True Storm

by L. E. Sterling

  What will you do? I want to ask. But I reckon I know enough.

  Nolan Storm is going to tear down Dominion, brick by brick. He’ll kill them all, as impersonal as a hurricane. He’ll wipe them off the face of the earth.

  I feel my own lips stretching into the suggestion of a feral smile.

  Good.

  …

  When I next see the sky, it is wearing its familiar white robe. Kira holds my arm like I’m an invalid, much to my horror, though I’ll admit I’m weaker than I’d like, and escorts me down the elevator.

  “Don’t worry, Lucy.” Kira says with a wry smile, pulling me closer. “You’re not my type.” She’s clearly trying to coax a smile from me, but my face remains a frozen mask.

  They tell me fresh air is good. I would argue with them that Dominion has no fresh air, but I’ve no desire to speak. Despite the bandages having been removed from my ripped-up throat, I don’t even know if I can.

  I haven’t seen Jared since the night of my return to Storm’s keep. Haven’t seen him, heard from him. He’s probably forgotten all about me. I tell myself it’s for the best.

  As bleak as I feel, Kira puts on fake cheer like she does four-inch stilettos. “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to take a load off and watch the world go by?”

  I let her lead me to the bench near the building’s entrance. We sit awkwardly as I watch the occasional city bird swoop down on the hunt for food. They’ve gotten fat and bloated from the corpses, those birds, practically becoming another species. Over the tops of buildings farther downtown, a canopy of lush greenery explodes and spills. The Prayer Tree. The air is clammy, as it is before a day of rain. I can smell it in the air. Iron and dirt.

  Like blood.

  Kira is far gentler to me than I knew she could be, though she’s still about as tactful as a machine gun. She glances at the scar cutting across my throat. “Looks good, Lucy. Almost like it didn’t happen. I’ve never seen a wound heal like that before.”

  I wouldn’t know. There had been no point in me looking at the wound on my throat. Mirrors are for the living.

  Tentatively I run a finger lightly over the track where the knife’s blade had kissed me. I feel a line, nothing more. Below that, Ali’s necklace. I pick up the coin, feeling its ancient weight, its strange heat, in my hand.

  “You know,” Kira muses, “I think that necklace might just have saved your life. The cut should have severed everything,” she tells me with professional interest. “The necklace was wedged so deep in there it had clotted right into the wound. By the time we got you to Doc Raines, she had to cut into you to get it out. They had to work around it, though. Couldn’t get it off you.”

  I stare hard at the lethal assassin beside me. I gulp past the painful knot in my throat. When I finally speak, the sound of my damaged voice, a low, guttural thing, shocks us both. “Where is Ali?”

  Kira blows out a deep, whistling breath that pushes the bangs off her face and looks away. “They didn’t tell you.”

  I shake my head. Something terrible knots in my belly.

  “Ali…went in with us. He was pretty good, too. But the Watchers had guns, Lucy. He—Ali…Gods, Lucy, it shouldn’t be me telling you this.” The assassin’s mask slips, and I see genuine regret in her eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

  …

  It’s the dream that shakes me awake. The same dark red rain. My tears mix with it, turning the hills and fields around Dominion a blooming crimson. Only this time, I understand its cryptic message. Margot.

  And this time, when I open my eyes and blink away the tears, feeling the hot wetness on my pillow, I also know I’m not alone.

  He can tell the moment I shift from sleep to wakefulness. One long, lean leg comes uncrossed in the chair across the room. Beside his rumpled form, on the ground, is a litter of pillows he has undoubtedly stomped on. The lamp beside the chair switches on, throwing off enough light to see him by. Enough light for him to see me. He runs a hand across his forehead, as though it pains him, his eyebrows drawing in. I can just make out the white pattern of one of his favorite shirts. Across the front dances a skeleton, which somehow matches the frayed holes of his jeans. He looks…tired. Lost. Defeated. The silence between us lengthens.

  “You’re alive. I don’t know how to tell you what it was like when I thought… You were sitting in that chair all covered in blood, and I thought for sure you were dead.” After a few moments, he calls out again from his perch across the room. “Can I…can I come sit with you, Lu? Please?”

