his head rests. I drop my forehead to his, spiraling further and further down while a glow appears inside my mind like a single, red flame; a single strike of lightning as red as blood.
I stop breathing because… I can hear him.
2. Baelen Rath
I stand in a darkened field. Tall blades of grass sweep my fingertips, swaying in a breeze that cools my skin. My feet are planted to the spot, as if they have become part of the soil where I stand. I hold a sword, both hands curled around its hilt while its blade points down, planted in the earth like my feet. Despite its weight, the sword feels insubstantial, as if it’s still forming in this quiet place where my heart and mind exist, suspended until I can return to the world of the living.
All is quiet. Nothing moves except for the breeze and the grass. The light never changes.
I wear Rath armor, covered from my feet to my neck in finely sculpted metal plates that link together to protect my body, the red-and-black markings of my House proudly displayed across them, the armor my ancestors wore into battle.
It didn’t save me.
Blood runs from the wounds in my chest, gaping slits burned at the edges from blades strengthened by sorcery, but the agony of the attack is a distant memory. Brighter is the memory of Marbella’s shout as she stood over the younger version of me in the simulation, protecting my younger self.
Her determined shout keeps me calm in this deserted field, keeps me anchored and steady.
I will protect Baelen Rath to the death. Because I love him!
Words she’d never spoken to me before. Words I couldn’t speak to her after she became the Storm Princess.
Now I wait until I can tell her again.
At the edge of the field, directly in front of me, the light suddenly changes. A brief spark glows and then fades fifty paces away. It brightens again. Dims. Brightens and this time, a silhouette appears within it. A female, her auburn hair streaking across the dark like a flame, her golden armor a rising sun.
Marbella.
Her hand reaches out to me, her fingertips lifted as if she’s searching for me in the dark. Her face is shadowed and her eyes are closed, dark lashes resting against her cheeks. She pushes through the long grass, pressing against the breeze that suddenly springs up around her.
My heart jumps and she veers directly toward me, as if she’s seeking me by the heavy thumping of my heart alone. Her fingers twitch and a bright sapphire spark rises from her fingertip, dancing across the breeze toward me.
I can’t move, can’t shift my feet, frozen here, clutching an insubstantial sword. The spark reaches my chest, my heart, and sinks through my armor, warming me, finally releasing my voice.
She can’t be here. This is the place between life and death. She can’t cross this veil without consequences.
I open my mouth to speak, needing to warn her, protect her. Marbella, baby, you can’t be here with me.
She pauses thirty paces from me, her eyes still closed, her lips parting as she gasps. Baelen?
Her sharp inhale turns into a sob, her chest rising and falling as her hand strains farther forward. I need you. You have to come back to me.
I want to hold her more than anything, but if she opens her eyes in this place, she’ll cross over and there’s no telling what will happen if the Storm is released here.
Still, I take what I can from her presence, her voice. I will come back to you. You have to trust me. You have to trust yourself.
She speaks in a rush, her desperation nearing panic. What if I can’t get you to the springs in Mount Erador? What if the gargoyles stop me? What if the springs don’t work—
Marbella Mercy, I growl. My stubborn, beautiful love. You stayed away from me for seven years because you were determined to keep me safe. You will find a way to the springs, because you’re determined to do that too.
Nothing will stop me, she whispers.
I want to stretch out this moment, keep her here, but already I sense the Storm growing beyond us in the place of the living. An unstoppable force presses against my back, seeping through me. At the same time, a droplet of liquid falls on my cheek and down my neck. Then another. Crimson clouds form in the air above me and my Storm power surges. I rein it in, barely keeping it under control.
I want to go to her, but if she stays with me any longer, our Storm powers will collide and whoever she is with will be hurt.
Far, far beyond her, I sense a flurry of movement. A voice I recognize—Jasper’s?—shouts Marbella’s name, calling to her with an urgency I can’t ignore.
You have to go now, I say to her. Before I lose my will to remain in this place. And before we hurt someone.
Her hand drops to her side—the hand from which the blue spark flew—and the movement tugs my chest. I tilt my head to study the space between us. The light glints off her armor. For a split second, it looks like a sapphire thread stretches between her hand and my heart. Then it’s gone.
I miss you, Baelen, she says.
She turns away and I let her go, willing her to return to the living, the breeze blowing at her bac
k, even though it leaves my heart hurting.
The light around her silhouette fades.
That’s when it starts to rain.
3. Marbella Mercy
The flame grows inside my mind as I reach for Baelen, gasping back a sob as his gravelly voice speaks, laced with concern. Marbella, baby, you can’t be here with me.
Baelen? I choke. Gasp. I need you. You have to come back to me.
His voice is warm like my whole body right now. I will come back to you. You have to trust me. You have to trust yourself.
All my worries bubble upward. But what if I can’t get you to the springs in Mount Erador? What if the gargoyles stop me? What if the springs don’t work—
Marbella Mercy, he growls. My stubborn, beautiful love. You stayed away from me for seven years because you were determined to keep me safe. You will find a way to the springs, because you’re determined to do that too.
Nothing will stop me, I whisper.
You have to go now, he says. Before I lose my will to remain in this place. And… before we hurt someone.
Hurt someone?
Far, far away, I’m aware that someone is shouting my name. “Marbella! Princess!”
I miss you, Baelen.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to swim upward, away from Baelen’s voice, away from this connection. He doesn’t respond. Instead a force pushes me upward, back through the lightning and the flames, back to myself. The sky is bright as I open my eyes, much brighter than it was before.
“Princess!” Jasper balances on his feet opposite me, half-crouched, fingers splayed out toward me, alarm etched in every line of his face.
Lightning streaks upward in front of my eyes, but it’s not inside my mind now; it’s rising between Baelen and me, glowing between us and forming droplets that shimmer upward like raindrops in reverse. Shock burns through me. It’s not just my lightning. It’s Baelen’s, too.