by Cora Carmack
Cassius’s fury boiled past his control. He picked up something from the table beside him, some trinket of sorts, and sent it sailing toward the wall. It smashed with an utterly unsatisfying crash, glass scattering over the floor.
“Those soldiers do not come home until they find her, do you hear me?” Cassius growled. “I don’t care what you have to do. Raise the reward. Force conscription into the military to boost our ranks. Whatever it takes, you do it. None of this will end well unless she’s found.”
It might not end well regardless. But he had to bring Aurora back to Pavan. He would search her out himself if he had to, and kill anyone who obstructed his path.
“What shall I tell the king, Your Highness?”
Cassius scowled. “Nothing. I will deal with him. Go,” he growled. “And bring me the girl again. The witness.”
Cassius had been back several times since that first encounter, but Novaya had stuck to her story, repeating it by rote. She knew more than she was letting on, he was certain. This time, he had left her in for nearly a week and ordered the guards to cut back her meals to one a day. He would have his answers one way or another.
He was well past patience now.
* * *
Locke fought a smile as Roar’s head dipped and jerked as she tried desperately not to fall asleep while in the saddle. He had thought he’d pushed her as far as she could handle before, but she had somehow dug even deeper, dredged up even more strength. He’d been left scrambling to find new ways to challenge her.
He had given up trying not to watch her. It seemed the more willpower she showed, the less he did. And when he wasn’t consumed with thoughts of her, he was battered by an anxiety that had never plagued him before. For a long time, he had lived for the hunt, for the moments of uncertainty when death came close enough to brush up against him. Now he spent most days rigid in his saddle, dreading their next encounter with a storm.
After three more days of traveling south, they were between Sangsorra desert to the east and craggy mountains and cliffs of the Sahrain range to the south. The earth had grown dusty and dry, dotted with scrubby trees and patches of long brown grass. He was on edge. They had not seen a storm in several days, which had been the goal of their new route. But he did not like when the wilds were quiet. At times it felt almost as if they were being stalked, the prey of a predator lurking just out of sight.
“What’s your plan?” Ransom asked from atop his mount. “Make her so exhausted that she can’t ride her own horse and will be forced to share one with you?”
Locke whipped his head around to face his friend. “What are you on about?”
“It’s not a bad plan. If you have to spend days on horseback, doing it with a pretty girl pressed against you is definitely the way to go.”
“You’re mad. I’m trying to make sure she stays alive.”
“Right. Then why don’t you train her to pitch her own tent instead of doing it for her like you have the last few nights? Tell me, friend, just how many times have you pitched a tent for the wild one?” Locke plucked an apple from his saddlebag and flung it at Ransom. The bald man caught it and bit into the fruit with a cheeky wink. He added, his mouth full of fruit, “Your shoulder is never going to finish healing if you keep trying to woo her via tent.”
“Enough of your theories. There’s nothing—” Before he could finish his denial, a terrible wail filled the air, followed by an ominous crack. He swung his head back toward the Rock, where the sound had originated, but before he could discover the cause, a scream rent the air.
Roar’s scream.
He forgot about the first sound in favor of the second, and turned to see her horse reared on its hind legs. The noise must have scared it, and now the mare was bucking hard. Roar slid backward, out of the dip of the saddle, but she held tight to the pommel.
The horse’s hooves crashed back to the ground, and Roar was flung forward. She winced in pain, but managed to secure her place once more. Then a strong wind gusted behind him, followed by vicious pops and crackling and the acrid scent of smoke.
Once more, Roar’s horse reared in fright, and when Locke finally looked back toward the Rock he knew why. There was fire everywhere—the patchy brown-green grass went up like tinder, the scrubby trees that lined the road exhaled flame up into the sky, the sky … well that appeared to be burning too. Overhead, too low to be a naturally occurring firestorm, the sky rotated with heavy winds and spit burning embers onto the earth below.
Another scream sounded, and he whipped his head back just in time to see Roar fly from the back of her horse. She landed in a roll, coming up on her feet only a few steps away from the rapidly expanding blaze.
He cursed and flung himself down from his horse. A hard slap on its rear sent his stallion running safely away from the flames. He wanted to run toward Roar, but while other members of the team had some experience with torque storms, they were his specialty. Low against his spine, he felt the warmth of the firestorm Stormheart hidden inside the leather of his belt, and he plucked it out to hold in his palm. He drew power from within himself and from the stone, and flung a hand toward the swirling clouds. The air was stiflingly hot around him, and every breath raked down his throat and stung his lungs. The harsh smell singed his nostrils, and sweat slicked over his skin.
He stood outside the range of the falling embers, but he saw them battering at the top of the Rock, leaving black spots before rolling down the frame and landing amid the burning grass with the others. Jinx and Sly stood in the eye where no embers fell. He focused, the magic flying out from his fingers to collide with the storm. It surrounded it, searching out the edges, feeling the mass. There was no heart to this storm that he could sense, which meant it was magicborn.
