by Cora Carmack
“Storms?” she asked.
“Blizzard.”
Rora’s jaw dropped. “But we’re still in the Slumber season.”
“The deluge of snow that nearly trapped us in the pass at Bone’s Break cared little what season it was. The wildlands have been even more unpredictable of late.”
As far as she knew, the Lockes had no snow blood in the family line. The snowstorms never ventured far enough south to matter in their kingdom. “Your father—was he able to control it?”
He shook his head. “None of us had ever seen a blizzard. And my father rarely faces storms these days. My brother and I battle most.”
She supposed the same might have been true for her if she had magic. Instead, she and her mother had delayed the transfer of protection duties as long as possible. It was why she had to marry now. With the Rage season looming, they were out of time.
“How did you—”
Before the question was out of her mouth, he reached his free hand back to touch the Stormheart at the top of his spine. It was a glittering white, nearly silver, and almost perfectly round. “I did not have snow blood. But I do now.”
Cold chased over her skin, and she shivered. He stepped into her space, taking both her hands between his and sliding his warm palms over the pebbled skin of her arms. “My apologies.” His voice rumbled low in the scant space between them. “The newer hearts are … responsive.” He used her elbows to tug her close, her palms falling flat against his hard chest. His hands kept skimming over her skin, slower now, rubbing away the cold. She told herself to pull away, screamed it inside her head, but the blood in her veins felt slow and thick like honey.
The storms in Caelira were dangerous not just for their destructive capabilities but for their magic. A potent storm could mesmerize a person, and even if you knew you should run or fight, you were too enthralled to care. All were trained to guard their minds as children, but sometimes it still was not enough. Whole Stormling armies had been slaughtered without raising a finger in their own defense, stunned into stillness even in the face of death. She wondered if Cassius had found a way to steal that skill from the storms along with their hearts. Because despite her unease, she could not seem to step out of his grasp. He leaned in close, until she could feel his breath tickling over her cheek. “You remind me of it.”
She swallowed, and the skin that had pebbled from the cold grew blisteringly hot wherever his breath touched her. “Of what?”
“The blizzard. Fierce and beautiful and unlike anything my eyes have ever seen.”
Her stomach tumbled at his words, and her mouth turned dry. She might have looked fierce in her skyfire-inspired attire, but she did not feel it. Not with him so close. He’d barely touched her, and she felt as if each of her walls was collapsing one by one.
* * *
The Pavanian princess stared at Cassius, her mouth open slightly. When she first walked into this room, Cassius had thought her stunning in her savagery, colder than the depths of winter. Her dress seduced and threatened in equal measure, clinging to her curves and adorned with carved skyfire crystals that jutted from her shoulders and head like the spikes of a warrior’s armor. And yet for all that careful pageantry, it had only taken a compliment to rattle her. She looked very young in that moment, very sweet, which was never a good thing for a potential ruler to be.
She donned an unreadable expression before his curiosity was satisfied, and her lilting voice turned sharp. “Flattery is not necessary. The betrothal has already been set.”
Another blast of that wintery gaze. She had unusual blue-gray eyes—wide and expressive and lovely enough to bring a lesser man to his knees. Her confident demeanor would likely have convinced most, but he had sharpened his instincts in a court little safer than a lion’s den. Tension rode her—something between unease and fear. He gripped her wrist and had the inexplicable urge to drag her somewhere else, anywhere other than the betrothal celebration that waited upstairs with his family. She was a delicate songbird, and his father was a bird of prey. They all were, Cassius included. And he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before this little bird had her wings clipped.
She tugged her arm out of his grasp, hard. He was tempted to take it back. That was part of his nature … to take. But she fixed him with a harsh glare, and he smiled in response. Perhaps his little bird had talons after all.
Enough. She was not his little bird. A jungle cat does not care for prey, even if he wants it with a hunger stronger than any he has ever known. He pushed his more ruthless instincts aside. That would be his greatest challenge here—fighting the need to seize, command, destroy. Those were the things he was good at. The things he’d been taught since he could walk. With Aurora he would have to coax and flatter and comfort—that was his path to control.
She said, “We should probably go. They’ll be calling for us soon.”
Cassius offered her his elbow, and her body was tense as she curled her hand around it. But before they even took a step, it became clear that the voluminous fabric at the bottom of her dress wouldn’t allow them to easily walk side by side. Cassius took hold of her hand, sliding it off his arm and lacing their fingers together instead. Slowly, he lifted her hand until his lips dragged across her knuckles. The blacks of her eyes expanded, swallowing up that lovely color and adding just a touch of sin to her sweet. She jerked within his grip, trying to pull away. Chuckling low, he put some distance between them, but he did not release her hand.
It took entirely too long to cross the throne room in her elaborate attire. She had to kick the bottom of her dress out before she stepped so that it wasn’t underfoot. Cassius was willing to bet that the dress and the headpiece weighed a third as much as she did or more, but her posture remained rigidly upright and her steps smooth.
By the time they reached the staircase at the back of the throne room, her lips were open and her breathing quick. He was beginning to hate this dress, even if it did cling to her curves rather spectacularly.
