The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(74)


“Maybe you just didn’t push hard enough?” he suggested.

I focused on the link again. It hummed, pulling at the spot just below my rib cage, and I imagined myself traveling down it. I thought of reaching into Res, of finding the magic lying coiled deep inside him, and—

The floor rocked violently. The connection between us shuddered, and I stumbled back, gasping for breath. The room rocked again, and I nearly lost my footing when Caylus seized my arm, steadying me.

“What’s happening?” I asked. But even as I asked, I saw.

Out the window, the once cloudless sky had turned darker than dusk as heavy clouds materialized from thin air. A powerful gust of wind rattled the windowpanes, screaming as it whirled down the street. Thunder boomed, echoing like the march of an army.

And before me, Resyries crackled with lightning.

*

Res stood in the center of the room, his wings lifted, the tips pointed down. I gaped at him, unable to think, unable to move. The wind howled louder, coming alive in the room. It lifted plates and food and utensils off the island, swirling them about the room in a massive whirlwind. Outside, lightning crackled across the sky.

My hair ripped free from my braid, buffeting my face with sharp, tiny lashes. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

A warm hand found mine, and I felt Caylus beside me a moment later. “The opposite!” he yelled, and my shocked mind struggled to understand. “Do the opposite!”

The opposite of what I’d just done. I nodded, reaching out for the cord, and recoiled with a cry. The link vibrated viciously, the feel of it sharp and hot as the lightning erupting around Res’s body.

Despite the way the thought made my stomach turn, I seized the cord through the pain and pulled. Res let out a cry, sharp as the snap of bone, and the link shuddered.

A burst of energy barreled through me, throwing me backward. Caylus caught me as my vision blurred, then cleared. Res stood before me, the lightning gone, his silver eyes back to their usual stormy gray, wings lowered to his sides as things came crashing to the floor.

My lips parted as I took in the chaos. Shattered pieces of plates and bowls littered the floor, scones and cakes torn apart and scattered. A bread knife had been driven into the wall right where Caylus had been standing. Outside, broken branches hung at awkward angles on trees along the street, leaves scattered like flower petals.

What in the Saints’ name had just happened? The ground had shaken. Thunder alone couldn’t do that. It was like—

“Caylus?” A voice called from outside the door. “Caylus, what’s going on in there?”

We both spun for the door. The locks were undone. Caylus had forgotten them in his excitement to see me. I shot forward, but it was too late.

The door opened.





Twenty-Six


The new girl from the bakery stepped inside.

I froze, my mind racing as she surveyed the room. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t know.

“What happened here?” she asked, her face growing slack as she took in the damage, her eyes sliding across the island, to me…and right over where Res was standing.

She looked at Caylus expectantly.

My breath shuddered, and I locked it in my throat. Had she not noticed Res? I glanced at Caylus, carefully sculpting my expression into something calmer.

Caylus blinked at her, startled. At least she wouldn’t find his behavior strange; he was always a little strange.

“The storm,” he said, and that was it.

The girl’s brow furrowed. “The shaking did all this?”

“Yes,” I said too quickly. But half my mind was on trying to understand how she hadn’t noticed the three-foot-tall crow behind me.

Her gaze fell on the knife sticking out of Caylus’s wall. She placed her hands on her hips. “You were doing another one of your experiments, weren’t you?”

“That too,” I said. “The shaking messed it up. It exploded.”

Her expression grew hesitant. “This’ll come out of your pay, Caylus.”

He nodded, but his face had gone empty. His mind was somewhere else, likely wondering the same thing as me: why in Saints’ name didn’t she care about Res?

Giving the room a final sweep, the girl let out a sigh of resignation and stepped back out onto the landing, closing the door behind her.

For a moment, the room was utterly still. Then I bolted for the door and turned lock after lock so fast, I scraped my knuckles. Slumping back against the door, I faced the room.

Res was gone.

My heart stopped. I blinked, thinking it a trick of my vision, but he wasn’t there. Yet I could feel the cord pulsing between us.

“I swear he didn’t move,” Caylus muttered, brow furrowed.

“Res?” I called hesitantly.

In the corner, the shadows looked strange, like a distorted reflection in a rippling lake. A spot behind my temple began to pound, and I pressed my fingers to it, blinking to clear my vision.

Then the shadows moved. They shifted like ebbing fog, growing and stretching until a piece pulled apart from the rest, coalescing first into wings and then a body and tail and head and—

“What—?” I gaped at Res as he finished detaching himself from the shadows.

Caylus’s eyes widened, his head tilting in consideration. “I didn’t think storm crows could bend shadows.”

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