There was another scream to his right, and the urge to look for Roar burned in his gut as hot as the flames that lay ahead of him. From his hip, he snatched one of the jars that held thunderstorm, pulled the cork, and threw it in the direction he’d seen Roar before. His shoulder protested, but there was no time to feel pain. The jar shattered, followed by a gust of wind and the crack of thunder. He hoped the rain would drown the burning land while he focused on the firestorm.
Once his magic had flowed all the way around it, and he knew its size, he concentrated on the right side of the storm. He raised both hands and, with a growl, used all his strength to yank the right side of the storm down and toward him. This broke up the rotation, and as he’d hoped, the storm crumbled against the resistance he provided. Without a living heart at the center, the storm was no match for his magic. The clouds folded and thinned, and the embers stopped falling, and it only took a few moments more before the dark clouds of the thunderstorm overtook the space where the firestorm had been.
“Jinx!” he yelled into the pouring rain.
He didn’t know exactly where she was, but he heard her yell back, “Got it!”
Jinx was their torrent specialist. She would stoke the thunderstorm until the rain had put out the last of the flames, then do away with it as he had done with the firestorm.
Finally, he gave in to the overwhelming urge to search out Roar, and his stomach dropped when he saw her. She was soaked, and stood still and silent, staring up at the sky as if mesmerized.
The drab traveling cloak she wore had been ripped down the middle, and its torn neck now sat around the curve of her hips. The bottom of it was charred and still smoking lightly, and the white shirt she wore beneath it stuck to her skin in places and had been singed to ash in others.
He trudged through the mud and ash to reach her, but even when he stood directly in front of her, she only had eyes for the storm overhead. And it was then that he realized … she wasn’t screaming. Or attacking anyone. Or unconscious. Whatever had happened when that twister had struck wasn’t a problem now.
* * *
Large hands grasped Roar’s shoulders, and it was only then she realized how badly she was shaking. Locke peered down at her, his hands squeezing, as if he
could make her body still through force alone. Over his shoulder, Roar watched Jinx lift her hands. The witch glanced around one more time, and when she found no lingering flames, she curled her fingers and pulled as though she had a lasso around the middle of the storm. And, sure enough, the center of the storm jerked downward, breaking the mass of dark clouds apart. The outer edges of the storm dissolved like steam, and, after another motion of Jinx’s hands, the core of the storm followed, giving way to a sky that was gray, rather than the blue it had been before. But it was calm. Quiet.
Roar watched, frozen and fascinated, long after it was over. It was the first time she’d gotten to see magic at work. She only snapped to when she felt Locke’s hands dragging unabashedly over her body, over her arms first, then smoothing over her waist and hips, tugging at the cloak that tangled there.
“Excuse me.” She shoved him backward, heat rising into her cheeks. “Perhaps ask before you put your hands all over a person.”
He snapped right back, “I thought you were in shock. Your cloak is scorched, and you wouldn’t answer when I asked if you’d been burned.”
“I’m fine.”
Then, to make sure she wasn’t lying, she took a moment to look over her body. She finished pushing the cloak down over her hips and stepped out of it. It had caught fire when an ember bounced off the Rock and hit the bottom of her cloak, and she felt a pang at the loss of something that belonged to her brother, even if it was plain and ill fitting. She had been struggling to get it off when the skies broke open and it began to rain. The trousers she wore were soaked and burned through at the knee and below. Between what remained of the fabric and her calf-high boots, the skin on her legs was red and raw and stung in the open air.
“Fine, huh?” He grabbed the leather around her neck and pulled up the magical items he’d given her. The crystal had gone hot, but not painfully so as it had with the twister. And the firestorm powder he’d given her remained in the tiny bottle. “You did not take it?” he hissed. “I told you that we take no chances with firestorms.”
Locke’s voice was a fierce, angry growl, and she bowed up, ready to growl right back. She was getting tired of his moods—suffocatingly protective one second and a beast the next. Before she could lay into him, they were interrupted by Ran asking, “Who did these?”
He pointed to a small pile of jars that held still-burning embers. Locke paused long enough in his anger to glance over, and then his brows puckered in confusion.
“Sly?” he called out.
From the other side of the Rock, they heard, “Not mine.”
Locke marched away, heading for the pile.
Roar sucked in a breath and said, “I did it.”
He froze, twisting to look back at her. “You what?”
Her stomach rolled. Had she done it wrong? “I captured the embers. A bag of jars fell off one of the horses’ packs, and I thought I might as well do something useful. I caught the embers as they rolled off the Rock, before they hit the grass.”
He stalked back toward her. “And you did it without taking the powder. Scorch it all, Roar. You could have been hurt. All it would have taken was one ember to bounce off the Rock when you weren’t expecting it and hit your skin directly. Have you seen the kind of burns they can cause?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them. And I’m well aware of the danger I was in. It was the same danger as every other person here, and I saw no one take any powder. So why don’t you yell at someone else!”
The others wandered away out of sight to the other side of the Rock, where most of the damage was, likely saving her the embarrassment of being witnesses once again to Locke lecturing her. With a growl, she spun before he could say anything more and began marching away. He did not get to make her feel bad about this. She had seen a storm and stayed herself. She had done something useful after so long feeling useless. She thought at first that he was going to let her be, but eventually she heard him jogging up behind her.
