Roar (Stormheart #1)(20)

Rora lurched to a stop, and jerked her head upward. That wasn’t Cassius. Her hood began to slip backward. She tried to catch it, but her movements lagged behind her mind, and her injured arm had grown stiff and numb. Cool air hit her uncovered cheeks, her nose, then her forehead. Even with the scarf hiding her hair, she might be recognized. And she had a feeling this was a very bad place for a princess to be.

The hood’s descent halted; it wasn’t her fingers that had caught the fabric but his. He was so tall that Rora had to crane her head back to see him. His hair was a dark, wavy brown and hung long enough to brush against his shoulders.

“Keep that hood up. This is no place for little girls.”

“I’m not a little girl!” She clamped her mouth shut, immediately wishing she could take the declaration back. Not only because it sounded exactly like what a little girl would say but also because she had not tempered her volume. At all. And though it wasn’t Cassius who caught her, he was here somewhere. She bit her lip in worry, and the stranger’s eyes tracked down to her mouth briefly before darting around her face.

He still held on to her hood, keeping it back enough that he could see her eyes. “So you’re not a little girl. Still doesn’t mean this is any place for you.”

She could not argue with that.

“She called you Locke.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes. And?”

“As in … Prince Locke?”

He laughed so hard that he released her hood. She rushed to grab it and pull it down to cover her face. She had no doubt people were staring now. He sucked in a breath, and then as if he couldn’t help himself, burst into laughter all over again.

Still chuckling, he said, “I’m about as much a prince, as you are a princess.”

Rora resisted the juvenile impulse to inform him just how much of a princess she was.

“But … the name,” she said. “Are you related?” Perhaps he was the person Cassius had come to meet. In which case, she needed to leave now.

“I’d rather die than be related to that poor excuse for royalty. The name is just a name, like any other. Like yours?” he prompted.

Rora’s mind went blank when she tried to invent a name to give him. So instead she shook her head.

“Good. Smart girl. This is a place for secrets. Not truths.” For the first time, Rora looked away from him and her eyes caught on row after row of glass jars and tubes and bottles, each of them glowing like the lanterns she saw when she entered the market. But these weren’t all skyfire. A fat, round jar contained a funnel of black and gray smoke. She squinted, certain that it was moving. That it … twisted.

The man, Locke, picked it up, long fingers plucking the jar from the sea of others. Inside was a tiny twister like the one that had killed her brother. She stared at it, stunned into awe. There was something truly beautiful about the way a storm moved. The other jars swirled with different kinds of magic—blizzards and thunderstorms and skyfire and firestorms—each more wondrous than the last. All her life she’d been desperate for magic to call her own, and now it stretched out before her as far as she could see.

The stranger spoke again. “Steer clear of the vendors around the edges. Those are the frauds. Get whatever magic you’re here for, and get out. Don’t talk to anyone unless you must, and for sky’s sake, the next time you come here try to look less…”

“Less what?”

He moved closer, peering down through the shadows cast by her hood to meet her eyes. “Less like the kind of pretty girl this place would chew up and spit out long before dawn.”





Whether it be thunderstorm, hurricane, or some storm on which we have not yet laid eyes, one truth remains—challenge a tempest, survive it, and you become its master.

—The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram





5

Locke knew the moment he spoke that he had said the wrong thing. Her stormy blue eyes narrowed to shards of ice, and she pushed her narrow shoulders back and her chin up. He had almost certainly guaranteed she would be back, regardless of the danger.

But before she said a word, her eyes caught on something over his shoulder. The cold in her eyes melted, her lips parted on a sharp inhale, and her whole body went stiff. He had been teasing earlier with his little girl comment, but now she did look young. And frightened. And it roused every protective instinct he had.

Locke started to turn, but before he moved more than a step, a hand tangled in the leather straps that crisscrossed his upper body. Then another hand—soft but with a strong grip—took hold of his jaw and pulled his head forward again.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

For a moment, he forgot what he was doing entirely. She was close, and whatever fear had been in her before was gone, burned away by a blazing intensity. Her skin smelled fragrant, as if she had rubbed perfume or oils over the wrist that hovered by his mouth.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look.”

Talking to Etel, she had been adorably curious but gravely out of her depth. He hadn’t been in the mood to chase a girl. His temper soured the day the Locke royal procession had paraded into Pavan like a gift from the heavens. He’d planned to snag a seat at a pub and not move until dawn, but she had caught his attention anyway.

His earlier mild interest had become a fist in his chest, gripping him tighter than the fingers she tangled in his leathers. Her cloak was too big, and the sleeves had fallen back when she reached for him. Seemingly of their own volition, his fingers touched her slim wrist. She glanced behind him again, then huddled closer, and he let his fingers graze down her arm, slipping under the sleeve that had gathered around her elbow.