Aurora’s knife slammed into the center of the target with a gratifying thunk. She reached both hands back, trailing her fingers over the flat sides of the knives tucked away near her shoulder blades in a worn leather holster. Pulling two knives at once, she spun, releasing first one knife, then the other as she turned. One struck directly below the blade already lodged in the center, and the other just above.
Still not enough.
A group of soldiers trickled into the training courtyard, having just returned from a run. Their faces were slick with sweat and their boots messy with grass and mud. A fine layer of dew covered the land today, another sign of the waning Slumber season.
Merrin, one of her frequent guards, said, “Need more of a challenge? We can strap one of those to Elmont and give you a moving target.” He slapped a younger soldier on the back, whose face turned a blistering red.
Elmont was new to the palace guard. He was part of the regiment that manned the palace gate, and their first few encounters had been when Rora was going out for an early ride on her horse, Honey. He had been reluctant to let her leave, eager as he was to prove himself in the guard. It had taken a lot of cajoling and not a little amount of flirting for her to get her way.
She offered them a polite smile. “As interesting as that sounds, I would not risk Elmont just so I can allay my own frustrations.”
Taven stepped forward, his usual serious expression in place. “Spar, Princess?”
A slow smile spread across her face, and she nodded. Taven had been the one to teach her to throw knives and use a bow. He had never laughed once when her blade spun off course or thunked handle first into the target. She’d been restless and lonely and angry, and he helped her channel that into something worthwhile by teaching her about defense. And this morning she had many emotions to channel.
Taven set the rest of his unit up doing drills, and then came back to her. They began slowly, but in half a bell, they were moving close to full speed, their bodies lunging and spinning and dodging. Taven was beyond careful with his blade, never thrusting near or hard enough to actually impale her. She understood the point was to teach her body the moves without endangering her life, but in the event she ever needed to use these skills, she doubted her attacker would be so generous. And right now, especially, she needed a bigger challenge to clear her head. She spun fast, slashing out with her blade. He ducked, and while his bigger body was still recovering from the movement, she swept out a leg, striking him below his calves and taking his legs out from under him.
The other soldiers, who were supposed to be focusing on drills, snickered and cheered. Rora immediately felt guilty as Taven rose to his feet. She should have known it would not be possible to goad a man like him into aggression. He had always been so serious and calm. The day he had been assigned to her personal guard, he had committed himself fully to her protection, as if there was no life, no purpose outside it. She had embarrassed a man that had only ever been loyal to her. She opened her mouth to apologize, but a familiar voice from the courtyard’s entrance interrupted and made something twist in her belly.
“Seems the princess needs a more capable opponent.”
She did not want to look at Cassius. There was such a jumble of emotions inside her that she couldn’t be sure she would not burst into tears at the sight of him. Or send the knife in her hand flying. More than that, she feared he would see the distrust and betrayal written all over her face. So she answered without turning, “Taven is far more capable than I.”
She offered the soldier an apologetic smile.
“Taven, is it?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” The soldier inclined his head toward Cassius. He came to a stop beside her, once again dressed in black. She was dressed similarly today in an old black and gold military uniform she wore for these early-morning training sessions.
“You taught her?” Cassius asked.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
He surveyed Taven for several long moments. Then Cassius turned to Aurora and their eyes met. Anger clawed up her throat, and she struggled to keep her face blank. Better for him to believe he still had the upper hand.
“You taught her well,” Cassius said without looking away from Aurora, “but I’ll take it from here.”
Over Cassius’s shoulder Taven met her gaze, eyebrow raised. She nodded; she had kept him away from his soldiers long enough, and she could not avoid the prince forever.
“You are full of surprises, Princess.”
She smiled, ignoring the bile threatening to rise in her throat. “As are you, Prince Cassius. As are you.”
He circled behind her, and she felt the weight of his touch against one of the knives still sheathed near her shoulder. His breath fanned over her ear as he asked, “May I?”
Without waiting for an answer, he lifted the blade from her. “Good balanced weight,” he said. “I imagine it flies well.”
“Like a dream.”
His mouth was at her ear again—too close, too warm. “Show me.”
She stepped away like it burned. “I think I’m done for the day.”
“Come now, Aurora.” She flinched at his use of her name. Had he used it yesterday? She could not remember. But now it felt too familiar, far too intimate. “What will it take to get you to show me? How much of my pride shall I bargain away?” His hand touched the small of her back. “Or what shall I offer you in return?”
She spun, and before she realized what she was doing, she had the point of her knife beneath his chin. The courtyard went still around them, but Cassius only smiled wider in response. She was unnerved by the darkness that licked at the edge of her thoughts, of the voice inside whispering to push the knife a little harder, to show him she was not so easy to control. All she knew was that she had let fear rule her for too long, and now it was time she took the reins.
