by Cora Carmack
When no reply came, she tried again, “Ma?”
Carefully she held her mother’s shoulder and shook. “Wake up. It’s me. Aurora. I’m home.”
Her mother did not move. Aurora shook her a little harder. Still no reaction. Jinx came around the bed then, and she took over with an emotionless efficiency that Aurora could not match. The witch touched Aphra’s skin and checked her pulse and lifted her closed eyelids. Then her lips drew down in a heavy frown.
“What? What is it?”
“She’s been drugged,” Jinx answered. “My guess is heavily and for a long time.”
Aurora stifled a cry and covered her mouth with both hands. She briefly slammed her eyes shut, letting the guilt and revulsion roll over her in one consuming wave. This was her fault. She had let this happen. The shame pierced her for a moment, through and through, then she pushed it away for another day.
“Is there something we can do? Is there any way to wake her up?”
“Not quickly,” Jinx answered. “I have to be honest with you, Aurora. I am not positive she will wake up. It depends on what has been given to her. Only time and rest will tell.”
A horrible wailing horn blared through the silent room in several quick bursts, but this was not any storm siren that Aurora recognized. It stopped, then started again. The sequence repeated. A rumbling sound began, followed by shouting, that grew louder when the door opened, revealing a distracted maid carrying a pitcher of water, and beyond her a glimpse of soldiers moving down the far hallway at rapid speeds, shouting about a breach. The maid bumped the door closed with her hip, turned toward the bed, then froze at the sight of Aurora and Jinx. She opened her mouth to scream, but Aurora beat her to it, shoving her into the wall and snarling, “Don’t make a sound.”
The maid began crying, little whimpers escaping her pursed lips. “Are you one of the ones who has been drugging the queen?” Jinx asked from behind Aurora.
The maid tensed, and her crying stopped immediately. “I—uh…”
“Tell the truth,” Aurora demanded.
“What have you been giving her?” Jinx asked.
The maid stiffened her lip, lifted her chin, and replied, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Aurora pushed her hands harder against the girl’s shoulders, pinning her to the wall. “Don’t lie to us.”
“I’m not ly—”
“Enough!”
A jolt of crackling magic shot from Aurora’s hands into the girl, whose body jerked back against the wall. She cried out, her eyes fluttering wildly, then in a whining, wheezing voice said, “I don’t know. He gives me the vials and a coin, and I don’t ask questions.”
“Who?” Aurora asked.
But it was too late. The girl had begun to slump against the wall, her glazed eyes falling shut. Aurora was tempted to let the girl drop, but instead she eased her to the ground, and then took two careful steps backward before shoving her fists against her eyes in frustration.
When she lowered them, Jinx was kneeling by the girl, her eyes trained on Aurora. “That was … new,” the witch said carefully.
Rora looked down at her hands. Was it terrible that she had not even spared a thought for what she’d done? It all mattered little in comparison to what had been done to her mother.
“It was not intentional,” she promised her friend. “I only wanted her to tell the truth, and the skyfire came unbidden. She’s … she’s not—”
“No,” Jinx answered, standing. “She only got a bit of a shock. She’ll be fine. But we need to move. She will have quite the story to tell when she wakes. We need to be lost to the winds by then, your mother too.”
Together they heaved the queen’s deadweight from the bed, dragging her too-thin arms around their shoulders as an anchor. Then they each wrapped an arm about the woman’s waist and hefted her up between them. Aurora was more than half a head taller than Jinx, which left most of the queen’s weight on her. Rora was fine with that. She’d carry her mother across Caelira if she had to.
She said, “We need to go out into the hallway. There’s a tapestry there with a passageway behind it.”
Jinx left Aurora holding her mother, and opened the door just enough to peer outside.
“Any soldiers?” Aurora asked.
“None that I can see.”
“They must know the rebellion is inside the palace. Hopefully, they will be preoccupied with them long enough for us to find Nova and get out.”
They shuffled into the hallway, the queen’s feet dragging helplessly against the ground.
“That one,” Aurora said, jerking her chin toward a tapestry woven in rich blues and blacks. It depicted the day the Time of Tempests began, when the very first storms poured from the goddess’s hands out on the land below.
Carefully, they peeled the tapestry away from the wall, revealing a latch that opened and slid back a door to show a narrow stone passageway. Maneuvering slowly, Jinx slipped in first, followed by the queen, and finally Aurora, who returned the tapestry to its normal place as best she could.
Aurora looked at the dark corridor, wondering how they were going to get down the long and winding route to the royal storm shelter where this particular passage led.
“Maybe I should go on alone,” Aurora said. “You could stay here with my mother, and I’ll bring back Nova.”
Jinx gave one firm shake of her head. “We stay together. If something happened, and I lost you, Thorne would throw me out and let the fog have me.”
“He would not,” Aurora huffed.
“Perhaps we should get your mother free, and try for your friend another time.”