  It’s not Jared’s way to be tentative or unsure of himself. Jared does what he pleases. And I hate that I’ve taken this away from him, too, like another little death. Still, the moment draws out before I decide to say yes. A moment longer than he likes, I reckon, as I hear a rumble, low and deep, in his throat. “Lu.”

  When I finally nod, Jared all but flies out of his chair, faster than my eyes can track. His weight sinks the mattress. There’s a look to him more wild than wild. His eyes marble: green, indigo, green, indigo, like exotic traffic lights. He’s not been sleeping, I can tell. The smudges beneath his eyes make him look as though he’s been punched.

  “You look terrible,” I rasp.

  His laugh comes out in short, chippy bursts. “Thanks. I know.” He eyes me. “You don’t look so hot yourself.” I don’t have any reply to this, and he doesn’t seem to expect one. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” He combs anxious fingers through his hair, the blond skeins standing straight up. “I’m just…I’m just so damned glad you’re alive.” I stare at him in wonder as his chest heaves. “I’ve been going through hell, sitting by your bedside whenever you’re asleep. Knowing what you must think of me. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided I had to be here anyway.”

  I shake my head in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you talking about…what I think of you?”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m so sorry I was too late.” Jared takes my hand in his two. He raises my hand to his lips, savoring the scent of me before flipping my hand over and gently pressing a kiss to my palm, another to the soft skin at my wrist. The kiss ignites me.

  My body leaps to fire. My mind slams that door firmly shut. But not before Jared murmurs, “You even smell different now.”

  A flare of annoyance ignites inside me. “That’s because I’m dead.”

  He blinks owlishly, as though I’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. “What?”

  “Don’t you get it?” I wrench my hand from his. “Don’t you understand? I’m. Dead.” I don’t bother to glare; I simply turn my face to the wall. I can practically hear his horror as he continues to sit there. Slowly, creaking off the bed, Jared walks out of the room. Maybe for the last time. Maybe I’ve finally pushed him away for good this time.

  It’s all right, I remind myself. Because the dead don’t have regrets. The dead don’t love.

  21

  From here, high above the city, safe in Storm’s office, the heavy twirl of smoke among the buildings doesn’t seem that sinister. I know this is a distortion, like seeing the world through glass. If I were standing on the ground, I’d know that houses were on fire or that there was a battle on the streets. Or that the Rovers are clearing the dead.

  “Rovers,” a deep, masculine voice behind me says, confirming my suspicions. My reflection in the glass, one hand laid across the faint track of scar on my neck, disappears in the glow of the magnificent, forked lightning around Storm’s head. As he comes to stand behind me, I feel his heat, power emanating from him with a heavy throb. And where I once would have described his scent as the loamy smell of a forest, now all around him is the smell of ozone.

  The scent of a gathering storm.

  I nod, turning my back on the chaos of Dominion, and stare up into the handsome, chiseled face of my guardian. With a tilt of his heavy head he says, “The Watchers tried to burn down the Prayer Tree again last night.” That explains the smoke, then. “My ears on the ground i
nform me that, now that Wes is dead, his people don’t quite know which way to turn.”

  “Nash? The council?”

  Storm nods and leans his hulking frame against the glass. From here, so close, it looks as though he’s about to fall out over the world. But he wouldn’t break, I think to myself. Unlike me.

  “Nash hasn’t been seen or heard from since we stormed the house.”

  My still-ravaged voice comes out broken. “My father?”

  Storm tosses his head again, the gray of his eyes molten lava. “No.”

  I stare down at my hands. The skin around my wrists remains a delicate pink as it heals. I whisper, “You believe me. Don’t you?”

  I told Storm, of course, as soon as I’d been able to hold a pen. Wrote down for him what Margot and I had heard, what we’d seen—how complete our betrayal has been. Until this moment, though, I don’t think I realized I expect he won’t believe me. And I wouldn’t blame him; I hardly believe it myself. It grows quiet in the room. I hear the heavy hand of the clock fall over Storm’s desk and marvel at how meaningless time has become to me. I hiccup on a sob, holding it in. I have no desire to cry in front of Nolan Storm.

