Roar (Stormheart #1)(113)

But then … it began to roll back. Roar marched forward, and with each step the fog retreated farther and farther until he could not see it at all.

*

The storms continued to come as they made their way toward Pavan, and each time they did Roar made them surrender. As she had learned from the skyfire storm, the connection she felt went both ways. If she was not careful, their souls, their desires could bleed into her. But she could do the same to them. She had sowed fear into the fog, the certainty of its destruction, and it retreated rather than fight. She soothed the rage of a twister until its winds slowed and it broke apart in the sky. She stood in the eye of a firestorm and offered it comfort, even as burning embers rained down around her.

One by one she exerted her will over the storms, and eventually her awareness of the souls around her was so strong, stretched so far that she began to soothe the darkest spirits in the world around them before they could even become storms.

The hunters pressed on toward Pavan, moving far faster than they ever had. And the closer they got to her home, the more malevolent souls she sensed. She tried to soothe them, tried to break the hold of their rage, but they were too twisted, too cold for her to help. When she tried to find some fragment of humanity in them, some piece of who they used to be, she found only bottomless fury. And each of those irredeemable storms had one thing in common. They felt pulled to Pavan, drawn toward something there, bent on the city’s destruction.

At Roar’s request, the hunters rode even harder, pushing later into the night and setting out earlier in the morning. And when they were only a day’s ride from the city, she became aware of huge numbers of souls, streaming toward Pavan. These, however, were still living.

Remnants. By the hundreds. They trudged on by foot, many injured or weeping. There were so many that they covered the road, and the hunters had to slow their pace to weave through the sea of bodies.

They heard whispers among the people of towns leveled, of a madman who wielded storms like swords and cut down everything in his path. They believed the Stormlings were their only hope, the only ones who could stop the carnage.

And when they reached Death’s Spine, the rocky outcropping that marked the edge of Pavan territories and overlooked the grasslands that stretched all the way to the golden dome of the palace, Roar’s worst fears were confirmed.

At the top of the dome and all along the city walls flew flags of blue.

“Are you all right?” Kiran asked her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing a kiss to her neck. She held tight to his arms, soaking up every bit of warmth he offered. She turned and took a real kiss, pouring every bit of her love and fear and worry into it.

Because it was time.

To say good-bye to Roar.

And become Aurora once more.





EPILOGUE

He wove between the sniveling insects that marched on toward the city, marched toward what they thought would be their salvation. He passed among them unnoticed as they wept over all that they had lost, all that he had taken from them. It suited him to be invisible. It had allowed him to infiltrate town after town, circling Pavan like a bird around its prey.

Soon. Soon they would all know who he was. The goddess’s vessel, the tip of her sword, the brunt of her rage.

He wondered if the Lockes were cowering inside their new city. Did they jump at every wail of the wind? Sweat at the sound of thunder? Was their sleep plagued by nightmares of the last time he came for them? Did they remember the howl of the hurricanes closing in from every side? The way the city burned beneath firestorms even as towering waves crashed over their battlements? He would not rest until he had poured out tenfold the amount of agony and horror and despair that they had given him as a boy.

But the Lockes had taught him that fear only compounded over time, it pressed in on you like madness, swallowed you up until you could think of nothing else.

It was not enough to destroy them.

He would make them want it, beg for it, hope for an end to their torture.

He reached out to his friends, the tormented souls that mirrored his own, who had followed him all this time, from the jungles of Locke to the grasslands of Pavan. They gathered in the wind, lay in wait in the earth, flowed through the rivers that surrounded the city.

Suddenly, he stopped. Remnants stumbled into him; some even dared to yell in annoyance as they dodged around him. Any other time he would have slaughtered them all on the spot. But his focus was not here. Not on these pitiful souls. It was on a soul far behind him, at the very edge of his consciousness. It was not warped or cruel like the ones he usually sought. Instead, it was bright. Too bright. Radiant as skyfire streaking through the night.

But even so … this soul … this soul was like his.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m not even sure where to begin. The journey toward this book started over a decade ago. I’ve written and published other books, all of which I loved immensely. But since I was a teenager it was my dream to write a YA novel. I took several amazing detours before getting here, but I am so grateful to have had the chance to fulfill this dream (and hopefully continue it).

First, I must thank my family. I could fill a whole other book with all the ways you have loved and supported me over the last decade, and yet those words would never be enough. The year 2016 especially was the most difficult year of my life, and I could not have survived it without you. To my mother: thank you for instilling in me a love for reading, writing, and great characters. To my sisters: we fell in love with YA together, and you encouraged me from the very first time I put pen to paper. For my father: thanks for killing all the spiders and, you know, all the other multitudes of ways you keep me sane, safe, and healthy.