“Roar, wait.”
“No,” she snapped, picking up her pace.
“Would you listen—”
“Can you just leave me alone?”
His hand seized her elbow, and he spun her around forcefully. He growled, “No. I can’t.”
And then his mouth collided with hers.
For a moment, Roar did not understand what was happening. She knew his lips were on hers, pushing hard enough to be punishment, and his fingers threaded through her hair, and an arm wrapped tight around her waist. But even knowing those things, she could not quite comprehend that Locke was kissing her.
She froze, unsure whether she wanted to allow it or shove him away. She had been so angry, but now that blazing heat had melted into something different, like molten glass being shaped into something new. He tilted her head back, his hand gripping tighter in her hair, and when he opened his mouth against hers, she followed. He kissed his own fury into her, melting and reshaping her again and again with each stroke of his tongue over hers.
When he broke the kiss, his mouth stayed close, his breath like fire on her tender lips. She opened her eyes and found him staring, brows furrowed halfway between confusion and anger. Slowly, the world came back into focus—the lingering scent of smoke, the wet cling of her clothes, the sound of voices not too far away.
She planted her hands on his chest and shoved, but he caught her wrists.
“You still did not ask,” she hissed.
The indent in his brow deepened. “Ask what?”
She struggled against his hold, panic welling in her throat. “You can’t just grab me and … and do that. You cannot manipulate me into letting go of my anger.”
This time when she pulled, her wrists came free, and she stumbled backward. He held out a hand as if to catch her, but hesitated, letting her find her own footing.
“I should not have yelled at you. I was worried, and I overreacted. You—you did well. With the embers.”
She wanted to yell some more, to push and shove and protect herself because fighting was not nearly as frightening as … as whatever this was. She was supposed to be learning how to trust herself, how to be confident in her strength. She could not risk that, not even for a kiss so intense that she was still shaking.
The raised voices of the other hunters intruded again, and she glanced behind him. Thankfully, the others were still out of sight on the other side of the Rock. Her face was flushed, and she did not know what she would have done if they had seen. Locke’s voice was rough and low when he spoke again. “I need to find out what happened. Then we’ll take care of your burns.”
He didn’t wait before turning and heading toward the Rock, the back of which was scorched and mangled, and not dissimilar from how she felt inside.
“Is everyone unhurt?” Locke called as he joined the rest of the group. Each member of the team checked in one by one, none seriously injured. Last to call out was Bait. The redhead stood next to the damaged carriage, his face streaked with soot and rain, his shoulders bowed as Locke stalked toward him.
“Bait,” Locke growled, and Roar flinched, glad it was not her on the receiving end of his frustrations. “What in the bleeding skies happened?”
“I, uh, got distracted. And missed the time when I was supposed to add more magic to the chamber. I had to get something in fast or we were going to lose control, but I couldn’t find another jar of hurricane. So I put in—”
“Firestorm. Damn it, Bait. The metal can’t withstand that fast a temperature change. We’re lucky the whole thing didn’t rip apart.”
It sure looked to Roar like the whole thing had ripped apart. The back end of the coach appeared to have burst at the seams. Blackened metal peeled backward in multiple directions, gaping open to reveal the inside of the contraption that used magic to power the entire machine.
“Can you repair it?” Duke asked, ripping away one sleeve of his shirt to reveal scalded skin on his forearm, more scars to join the rest.
“Maybe. With Ransom’s help. But we
’ll need to find a village with a blacksmith. We’ll have to change our travel plans again.”
All eyes turned toward Roar then, some wary, some curious, some just weary from the day. She held still, worried that if she moved wrong, they would all be able to tell that Locke had just kissed the life out of her only moments ago.
“Did you feel anything?” Duke asked.
Heat bloomed over her skin, and her mouth went dry. Her wide eyes flicked to Locke and he said, “When the storm surfaced?” He frowned. “Any anger? Or other emotions that didn’t feel like your own?”
She tried to think back to the firestorm, to before her world had been flipped upside down. She could not remember feeling much of anything after she’d been thrown from her horse, she had simply reacted on instinct. Finally, she shook her head.
“What does that mean?”
Duke and Locke exchanged a glance.
“It rules out sensitivity,” Duke said. “If that were it, you would react to any kind of storm magic, even that which comes from a jar rather than nature.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Locke said. “It could be only natural storms that she reacts to. I’ve never heard of that kind of thing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. People are so bleeding scared to talk about magic that there’s probably a lot we haven’t heard of.”
Duke sighed. “Well, at least we’ll have plenty of time to find out while you and Ransom work on the Rock.”
Duke spent some time looking everyone over, assessing burns and other injuries. Poor Ransom had lost half his impressive beard to an ember before he’d managed to douse it. Roar could tell Bait wanted to laugh but still felt too guilty to do anything more than try to be helpful. To even it up, Ran had to clip his beard until only thick stubble remained.
Locke put Bait in charge of readying the Rock by hooking up two of the horses so that it drove like a traditional carriage. Honey ended up being one of those horses because the others had burns. Roar watched as Bait harnessed Honey, and she ran a hand down the horse’s muzzle to reassure her.