by Cora Carmack
Waiting to die.
Cruze pulled himself from the vision with a start, pressing his hand to the nearest tree to be sure it was standing. He felt the wet bark against his palm as he struggled to regain his breath, and was embarrassed to note tears tracked down his cheeks. He shoved his knuckles roughly over his skin, wiping away the weakness, and surveyed the area around him more carefully, noting downed trees over which shrubs and moss had grown so completely that Cruze could only guess that lifetimes had passed since their falling.
“Did you die here?” he murmured, knowing volume did not matter, not in this strange, haunted place he found himself in.
A rush of emotion poured over him, stronger than the torrent of rain they had endured in the days since they had been stranded here—grief, regret, fear, but most of all—fury.
“Were you left here like me?” he asked. “Left to die?”
He received another flash of images, this time of a carriage like the one that had transported him and the others to this place—something more suited to moving livestock than children—followed by a flash of the city by the sea he used to call home.
Locke.
Cruze made a promise to himself then. He would do whatever it took to survive this savage place. And someday, no matter how many days it took, he would have his revenge on the people who did this. Not just to him, but to all those who had died in this place before him.
* * *
After a few more meetings, the plans were cemented, and under the rumbling distraction of a thunderstorm, Aurora began her first mission for the rebellion. She was covered head to toe, her identity hidden but for her eyes—a necessity for the night’s work. Had she not worn thick leather, anyone would be able to see the strange light that was no doubt pulsing erratically in her chest alongside the anxious beat of her heart. And that was one secret she intended to keep for as long as possible.
Aurora’s sharp blue eyes scanned the top of the palace walls. The posts above should be deserted; during a storm, the soldiers typically retreated to the towers stationed at each of the cardinal directions as secondary levels of defense for the Stormling fighting from high atop the palace’s dome. But all the same, her gaze darted up to scan the walls just in case. She could hear Jinx’s light footsteps falling close behind her own, and her heart careened between each unsteady breath. The other rebels were watching from afar, waiting for her signal. As were her fellow hunters, who had followed her blindly into this chaos even though she did not deserve their loyalty.
Tonight, the rebellion would infiltrate the palace that had once been her home. And Aurora would be the one to open the door. Or gate, as it were.
Aurora slowed to a stop and met Jinx’s eyes; the witch nodded her readiness. Nothing but confidence shone in her friend’s face. Having Jinx by her side calmed some of Aurora’s nerves, but she would have felt better with Kiran there, and worse all at the same time. Things with him were … complicated. They still appeared to be part of the same crew, for now. They had made commitments to the same rebellion. They even slept under the roof of the same inn. But that was all that remained the same.
Their eyes rarely met, and when they did, his were unreadable. He avoided being alone with her at all costs, disappearing quickly after meetings with the rebellion or with the other hunters. The girls were bunking together as originally suggested, and that night she had spent in Kiran’s room felt more like a dream than a memory. It was as if the weeks they spent together in the wilds had never happened. He had written her out of his life as though she were nothing more than a footnote in a longer story.
So it was for the best that he had been designated part of the infiltration group. She was worried about him, about the risks the rebellion was taking, but if he was off with the rebels, he wouldn’t be around to interfere with her own plans. It had been decided in their meetings that Aurora was “too valuable” to contribute anything to the mission except the barest essential—hence she and Jinx’s current approach toward the palace gate that could only be opened by someone of Pavanian lineage (or someone who wielded skyfire magic as they did).
But she was no longer the Aurora who had grown up in Pavan, constrained by fear into letting others make her decisions. She was done seeing her value as a prize to be kept away and guarded and played like a game piece at exactly the right time. Aurora still had a great deal to learn, but of one thing she was certain: the value of a person remained unmeasured until they did something worth measuring. Sometimes the most important thing a person could do was to simply show up. And Aurora Pavan had been missing long enough.
Tonight she would help the rebellion’s mission, but she would also take on a mission of her own choosing.
“Ready?” Jinx asked, breaking the silence. Aurora nodded. She had been ready to do this for days. Only reason and fear of repercussions had stopped her from storming into the palace days ago.
Knowing the thunder rumbling overhead would serve as the best cover for their mission, they waited until the next rolling crash began, then they set off at a hard sprint. They came around the curve of the wall, and as Taven had promised, only one man stood guard at the palace gate; all the others had gone to their respective stations for the storm. By the time the soldier turned his eyes from the sky to them, it was too late. Jinx held out her hand as if to blow a kiss, and instead a fine powder danced from her palm like mist. The soldier gulped in air to yell, breathing in the powdered and enchanted Rezna’s rest, and before his tongue had even curled thought into sound, he slumped into a deep sleep, his limbs sprawling awkwardly across the wet grass.
Aurora glanced quickly at his face, but did not recognize him, so with Jinx’s help, they carried him closer to the wall and gently laid him out in the shadows. Jinx had made a large enough dose that he should be out for several hours.