“No,” Aurora snapped. Then, softer, she said, “No. Novaya has suffered too long for my mistakes. I am not leaving without her.” She hitched her mother higher, and began the long trek down the cramped tunnel. She had to hunch because she was too tall. She’d been hunching in this particular tunnel since she was twelve years old and hit a particularly strong growth spurt. But everything was different this time. Her ears were attuned to every sound, and she could feel each scrape of her mother’s unresponsive feet against the stone as if they were her own.
“So … dungeons next?” Jinx asked. “Do you know how to get there?”
Aurora pulled in a quick breath, ashamed. She did know where the dungeons were, having explored the location on a few occasions as a child in an effort to do something scary, but she did not know how to get there using unseen passageways. At some point, they would have to take to the main halls, which would leave them vulnerable.
“I do. But it won’t be easy. I still think we should split up. You could stay with the queen, and I—”
“I said no, Roar.”
Rora’s breath caught at the name, at the familiarity in Jinx’s voice. She wanted so badly to keep both versions of herself, both lives. But she did not know if it was possible. She shook the thoughts away, one thing at a time.
“Then we might need to hide my mother somewhere safe, and come back for her after we retrieve Nova. Otherwise, we’re too conspicuous.”
“Is there somewhere safe?”
That was a question with no answer. The tunnel led to the storm shelter, which even now could be in use by the Locke family. The tunnel itself could be safe, but it was impossible to know. There had been unused rooms and studies, but how much had changed in Aurora’s absence? A great deal politically. She couldn’t be sure how much had changed around the castle.
“I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll go alone.”
Aurora readjusted her mother’s weight, pulling her limp arm farther across her shoulder, and shook her head. “No. You don’t know who you are looking for or where you are going or who not to be seen by. I won’t have you being caught because of me.”
Jinx gave that wild-eyed, witchy smile and said, “Together it is, then.”
The two moved as fast as they were able down the tunnel with the queen’s weight between them, and found the storm shelter at the e
nd deserted. They took a chance, and left her in one of the bedrooms there. Aurora chose a small maid’s room, not one of the larger royal rooms, hoping that if someone did come looking they would not think to check there.
Together they laid the queen’s frail body out over the small bed frame, and Aurora did her best to plump a flat pillow beneath her mother’s head.
“I’ll move fast. Like lightning made flesh,” she promised. Aurora pressed her lips to her mother’s dry cheek, and closed her into the dark room, praying to the goddess she would still be there when they returned.
Fog, while less destructive to property, is one of the most precarious storms to encounter in person. Its magic, like the low cloud’s slow creeping invasion, is insidious and subtle. In the same way that the dense clouds can obscure an entire mountain from view, so too can it obscure a person’s thinking to the point of imminent danger.
—The Perilous Lands of Caelira
9
Cassius was accustomed to hearing sirens. They sounded when he ate, when he worked, when he slept—or tried to. Sometimes he wondered if the Stormlord had some untold-of magic that allowed him to see into Cassius’s mind, to know when he was the most distracted or vulnerable, because that was always when his storms came calling. It would be more realistic for him to move his living quarters into the dome itself so that he had quicker access to the skies.
But Cassius was a selfish man. He had never denied that.
So like many times before, he was in his office, the princess’s former study, when this siren sounded. He had recently finished dispensing a thunderstorm, a mere annoyance more than anything, and had kicked off his boots and coat to relax for however long he could.
Never long, not anymore. He was so damned tired.
But when the siren sounded, it took even Cassius a few moments to realize that this siren had nothing to do with tempests.
He stood abruptly from his desk, knocking over a bottle of ink in the process. Black liquid spread across his papers like unholy blood, but there was no time to stop it, not even time to be frustrated with himself for his clumsiness.
They were under attack.
Not by storms, but by men.
He hastily pulled on his boots, inserting a spare knife into each one, then grabbed his sword. By the time he entered the main hallway, the edge had left his movements and his steps had grown into a sprawling stalk. This was where he thrived. Give a predator prey and he came alive, no matter how close to death he might feel. His vision sharpened, the exhaustion disappeared, and a hunger rose from deep in his gut.
A fight was exactly what he needed—and not with some faraway magic, but up close, hand to hand, face-to-face, blood drawn. He needed to feel victory. Needed to serve up a defeat that was permanent.
When men died, they stayed that way, unlike the enemies he normally fought.
The hallway swarmed with soldiers, all clearly taken by the chaos. He grabbed the highest-ranking officer he recognized and spat, “Tell me what you know.”
“A breach, sir. The main gate.”
Bleeding skies. How had they gotten through the main gate without anyone noticing?
“Where is the fighting located?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
Cassius froze, his eyes narrowing, and his jaw went tight. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“We have not found the intruders.”
His heart slowed, forgoing its beats as his mind raced—not in anxiety, but in deference, as if one knew the other was more needed. What would intruders want? Where would they go? What would their goals be?
One blink, and he knew.
“I want soldiers on every member of the royal family, now.” He was surprised there had not been an attempt at overthrowing them before now, frankly. “Once my family is protected, then every other remaining soldier is to scour this palace until the intruders are found, do you understand?”