“You know,” he said, “I have a knife. I’m tempted to cut off the bottom of that dress so you can walk like the rest of us.”
A smile flitted across her mouth, small at first, then widening into something playful and bright. It called to the darkness in him. “You could try. But you’d likely find that knife at your throat with my mother on the other side of it.”
“Not you?”
“If I had my way, we’d burn it once you cut it off. The headdress too.”
He smiled, and for the first time in a long while it felt almost natural.
“Perhaps we’ll celebrate our wedding with a bonfire.”
Every time he mentioned the wedding, she tensed. It was, of course, already agreed upon and signed in ink, but he had plans that would not succeed if she remained reluctant.
They ascended the first few steps slowly, the beaded fabric of her dress pulled taut around her legs. He wanted to throw her over his shoulder and charge the rest of the way, but he distracted himself with studying his surroundings instead. The hallway they were leaving behind was filled with paintings and statues of the Pavan Stormling ancestors. At the hallway’s end a massive, gold-painted statue of the current queen stood in a decorative alcove. Once upon a time, there might have been altars to the old gods—places to pray for good harvest or fertility or even luck—but those days were long past. Too many years of unbridled destruction and unanswered prayers.
No, Stormlings were the gods now. It was Cassius and the people like him who either answered prayers or ignored them.
“You said you faced a blizzard on your journey, but you did it without an affinity.”
He squeezed the hand he still held. “I did.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, scraping at the white paint that covered her skin. She asked, “Would you tell me about it sometime? The blizzard?”
He angled his head to smile at her again, and she looked away. Shy. So many pieces to her puzzle. “On one condition.”
“Which is?” He had expected her to be like most of the well-born ladies of the court in Locke: sirens with claws and teeth or frightened little mice, made to be gobbled up by this world. Aurora seemed neither vicious nor weak, but she was working so carefully to show him a façade that he could not pinpoint exactly what she was.
He had to know. It was his curse, the reason he thirsted for the thrill of a storm. He had to know how things worked, had to know why. And the girl in front of him was no different. In fact, the need to unravel all her secrets was stronger than he’d ever felt because she would be his. And he had a feeling that conquering her would prove more exhilarating than any storm he had ever defeated.
Rather than giving her his condition, he released her hand and wrapped an arm around the slim circle of her waist. She tried to step back, but her feet tangled in her dress, and she gripped his tunic to stay upright.
There it was. A thread of fear in those eyes. He could have stopped then, but he had little self-control when it came to these things. It was not enough to see a measure of her emotions on her face. He wanted them all. So he pushed a little more. “You might be patient enough to fight with this dress, but I am not. Let me get us to the top of these stairs, and I promise to tell you whatever story you want to hear.”
She jutted her soft chin out and said, “You have a deal.”
The paint had begun to wear away on her lips, revealing rosy skin underneath. Was the rest of her flushed beneath all that powder? He dragged his fingers back and forth over her side, feeling hard ridges beneath the heavy, embellished fabric. “Corset?”
She sucked in a breath, and he knew he had shocked her. Innocent. He collected each morsel of her identity like a scavenger in the jungle. He saw just a sliver of panic before she hid it away and met his gaze.
Brave little bird.
“It will have to be like this.” Before she could change her mind or reason could catch up to his own actions, he bent, winding his arms around her thighs, and lifted. She was tall but slight, and he held her tight against him so that her hips pressed against his chest and her stomach hovered in front of his face. She gasped and braced a hand on his shoulder, reaching up to balance her headdress with the other. He could not see her face like this, but he imagined she was scandalized. He chuckled. “I suppose I should have given you some warning.”
He risked offending her or word getting back to her mother through the guards that followed them. Both of which paled in comparison to the risk of his father hearing of his actions. He was a child, poking at a fish with a stick, rather than reeling it in the way he was supposed to. But he could not seem to help himself.
With some measure of urgency, he started up the stairs. Her body swayed toward him, her beaded dress scraping against his chin. This close, he felt her breathing speed up. The hand on his shoulder migrated to her chest, doing her best to cover the cleavage that was only just above his line of sight.
His instincts said to push again, but this time he reined them in. He kept his head down and quickened his feet. Again, the movement made her sway toward him, harder this time without her hand on his shoulder as a brace. He turned his face to the side, and her belly pressed against his cheek just for a moment before her hand was back at his shoulder, righting her position.
He took the last few steps at a pace that was nearly a jog, and when he reached the top, he looked up at her face. Her mouth was open and soft; he knew by the rise and fall of her body against him that her breaths were ragged, and in her eyes was a gleam. Not fear. Not panic. Not even anger.
Want.
He could work with that.
The capital city of the Locke kingdom seems to lie at the very edge of all things. Jutting out into ravaging sea and hemmed in by wild jungles, it is the edge of the world, the edge of beauty and danger and power. It is a gleaming gem cradled in the jaw of a predator, and to touch it, to live there on the edge, is to know life and death and command them both.