  But he takes my chin in gentle fingers. I feel power throbbing through his skin as he forces me to look at him. With his other hand he gently brushes my hair from my eyes. A stray tear breaks free and courses down my cheek, but he brushes it away. All gentleness, though his eyes still burn winter.

  “Lucy.” His voice is so soft I almost don’t hear him. In a bizarre parody of what Jared had done, Storm takes one of my raw-boned wrists into his hand and presses a slight kiss to the thin skin. “I know you feel lost, but you’re not alone. You have us. You have me. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  I nod my thanks, unable to speak for the tears that would threaten like rain and feeling more than a little uneasy at sea. Standing on weak and trembling legs, I face the man god who has, perhaps against reason, taken me in.

  I croak over the giant lump in my throat. “What would make me feel better is if we destroy them. I want to destroy them.”

  The planes of Storm’s cheeks stand out under the shadowy glow of his thorny crown. Slowly, so slowly, he nods.

  “Yes.” I almost think I’ve imagined his answer until he says it again. “Yes, Lucy. We will destroy them.” His voice is deceptively calm as he sits down casually on the couch, as though we’re discussing the weather at an Upper Circle tea.

  But his eyes tell me everything I need to know. Nolan Storm will help me avenge Margot.

  …

  It’s a bleak day, the color of ash, when Mohawk and Jared drive me up to the gates of Grayguard. The security guards have been replaced, I notice. A line of shiny new faces mans the fence, the blue of their uniforms crisp against the old stone of the school.

  Jared turns around to look at me from the driver’s seat, his face inscrutable. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asks in a neutral voice.

  “No,” I tell him truthfully. “But I’m doing it anyway.”

  Beside me, Mohawk smiles a terrible smile. “Good for you, Dolly. And anyway, you won’t be alone.” Mohawk opens the door, her sharp gaze sweeping over the terrain before holding out a hand to indicate I can exit.

  They’ll take no more chances, Storm told me.

  Mohawk’s strange print skin sticks out under her white cutoff shirt and long shorts. I’m certain Grayguard has never seen the likes of one such as her, I think, recalling the True Born merc with blue-tinged skin who I used to see a lifetime ago. I sigh and let Jared pull open the doors and usher me through. His fingers burn at my back, and for a moment I long to press into them, to ease the suffering. But I can’t let myself unwind.

  We’ve arrived in the middle of the day, hoping to avoid the crush. But it seems we’ve come between classes. The halls are packed with uniformed bodies pressed into polished leather boots. The air is thick with their chatter and laughing, overlaid with the smell of wax polish. And it’s through this crowd that I walk, two True Borns at my side.

  The bodies part almost magically. The din falls mute. Our footsteps echo on the hard marble as I steer toward the bank of lockers at the far end of the hall. I don’t look at anyone as I pass.

  The bell rings and, save for us, the hallway remains a frozen tableau. Then a rumbling of feet and the bodies disappear into heavy-doored rooms coated in bulletproof glass.

  Mohawk holds open a large canvas bag into which I stuff Margot’s books and a Grayguard jacket. She’s closed the bag and makes to leave as I twirl open the lock on the adjacent compartment.

  “What are you doing?” she asks. Jared, for his part, wisely says nothing.

  “Cleaning out both our lockers.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You’re coming back—”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “C’mon, Lu.” Mohawk steps toward me.

  I raise my palm. I need the distance as bitter pain wriggles through my bones like the ravages of Plague. “No. And we’re not talking about this.” I slam shut the locker door but stop short, staring down the long, deserted hallway. The whole point of coming back to Grayguard was to move forward with our lives. With our degrees in hand, we’d be stepping into our pedigree, claiming back an inch or so of the life we’d left behind. But now, with Margot gone, I can’t seem to see the point. And anyway, I think cynically, Storm will make them give the degree to me now, finished or not.