The sky overhead looked as if the stars were weeping, giant glittering tears falling against an invisible barrier. Aurora gave a low whistle, the signal that all was clear. The sound was barely discernible above the din of the storm, but somewhere out there, fellow rebels were running to join her. The plan was to enter the palace and kidnap at least one of the Lockes to use as a show of trust in their attempts to contact and reach a bargain for peace with the Stormlord.
Aurora tried not to think about that, about the fact that they were giving a human being over to a madman who had laid waste to villages across the continent of Caelira, who had wiped the city of Locke from existence as thoroughly as the city of Calibah had been destroyed two decades before. The Lockes had done unspeakable things to the people of Pavan, to her city’s soldiers, possibly to her own mother, certainly to Nova.
It was them she had to fight for now.
And more than that, she tried not to think of the Stormlord at all, for thinking of him made fear leech in from the shadowy places inside her. They shared a gift—she and this madman—and if she let herself think too long on that she began to worry that his fate would one day become hers. That was a fear for another day.
Aurora stepped forward to survey the palace gate, its skyfire clockwork as dazzling now as it had been to her as a young child. She began to hear the soft thud of footfalls, and knew that the others were sidling up behind her, keeping tight to the shadows.
“You sure you can deliver, hunter?” a low, feminine voice drawled.
Aurora looked over her shoulder, meeting ink-black eyes rimmed with long lashes. The rest of the speaker’s face was covered by a cloth mask. Long, dark braids spilled over shoulders fitted with thick, black leather armor. Even without those clues, Aurora would have known who questioned her.
Zephyr.
Aurora opened her mouth to reply, but then caught sight of a familiar pair of brown eyes just behind Zephyr, and she forgot her intentions. Those eyes had been so many things to Aurora—infuriating, enticing, and above all comforting. Now, they were just another part of the chaos, another thing she had to work to shield herself against. The silence must have gone on too long beca
use Jinx answered for her, “She’ll come through.”
Aurora wished she were so confident. It was taking all her concentration to keep the storm above from bleeding into her thoughts and emotions. The magic barrier overhead was different this time, lighter, keeping the worst of the skyfire at bay, but allowing the rain to slip through. Oddly, the rain did not fall straight through, but instead gathered across the barrier like dew on a leaf and slowly dripped through in heaping droplets when the water became too heavy. Every now and then, a large splash would hit her arm or head or back, soaking her skin or hair or clothes. The lighter barrier also let more of the storm’s consciousness creep through, and she could feel it crooning to her, crackling in the air around them.
Shut it all out.
Aurora stepped up toe to toe with the gate, eighteen years of doubt and anxiety roiling in her belly. She could not recall how many times in her life she had stared at the skyfire workings of this gate and despaired that she would never be able to use them, to wield the power of her ancestors.
Everything was different now. She was different now. In every way. But she hoped that the skyfire storm that beat in her chest, unusual as it was, would still allow her to open the gates. In fact, she had already promised the rebellion it would. And if it didn’t, there was no guarantee they would not offer her up as their next bargaining chip.
She concentrated, focusing on the foreign energy that resided in her chest, and laid her hand flat against the cool glass and metal that comprised the gate. The storm in her chest was not entirely separate from her, nor was it completely woven into her own makeup. But when she reached for the magic, it filled her in an instant. She sucked in a breath, overwhelmed by the intensity of otherness that crashed through her. The feeling turned to alarm as she felt an answering flare of magic from the storm overhead. The thunder exploded above; even the ground beneath her feet seemed to shake. Skyfire streaked across the sky, calling to her. She tilted her head back, gasping for breath. She could feel so much—the churning clouds in the sky and the trees shaking in the wind and all the little souls hunkered in their homes wondering if today would be the day that another storm broke through the Stormling’s barrier.
“Anytime now,” Jinx whispered under her breath.
Right. She had a mission. Two, technically. Slowly, Aurora came back to herself, focusing on the here and now instead of the expanse of the world around her. She built up her mental walls to quiet the true tempest, and concentrated on the one sparking frantically inside her. She imagined pushing it into the gate, using the magic to turn the clockwork wheels that would unlock it.
A glow began in the corner of her vision, at the bottom of the gate, and then she heard the metallic grind of the first cog beginning to turn.
Her excitement grew. She was doing this. She was truly working storm magic. She pushed harder, and the process sped up, adding a second cog, then a third. The gears of the door moved faster than she had ever seen. She opened herself up, pouring out more and more of the magic, watching the wheels whirl at a wondrous speed. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes, sheer joy and surprise and relief all wrapped around her. She might have even laughed.
Then she felt it.
Something in her, something vital, shifted out of place. It did not hurt, not like a bone slipping out its joint, but she felt a hollow where one should not have been. She felt a stark, swallowing emptiness, and it was only when a whisper of magic from the thunderstorm overhead curled beckoningly inside her that she realized what she had done.
Hold tight to your own soul, the spirit witch had advised.