—The Perilous Lands of Caelira
2
If Rora’s eyes had been closed, she might have believed that a firestorm had struck indoors and that embers were scorching along every surface of her skin, burning and burning and burning until she turned to ash. Cassius’s hold loosened, and Rora’s body began to slide down his toward the floor.
His eyes were not black as she thought before, but a deep blue. Like the ocean in the midst of a storm. Or how she envisioned the ocean to be, since she had only ever read about it. Her favorite book was about an explorer who sailed the sea in search of a safer land; she had read it so many times that the spine was broken and the pages soft. She would like to know how it felt to stand and feel the crash of waves against her knees. Maybe Cassius would take her someday.
She felt the future rolling out in front of her, like the wind moving through the wheat fields. Too fast. Everything was too fast. But he looked at her mouth, and she looked at his. A spark burned up her spine, and for the first time in her life she could imagine exactly what it was like to control skyfire.
To be powerful.
Just when excitement overtook the fear, and she started to want things to be too fast, his hands slid away and he stepped back. Taven and Merrin had been maintaining a discreet distance until Cassius had lifted her, and now they waited only a few steps below them.
She was certain her guards could see the red flooding her cheeks, that they all could see, even through the layers of powder. In her mother’s efforts to seclude her and protect her secret, Queen Aphra had effectively cut Rora off from almost all personal contact. She’d traded friendship for solitude, social interaction for books. At her mother’s insistence, at her queen’s demand, Rora alienated everyone she knew to keep a secret that weighed on her more than this gown and headdress ever would. Even the maids who assisted her rotated regularly to prevent anyone from getting close enough to learn the truth.
Rora had certainly never been pressed against a man as she had been in Cassius’s arms. She was terrified that he would be able to see her nerves, that this would be one more area where she would be found lacking. But he didn’t laugh or tease her. Instead, Cassius knelt at her feet. Her heart skittered up into her throat as he carefully straightened and smoothed the mass of black fabric at the bottom of her dress. When he looked up, her thoughts tangled over their imagined wedding night. About how she would have to get used to him being even closer and more intimate than this.
Her thoughts spun out of control, but below her Cassius was unhurried and unembarrassed. He offered her the softest smile, softer than she would have thought him capable. Maybe her mother was right. Cassius had his rough edges, but perhaps there was happiness to be found with him.
“There,” he said, straightening in front of her again. He touched the curve of her chin, tipping it up slightly. His hand left her chin for the smooth crystal of a skyfire bolt on her necklace. His finger ran along the edge, and though it didn’t touch her skin, it was close. Maybe the crystal was crooked and needed straightening too. Or maybe it wasn’t. She only knew that she wanted him to do it again. He gave her a cheeky wink and said, “Your mother will never know a thing.”
Before she could make sense of her flurry of emotions, a door beyond them opened. A servant asked if they were ready, and Rora nodded shakily. Moments later cheering could be heard within the great hall beyond. Cassius clasped her hand and pulled her forward.
When they stepped through the doorway, Rora’s heart caught in her throat. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were crowded into the room to celebrate her betrothal to Cassius, smiling faces as far as she could see. The applause echoed around the room, filling her ears until she could not even hear herself think. Her favorite thing in the entire palace was the chandelier her great-grandfather had constructed by trapping the magic of skyfire in an elaborate glass structure, and she fixed her eyes on it. Tonight it shone brilliantly—lightning frozen behind glass as if the goddess herself had plucked it from the sky.
A squ
eeze of her hand pulled her attention to the side, to Cassius’s too handsome face. He smiled at her, the widest one yet, and she found herself smiling back. Something trembled inside her, like the plucked string of an instrument, and it seemed to grow, thrumming through her bloodstream until her whole body buzzed with an unfamiliar sensation.
It had been a long time since Aurora had truly felt like a princess. She made few public appearances, another attempt to hold her secret as long as possible. Occasionally, she would join her mother on carriage rides through the city, but she only ever waved through the windows. She was better off without the attention. She enjoyed her time alone, reading or riding her horse, Honey, or studying. She did not want to wear fancy dresses or attend parties or experience the frivolity of court life.
At least, that was what she always told herself. Now she felt as if she had stepped into the pages of one of her books or strode out of the shadows of her own life for the first time.
The applause died down, and Cassius led her to the center of the room for their first dance. He pulled her close, his long, muscled arms wrapping her up like a butterfly in a cocoon. He smelled of leather and salt and something distinctly male. She fought the urge to lay her head upon his chest as the music began and they started to move.
She had expected to spend the whole night on edge, protecting her secret and her mother’s plan to keep the throne in the Pavan family while also guaranteeing a ruler who could protect the kingdom. But between one twirl and the next, all those worries fled and thoughts of Cassius, of their potential future together filled the gaps.
* * *
Aurora’s flushed skin was beginning to show through the powder in places—the hollow of her throat, the crest of her cheek, the curve of her lip. Cassius fought the urge to finish the job, to rub it all away so he could see her truly. “You’re different than I expected,” he murmured when the dance brought their bodies close.