  Leaning against the lockers, looking utterly relaxed, Jared tilts his head. A blond curl bounces across his cheek. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I shake my head and pull my few remaining things to my chest. Doesn’t he know I’m barely keeping it in check? Doesn’t he understand? I can’t be here. “No.”

  “Come on,” he says again, this time taking my arm. I watch his eyes go to Mohawk—telling her to stay put, no doubt—as Jared hands her my things and half drags me toward the inner courtyard door. “Let’s go to our secret spot.”

  …

  The benches are the same as when I’d last been here, the stone mossy with polluted rain, the scattered tables bare. Jared came to speak to me in this very spot what seems like a thousand years ago. I’d last sat with Margot, I realize, back when Ali was sneaking in here every day. I fight back another wave of grief for the both of them, and pull a breath in through my nose, almost as if I could scent her again.

  But it’s Jared I smell, no one else. Jared, with his cinnamon and male scent, and whose body moves lithely and gracefully beside me.

  “Let go of me,” I tell him woodenly, which he ignores. He leads me to a seam where the walls meet in the octagonal yard, pressing my back against the warm stone and brick. Still he doesn’t let loose my arms. My skin sends traitorous signals up and down my body as he continues to gaze at me as though I’m some meal he’s contemplating. “I said, let go of me.” I try to shake him off but know I’m nothing next to True Born strength.

  “Cut it out, Princess. You’re not impressing anyone out here.” This catches me off guard.

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” The words are deceptively mild. He reaches out and oh so gently strokes hair off my face, leaving in its wake an electric frisson of pleasure.

  I swat at his hand. “Don’t.”

  His body is so close to mine. Barely an inch stands between us. Jared looks at my hair, his fingers tangling with the strands so that I can barely think, barely breathe. “Remember when I told you to shut off all those impressions Margot was sending you? Remember that?” he murmurs. His face bends closer so I can see the scar near his lips.

  But my heart is so heavy. So heavy. Doesn’t he understand? We were betrayed by those who supposedly loved us best. And Margot…she was all I had left. Without my sister, I don’t even know who I am. “What, are you telling me to just shut down? To cut Margot out of my heart? Well, I can’t do that. And I don’t need your stupid advice, Jared.” I
weakly try to push him away, but he moves closer. My hands become trapped against his solid flesh. He reaches up and frames my face with his hands, cradling me there against the wall. My body throbs with his nearness.

  Jared just smiles a funny half smile, as though he can tell what effect he has on me. “No. I was going to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, that right now you need to do the opposite.”

  Annoyance flickers through me as I stare at him. “I don’t understand you. And leave me alone.”

  “No.” He smiles tenderly, his lips wide and generous. I can’t stop looking at them.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no, Princess. You’re not going to shut me out. I won’t let you. So what I need you to do is this. I need you to let it all in. All of it. Every last single ounce of it. Let it in, Lu. I’ll be here. I’ll be right here. I’ll catch you, will hold it with you.”

  I stare at him, the wildness of my heart just inches from the surface. “No!”

  “Yes,” he insists. “Yes, Lucy. You need to feel her.”

  “I am feeling her!” I stomp my feet.

  “No, you’re not. You’re letting her kill you.”

  I pull back, aghast. “H-How can you say that?” The angry sparks within me fan into an inferno. “How can you say that?” It’s as though I’m watching outside of myself when I first strike him. A punch to the shoulder. He doesn’t move, not even an inch, which makes me even angrier. I haul back and slap at his chest, watch him barely twitch. “How dare you?” I scream, punching him in the arm and chest for all I’m worth. But he simply stands there, a look in his eyes as wild with sorrow as I am, like a lost thing. A cruel and useless thing.

  And then I’m done. One of my hands goes to his chest. There’s a red mark on his cheek that I don’t even remember leaving. I half sob, half hiccup, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then my other arm curls up around his neck as Jared gathers me close, shushing me. His heat warms over my shame as the first fat tears fall.

  He pulls me so tightly against his body, sinew and strength, running his hands down the back of my head and cradling my skull. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. Just let her in.”