An affirmative chorus rang out from the soldiers in blue, and then everyone was in motion, chattering about who would be seeking out his father, brother, and mother. The room emptied quickly of everyone except Cassius and a handful of soldiers who stood behind him.
“I did not mean me,” he growled.
The soldiers hesitated still.
“Go!” he barked. “Find them. Now.”
Then, blessedly, he was left alone, the siren still wailing on occasion, the only company for his scattered thoughts.
He should have gone after them, should have put himself in the thick of things, but instead he turned and headed back the way he came, down the royal wing where the Pavan family had stayed.
He was the only Locke to call this wing home. He was not certain why, but he bypassed his office and went for the door at the very end of the hall, the queen’s rooms. He listened for a moment, but heard nothing inside. He knocked. Again, he could not say why. The woman rarely ever woke, not since his father had started bribing the nurse to add something extra to her tea.
But sometimes when he looked at this door, he had this feeling in his stomach that he didn’t recognize, a feeling he didn’t know how to name. And it told him to knock before he went inside. When no answer came, he turned the knob and entered on his own. First, his eyes saw bare ankles, and followed them to the unconscious form of the nurse who cared for the queen. Her arms were askew in front of her, and her face lax, but a quick press of his fingers to her neck told him she was not dead. He lifted his eyes farther and found only rumpled sheets where the queen should have been.
Something in him rose high, pressing right under his skin, the part of him that liked to hunt and hurt.
He had been just down the hallway. Had someone managed to steal the old queen right from under his nose? Or did he somehow have even less knowledge and control than he thought? Could she have walked free herself somehow?
He had sent all those soldiers off searching and here was the breach right under his very eye. Where he slept and worked. Humiliation burned deep in his gut, and he charged toward the bed, pulling at the sheets as if he might find some clue there to how he had allowed such a blunder.
Could this be the Stormlord? Another prong in his plan? The meager resistance his brother had been cheerfully exterminating to impress their father? Or something else entirely? There were too many pieces on the board for him to win this game. The board was too damned big for him to even know what the game was sometimes.
Quickly, he searched the rest of the room, searching for any advantage, and he found it in the poorly closed balcony door. Outside, he discovered a peculiar crawling vine that had somehow made its way from the ground up to the queen’s balcony even though he had never seen it on any of his walks around the grounds. He touched the leaves, bright green and crisp—fresh. And something else about them—they were real, to be certain, but they hummed under his touch, as if they brimmed with something that was nearly familiar to him.
Cassius knew what he was seeing, knew it by heart from years of engrained warnings and fear. But his father had done such a thorough job of eradicating the practice and the people from Locke, it had often seemed more myth than malevolence.
But here before him was proof.
He rubbed a newly birthed leaf between the pads of his fingers, and plucked it free from the vine. He waited for it to wither or turn to dust, but it stayed—both a truth and a lie all at once.
There was a witch in Pavan.
And whoever they were, wherever they were, they had the Pavan queen.
* * *
There had been an itch somewhere beneath Kiran’s skin from the moment he’d left Aurora sprawled out and weeping before the palace gate, and he knew it would not go away until he saw her again. It distracted him throughout the entire mission, as they crept through the halls, each time they quietly dispatched an unsuspecting guard. He kept waiting for an attack to come out of nowhere, and for a sword to pierce him clean through, because he could do nothing but think of that look on her face. Try as he might to co
nvince himself that he did not know this Aurora at all, he knew down to his bones that she had been terrified.
And he had left her there.
He hated himself for that almost as much as he hated her for lying, for making him believe something was possible when it wasn’t.
They had nearly reached the wing where the Locke family resided, and the group began to split apart, so that they could surround the wing and cut off escape.
He and Ransom had naturally been paired together, as they were the ones to initiate the next part of the plan. Zephyr and her lieutenant, Raquim, were the last pair to leave. She asked, “Ready?”
Kiran only nodded.
“This is important,” she added.
“This family killed my sister,” he snapped. “Trust me, I know the importance.”
She began to turn, looking satisfied, but then a loud, blaring siren cut through the air, shattering the stillness that had been their friend up until this point. A door swung open in the hallway beyond, then another, followed by a woman’s voice.
“Onto plan number two,” Ransom growled, ripping a glass jar from his utility belt and throwing it around the corner into the hallway where they hoped at least one royal family member would be. The shattering of glass was followed by a quiet whoosh of noise and the spread of moisture in the air. Kiran knew thick tendrils of fog were unfurling from the broken jar, spreading to consume the hallway.
Each of them reached for a small vial containing powdered fog Stormheart, and threw it back. The powder melted in seconds on Kiran’s tongue, tasting like some odd mix of mist and ash. Their supplies had been low, so they only had enough to give each member of the rebellion a small amount. It gave them a limited window of time during which they would be immune to the fog storm’s particularly potent effects of confusion and sedation.
Duke, the one member of their crew who had remained back at command for this mission, had been unable to say exactly how long they would have, so they needed to get in and out as quickly as possible. They had intended to use this method for escaping the palace. Now they would need to make it last through the capture too.