“Do you trust me?” she asked, and slowly let the knife drift along his jaw.
His eyes narrowed. “Trust … is not one of my skills.”
“If we are to be married, if we are to someday rule, there is nothing so important as your ability to trust me, and I you.” He watched her warily. “You want something from me,” she continued, “but you’ll not get it unless I trust you.” She was talking about far more than knives, and from his long pause he seemed to know it.
“I’ll hand over my trust in this. What would you have me do?”
She led him to the largest target, the one with an outline of a person meant to test the thrower’s ability to hit a body’s weak spots. She pushed against his chest until he thumped back against the target. Then she snatched the knife from his hand and said, “Stay there.”
After retrieving the blades she’d left in the other target, she moved to stand a good distance away. She stowed all the knives but one and met his eyes. He was leaning on the target, his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles. He gave her a challenging smirk. It was possibly the most handsome she had ever seen him, and yesterday she would have been charmed. Now … she could only hear the words he had said last night.
Tentative. Unsure.
Soft.
Well, she had no intention of being tentative now. She gave no warning, no instructions, only pulled back her elbow and let the knife fly. It thwacked into place a finger’s width to the side of his neck.
When his eyes darkened and his easy posture fell away, she smiled.
“You did promise to trust me,” she said, reaching back for another knife. “Do not worry, when it comes to a blade, I am almost never unsure. The key is to avoid a grip that’s too soft, while likewise not gripping too tightly.”
He stood rigidly still as she carefully sent two more knives toward him. The first landed on the other side of his neck, and the second high in the open space between his thighs.
The last throw had his fists clenching so hard that she had to turn her back so she would not laugh. She pulled another knife from her harness and took a slow breath. When she was about to turn she felt hands at her hips and warmth against her back. She reacted on instinct, shoving an elbow into the body behind her, before stamping hard on his foot. She spun, her knife raised to defend. Cassius was hunched slightly behind her, his hand over his stomach. She swallowed the smile that threatened to break free.
He straightened, his head tilted as if he were surveying her through new eyes. “Was that fun for you?”
“Very.”
He made a sound—a low, husky bark that might have been a laugh. Hard to tell with a man like him.
“I trusted you with my body,” he said. “It’s only fair you trust me with yours.” His eyes roamed down her form slowly, with intent. Rora could almost swear that her heart gave out in that moment, that it refused to beat, and all the blood it held just seeped out into a puddle in her chest.
“W-what?”
It was one thing to think of kissing Cassius last night, to hope that he might be able to show her all the things she was ignorant of when it came to her body and his. But now? She knew he saw her as nothing more than a means to an end, a tool to be used and discarded when no longer necessary.
“You do not have my trust yet, Prince.” And he would never have her body if it were her choice.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She scoffed in answer, mostly because she did not trust herself to lie.
He frowned. “Do you have that little faith in my skills?”
It took a moment for her to realize he meant his skills with a knife. He wished her to stand at the target as he had done. She was so relieved that she let her guard down, and he plucked the knife from her hand.
“Can you trust at least that I would not do you physical harm?”
There was a challenge in his eyes and just a hint of amusement at her fear. That set her blood boiling all over again, and she marched over to the target. He followed, retrieving the blades she had thrown earlier. He moved in close, and she tipped her chin up defiantly. His blue-black eyes roamed her face as he reached behind her back and took several more knives from her holster. He brushed his knuckles over her cheek. She fought against the urge to jerk away. “I like you better like this. No frills, no finery. Just you.”
As he strode away, she saw that the soldiers had given up any pretense of training and stood lined up nearby.
“I hope your aim is as true as you believe, Prince. If not, you’ll have far more than one knife coming at you.” She lifted her chin in the direction of the watching soldiers.
“I told you last night, I enjoy a challenge.” Cassius gave a devilish grin and commanded, “Stretch out your arms.” He waited until she lifted them both and gripped the edges of the target.
Rora refused to show fear or flinch. She held her breath when his arm drew back and the knife came flying end over end toward her. It hit the edge of the target a few inches above her head, and the board vibrated with the force of the strike.
He proceeded to outline her body with blades, seeming to pay particular care to her curves. She felt pinned in by the time he had landed knives alongside her thighs, hips, and the indent of her waist. She hoped that would be the end of it, but he picked up two final knives. Her arms shook with strain, but she stayed still as he sunk another blade below her armpit, just to the right of her breast. She gave an exaggerated yawn. He grinned in response as he lined up for his final throw.