Aurora yanked her hand back, stumbling on legs that felt not quite her own. Then she pulled, on her magic, her consciousness, on anything and everything that was hers. The moment her soul slid back into place, she fell backward and began to weep uncontrollably. The sobs were not rational, she could not stop them, no matter how hard she tried to think them away; instead they came from somewhere deep inside her that she had not even known existed. She felt … uprooted, as if she had lost something essential that tied her down. Jinx was with her in a moment, her face shoved in front of Aurora’s. The vision of her friend blurred through Aurora’s tears.
“Quiet,” Zephyr hissed.
Aurora knew she was making too much noise, but she could not stop the panic welling up inside her.
“Breathe,” Jinx told her.
Aurora met her friend’s eyes, trying to convey without words what had almost happened, what she had nearly done. Was it possible to lose your own soul? To just let it go? A new round of gasping sobs overtook her, and Jinx pulled Aurora against her in a hug.
“What’s wrong with her?” Zephyr demanded, eyeing Aurora with suspicion.
Jinx said, “She opened the gate. That’s what you wanted. Go on with your mission, and I’ll take care of her.”
Zephyr hesitated, her calculating gaze settling on Aurora in a manner that made reason begin to seep back in for the princess. She had spent her whole life keeping secrets, never letting anyone too close, and it appeared she was not through with that yet. There was much she still did not know about what she was and what she could do, but she knew that having some of the same identifying markers as the Stormlord could prove problematic if the wrong person found out.
Zephyr began gathering her crew to set off, and Aurora was counting the seconds until she was out of sight.
“Thorne?” Zephyr asked. “You’re with us. Don’t you remember?”
It was only then that Aurora realized Kiran stood directly behind her, less than an arm’s length away. She looked at his feet, at his knees—she made it as far as the utility belt around his waist armed with storm magic before she ducked her head and forced her eyes down.
“I have her,” Jinx whispered.
Then Kiran strode off after Zephyr without a word. Aurora pushed her forehead hard into her knees and fought off another round of sobs. Grabbing onto each breath as though it might be her last, she focused on the in-and-out, in-and-out. When she was calm enough to look up, everyone else was off to their positions for the mission. It was only she, Jinx, and the drugged soldier lying in the shadow of the still-open gate that remained. Jinx’s expression was racked with concern. “What happened?”
Aurora shook her head. They did not have time to puzzle over the specifics of her abilities right now; they had other tasks to attend to. “I’m fine. Pushed too far, too fast.”
Jinx nodded, but the witch still worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Maybe we should—”
“No.” Aurora cut her off. “I cannot wait anymore.”
If Jinx was still worried, she did not object, not when Aurora rose to her feet or when she led them both through the palace gate, or when they darted through the royal courtyard toward the north wing that housed the royal suites.
Aurora knew all the secret passageways and tunnels in the palace, but she wanted to get to her mother as quickly as possible, so they’d decided to use Jinx’s magic to scale the wall next to the queen’s balcony. Then they would use the passageways to move about the palace and hopefully find Nova.
The courtyard was eerily silent under the reign of the night’s storm. Puddles had begun to form in the grass, and their feet splashed as they ran, but there was no one around to hear. Aurora found her own room first out of habit, and was shocked to see light coming from her window. Did her mother visit her room sometimes?
But no, it could not be that. Taven had said she was bedridden. Ill. Beyond help. She shook off the curiosity for another day and ran the last few paces to the space that lay beneath her mother’s chambers. The queen’s room, by comparison, was dark. There was a faint flicker of what she guessed was a candle, but nothing like the light that had been coming from her own rooms.
Jinx immediately set to work with her vines, digging a small hole in the earth and dropping a seed inside to make her magic easier. The plant bloomed quickly, climbing fiercely up the wall like a warrior to battle. Aurora went up
first, her hands and feet moving faster than they ever had.
She landed on her mother’s balcony with a heavy thud, but thunder rolled through the heavens a moment later, eclipsing the noise she and Jinx made. Aurora peeked through the curtains that lined the windows leading to the balcony, and she could see nothing inside the room except a lone candle by the bed, and a dark, huddled shape beneath the blankets. She rushed inside and went straight for the bed.
The first sight of her mother stole her breath and broke something inside her. Aurora had always known that her mother was aging. She’d had Aurora past her prime, and that had been eighteen years past. But Queen Aphra had always seemed so regal, powerful beyond measure—more like a goddess than a mother. Her silver-gray hair had never seemed a sign of her age so much as her power. But the woman lying in that bed looked old and frail. The skin of her face sagged as if she were in pain, even in her sleep. Her fingers clutched at the top of her blankets, knuckles wrinkled like prunes. She looked more than breakable. She looked as if she’d been broken, and no one had been able to put her together again quite how she used to be.
Aurora held one hand to her mouth in horror, and the other she reached out toward her mother. She touched a hand—the skin felt thin and too soft.
“Mother?” she whispered.