Roar (Stormheart #1)(28)

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

His mouth settled in a tight line, but his eyes were kind.

“I mean it, Roar. We leave at sunrise tomorrow for our next hunt on the way to Taraanar. I don’t know when we’ll be back here. Could be months or a year. If there’s something I can do—money or food or protection—if there’s something you need, please ask.”

Rora slipped her hand over the tightly curled fist resting on his knee. She wanted to tell him that she was more than fine. She was better than she’d ever been because for the first time since she was twelve, she knew the taste of hope. If these people and this place existed, maybe she didn’t have to marry Cassius to keep her kingdom. Maybe there was another way. She opened her mouth to assure him, but a long, deep horn call cut through the peace of the tent before she could utter a word.

She knew that sound, and her skin prickled with dread. It was not the same signal as yesterday but a different horn they blew when they hung new warning flags on the turrets of the four storm towers, signaling a change of season. They had been yellow for the duration of the Slumber season—a color that told citizens that while storms were possible, they were unlikely. A red flag meant that storms were probable and people should be on alert for the emergency signals. A black flag meant that the Rage season had come, and large storms were both imminent and likely to be frequent.

Locke’s mouth formed a curse, but she could not hear it over the second sounding of the horn. She jumped to her feet and ran outside. Her jaw dropped. The Eye was empty. All the magic of the night before was gone, only the booths left behind like the skeleton of some majestic, mythical creature. The dark tarp still covered most of the opening overhead, but she could see bits of pink and purple sky peeking in at the corners and along the sides. Dawn.

Rora let out a string of curse words that would have gotten her disowned if her mother heard, and began to run. Locke yelled after her, but she could not wait. She had stayed out all night, and it would be a miracle if her absence had not been discovered.

Rora skidded to a stop in front of what she hoped was the entrance she’d used the night before. With the stalls empty, it was hard to be certain.

“One more day!” Locke yelled after her. “You know where to find me before we leave if you change your mind!”

She looked back a final time at the hunter who had changed everything. He looked tall and menacing from afar, but he had been kind to her. And his mere existence shattered everything she thought she knew about the world. She lifted her hand in a wave and then ducked into the tunnel.

As soon as she stepped out into the dilapidated neighborhood that hid the market, her eyes sought out the turrets. Her throat pinched when she saw the new flag. Black.

Slumber had officially ended, and the Rage season had arrived.





It was not enough to punish her children. Rezna had given them a gift, and they betrayed her. And with the Time of Tempests, she purged the first tribes of their magic, stripping them the way they stripped the land. But death was not enough to soothe her rage. So the storms still come to this day.

—The Origin Myths of Caelira





7

Novaya glanced at the sun through the window. It was well past sunrise, and Aurora had not returned. She had known it was a mistake—all of it. She should not have let the princess go. And before that, she should have refused the prince and his coins. But the two gold coins he gave was more than she made in a week, and as someone who lived life ready to flee at a moment’s notice, having gold saved was imperative.

Wracked with guilt and worry, Nova had stayed hidden in an alcove of the servants’ wing all night, waiting for Aurora to return. Her eyelids were heavy, and her heart hadn’t stopped racing since the sun came up.

The prince had returned an hour past midnight, his full coin purse clinking with each heavy step. Nova had watched the door to the shelters at the end of the hall, waiting for Rora to follow once the prince disappeared from sight. But she never came. Something terrible must have happened.

Nova’s anxiety was hard to control on the best days. She would lie awake at night, consumed by thoughts of all the things that could go wrong the next day—little things like sewing a stitch wrong and losing her chance to become a full-time seamstress rather than a servant or massive things like accidentally burning the palace to the ground. Her mind would begin to unfurl elaborate disastrous scenarios in which one small mistake led to a dozen more, and her carefully constructed world would crumble around her. And when her emotions raged out of control, something inside her, something even harder to leash, raged too.

Night had gone, and the halls filled with the bustle of servants heading to their posts for the morning. Nova should go and admit her crime to the queen, so that soldiers could be sent out to search for Aurora. Already, she could be lying somewhere dead or dying, and it was all Nova’s fault.

She would almost certainly face banishment for her admission, and far worse if something had truly happened to the kingdom’s heir. A tingle of heat stroked up her spine, and Nova immediately doused her emotions, locking them away behind the imagined door she’d fashioned as a child. Most days, that door was all that stood between her and arrest, so she guessed in that respect, today was no different from any other day.

She had spent hours upon hours agonizing over the control of her magic, knowing one slip and the military would make sure she disappeared, and now she’d been felled by something akin to gossip. She did not know whether disappearing would mean death or imprisonment; it was not as if she could ask questions about the others who had disappeared without raising suspicions about herself.