As Cassius drew back his last knife, a shrill wail pierced the air. She had only a moment to place the sound—one of the horns blown from atop the city walls that signified the imminent arrival of an approaching storm—then Cassius’s arm was moving and the blade left his hand.
There was no time to think, to weigh her options. She only knew a storm was coming, and everyone—Cassius, included—would expect her to participate in the kingdom’s defense with a magic she did not have.
She jerked her head up toward the sky and let her arms drop a little. Then she did her best to look shocked and horrified when the blade sunk into her left biceps.
* * *
Cassius’s roar drowned out even the blare of the storm signal. When he saw Aurora’s pale hand touch the hilt of the knife buried in her arm, he wanted to make the whole world bleed, starting with himself. He ran toward her, arriving moments after a few of the soldiers. He wanted to tear their hands off her, but she beat him to it, pushing away their attempts to help. Her hand was smeared with blood. She turned toward Cassius, her face nearly as pale as it had been the night before with layers of powder. The soldiers turned and looked at him like he was the enemy, Aurora too.
In some ways, he was. But not like this. He would never harm her.
“Why did you move?” he snarled.
She tilted her chin up, swaying on her feet. Her lips were beginning to lose that soft peach color. She said, “The horn. I was distracted. I’m sorry.”
He growled, pacing away, tugging at his hair. He should not have been throwing knives at her in the first place. He had let himself forget for a moment what his purpose here was. Her aggression had been a surprising but welcome new morsel of her personality. He had prodded at the fire in her, treated her like a woman he truly wanted, rather than a woman he had to have at any cost. He was meant to charm her, seduce her, steal away her heart. Just another heart, he had told himself. Like all the others he was so good at collecting. Only hers would not harden into stone or glass or crystal when he claimed it.
She was now surrounded by soldiers, each fretting over her as Cassius wished he could do. “Enough,” she snapped. “It is only my arm.”
As if in demonstration, she pulled the blade free like it was nothing more than a needle. The spread of red was barely discernible on the black uniform she wore, but when blood started dripping onto the dirt beneath her, Cassius rushed forward.
Two soldiers stepped in his way before he could touch her, and she was swept up into the arms of the man she called Taven. As she yelled for the soldier to put her down, Cassius demanded, “Where are you taking her?”
Taven did not answer, merely kept moving away, flanked by half a dozen others.
“He is taking her to the palace physician,” another soldier answered.
“I am going with her.”
The remaining soldiers closed ranks. One of Aurora’s guards from yesterday drew his sword, pointing it at Cassius’s chest, as Taven exited the courtyard with Aurora. Cassius knocked the sword from the guard’s hand with one well-placed hit and within a breath, he turned it back on its owner, pressing it harder than necessary into the vulnerable skin beneath the man’s chin. He could have slaughtered the man in front of him and several others by the time they clumsily pulled their weapons.
Cassius growled, “The next time you hold a blade to me, it will end with you sliced open and your insides spilled at my feet. Now tell me where he’s taking her—to a physician directly or to her room?”
The only response was the training of multiple swords on him. Cassius let out a long string of filthy curses, but not one word moved the soldiers in front of him. His mind was clear enough to see a hopeless battle. He needed to regroup and find another way to make things right with the princess.
“Very well,” he seethed. “I will return to my rooms and inform my family of this accident. I expect to be kept informed of her well-being.”
He threw his stolen sword into the dirt and pushed through the soldiers, unworried about their weapons. They let him go, though they followed him inside the palace until he turned down into the guest wing. As soon as he was alone, he spun and punched the nearest wall. Knuckles split and bleeding, he made his way to his room to collect what coin he had.
He should inform his father. If word reached him before Cassius had a chance to explain, his fury was likely to be unmatched by any rage his father had ever thrown. And he had thrown many. But he had to see her first. With his money purse in his pocket, he set off for the royal wing of the palace.
He did not enter the hallway that led to Aurora’s room, but waited nearby in an alcove behind a statue of a Stormling ancestor for someone to leave. It felt like hours passed before a maid bustled from the hall, head down and hands full of bloodied rags.
He stepped into her path, and she yelped, several wet rags slapping against the stone floor. “Your Highness,” she whispered.
“How is she?”
She hesitated, eyes darting back down the hall. He plucked a gold coin from his pocket and asked again, “How is she?”
The girl bit her lip. When he retrieved a second coin, she snatched them both and began in a hurried whisper. “The wound bled a great amount. But it is beginning to slow. She is awake. Coherent. But fatigued. She is pale.”
“Does she have use of her arm? Can she move her fingers? Bend at the elbow?”
“It pains her, but yes.”
“Who is with her?”
“Her Majesty. The physician. A few maids.”
“No soldiers?”
“No. They left to evaluate the storm. To give Her Majesty as much time as possible with the princess before she must attend her duties.”
“What type of storm is it?”
“Skyfire, Your Highness.”
“And how long until it reaches us?”
“A bell. Maybe more, maybe less.”
“Tell Her Majesty to stay with her daughter. I will see to the storm.”
The girl’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “Oh, I ca—”
“If the queen would like to argue, she can find me at the storm terrace. But we both know she would rather stay here.” Cassius pulled out another coin and offered it to her. “Keep me informed of her condition, and I shall keep these coming. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” She grabbed the coin, bent to pick up her fallen rags, and bustled away.
Cassius weighed the coins left in his purse. He had a feeling it would be quite a bit lighter by the time he had all the information he desired, starting with where exactly the storm terrace was located.
* * *
Blue-white light struck the ground in the distance like a whip forged by the gods. Cassius stood on a terrace atop the famous golden dome of the palace. He had heard that in the mornings, sunlight reflected off this dome, making it appear as if two suns hung in the sky, but now dark had fallen hours before it was due, and the clouds pulsed with light.
He sought out the skyfire crystal at the base of his spine, pulling it from the holster in his armor. The hair on his arms rose as energy crackled over his skin. He focused on his connection with the stone, drawing its magic into him, stoking it into something greater, stronger. In the distance, he felt an echo of power bounce back to him.
“There you are,” he murmured. “Come and play.”
As if the storm could hear him, the sky blazed with light—dozens upon dozens of skyfire bolts streaking between clouds, lighting up the expanse of the churning black that had claimed the heavens. It was a show of strength from one storm to another.
Tempests were sentient enough to seek out destruction, to chase victims, or strategize like a commander during battle. But they could not see as a man could. So when he breathed life and magic into the Stormheart in his fist, that skyfire beast could not tell the difference between Cassius and a competing storm; and with a roar of thunder it began to approach Pavan at a quicker pace.
Cassius knew how most Stormlings would fight this battle. From a distance. It was the reason for the terrace upon which he stood, and the four watchtowers facing the cardinal directions. The Queen of Pavan likely would have produced a barrier in front of the city, and waged war against the skyfire there. But casting one’s energy that far took a toll. It took longer to subdue the storm, and the fields surrounding the palace would be scorched beyond use as the skyfire struck again and again in the same area.
There was no challenge, no enjoyment in that kind of fight. He would not stand back and watch the storm flounder and weaken against his magic from afar. He craved victory, battle. Those beasts of the sky—where nature and the unnatural met and merged—centuries of myths and religions and scholars had tried to understand them, to know their origins, their purpose. But the only way to truly know a storm was to flay it open, to wring out its magic, to gorge on it until all that remained was desperation and hunger and fear. That was when the moment came, when the beast stopped fighting and surrendered its proverbial neck to the greater foe.
He lived for that moment. But it could only happen if the storm came close.
He gathered his magic, pulling from the well inside himself and ripping more from the Stormheart. The magic blended together, burning beneath his skin. For a moment, Cassius simply relished the power, then he flung it out far and wide, in all directions, not just toward the storm. He envisioned his magic like a woven textile, as millions upon millions of threads—crossing and knotting until it became a flexible but durable barrier that covered the city from wall to wall.
Then he waited.
The city below was still and quiet—the people hidden away in their homes or shelters as another warning horn sounded, louder and longer than all the rest. Nearer and nearer the storm drew. A few bolts streaked down, but the storm seemed to be biding its time, saving its destruction for where it would do the most damage.
When it had almost reached the city wall, the door behind Cassius slammed open. He scowled when he saw a few of the soldiers who stood between him and Aurora before.
“Why have you not stopped it?” one demanded. “Do it now, before it hits the city.”
He held up a hand, not bothering to answer, and kept his focus trained on the city wall. Every time lightning flashed, he could see the faint shimmer of his barrier. He was confident it would hold, but he would not know how much effort it would take until he felt the first bolt.
He clenched his fist around the Stormheart as the first wall of clouds touched the edge of the city. Power surged in the air moments before five bolts of skyfire rent open the sky.
They struck simultaneously, like five cobras sinking their teeth into their would-be charmer. The blue-white light fragmented against the barrier, filling the night with a bright blaze. His magic rippled under the blows, but stretched taut and whole immediately after. The soldiers behind him went silent.
And then … oh, then came one of his favorite parts.
A high, furious screech carried on the wind. Thunder rumbled, and the heavens rained down wrath upon the land. More skyfire bolts than a dozen men could count struck with a shattering boom, and the night exploded with light as they were repelled.
Cassius grinned despite the effort and held firm, baiting the storm to come closer.
Close enough that he could reach its heart.