The first crackles of lightning scatter across my skin as the perfect storm swirls above me. Its been building since yesterday—from the moment I last subdued it.

The Storm Vault is so high that normally I can’t see the eye of the storm, but this one’s growing so fast that the dark center is an expanding mass before my eyes.

It’s coming for me.

The Vault is constructed of thick stone, hundreds of feet high and wide, and lined with about a million protective spells. There’s only one way in and one way out—through an ante-room that leads to another airtight room. There are three sealed doors between me and the rest of Erawind.

I don’t kid myself. It’s not the doors or the spells that keep the storm under control.

It’s me.

I call the powerful force to me, coaxing it down, ignoring the intense fear that rises inside me.

Curse my survival instincts. If I listened to them, I’d run as far and fast as I could away from this place. But there’s no escape from my daily task.

Centuries ago, the gargoyles conjured dark magic to create the perfect storm to wipe out the elven race. Hundreds of elves lost their lives while the Elven Command tried to subdue the storm—but they couldn’t destroy it. Realizing they had no choice but to contain its fury, the elves created the Storm Vault and tried to trap the storm inside.

But even their most powerful spells couldn’t keep it here. At the moment when the storm’s fury would have destroyed the last spellcaster, her young daughter burst through the Vault’s defenses and ran to her. That’s when a miracle happened. The girl absorbed the power of the storm into her body. The storm calmed for the first time.

That girl was the first Storm Princess. I’m the fourth.

I’ll stay in my role until another princess is revealed and replaces me. There’s no retirement. No choice. If I try to leave, the storm will follow me.

Until it latches onto another Storm Princess, I’m a living, breathing lightning rod. And if I die before another princess is revealed, the storm will be unleashed. We’re connected, the storm and I. As long as I’m alive, the perfect storm remains under control.

I control it. Even if it doesn’t feel that way.

I murmur, “C’mon, Beast, what have you got for me today?”

I’ve been calling it the ‘beast’ for as long as I’ve been coming to the Vault—every day since I was eighteen when the storm chose me. That was seven years ago.

I stand firm as a streak of lightning blazes from the distance, striking me as fast as I can blink. It zaps the soft spot between my shoulder and my collarbone, and despite my preparedness, a soft ‘oh’ escapes my lips. Somehow, it always knows where to hurt me most. I roll my shoulders and focus on my breathing, knowing that if I stay calm, the strikes won’t hurt as much.

My job is simple: absorb the elements. Take the worst of the storm into my body to keep it from exploding from the Vault. I do this every day. Every day the storm calms, and then it builds again. Again and again, I come here to calm it. I should be used to my daily ritual, but somehow the storm always finds ways to surprise me.

Right now, it’s the lightning I need to worry about.

Another strike licks fire across the back of my neck and I know it’s time to move. I lift my hands above my head, slowly drawing them down and across my body, controlling my breathing as I step into a warrior’s routine.

The princess before me was a dancer named Mai Reverie. I don’t have the grace for dancing. Combat moves are the closest I get.

The next strike falls directly through the circle of my arms, but it curves at the last moment. It follows the angle of my arms, curling to match my form, traveling an inch above my skin, moving with me instead of against me.

Another strike follows, joining the first and spreading across my body, curling around me in a white and blue light show. Strike by strike, the lightning follows my movements. As fast as I absorb one strike, another one hits, but the contact is soft now. Sometimes I feel like the storm is an angry child who wants only to be noticed, to have someone take care of it.

The first time the lightning moved with me, nobody believed me. Only my personal advisor, Elise, is allowed into the ante-room to watch me through the large glass panels on that side of the Vault. One day, my bonded partner will be allowed in here too, but for now Elise is my only witness and even she struggles to believe what she sees.

The lightning plays across my skin and taps my shoulder.

I grin. “Oh, you want my attention, do you?”

But my smile quickly fades, because the light show disperses and I realize that the tap to my shoulder was a warning. The atmospheric force bearing down on me is stronger than ever. It presses against me with suffocating density; like a blanket through which I can’t breathe. I gasp against the sudden pressure. Then, just as fast, it lifts.

I look up and wish I hadn’t. Storm clouds gather at unnerving speed. The lightning gives way to something worse.

Rain.

I never feared rain before I became the Princess. Sure, it’s wet and cold, but the rain produced by the perfect storm is something else—sharp as needles, intense, drowning.

I take a deep breath. It’s the last one I’ll get for a while.

A blast of thunder tears my hearing to shreds and then the rain buckets down. I can’t absorb it in the same way that I absorb the lightning. All I can do is hold onto it like I’m some sort of rain magnet.

Water fills the space around me as if I’m standing in an invisible orb. There are drains beneath me, but they’re never fast enough. In moments, I’ll be swimming…

The rain sweeps down, flattening my hair against my back, drowning my clothing in ice. Sometimes the rain is hot like lava. The first time it burned me, it shocked me to my core.

Today, it’s cold. So cold. I shudder so hard I lose my warrior pose.

That’s when the rain’s tone changes.

I frown, still holding my breath.

A whisper reaches me through the pounding flood of water. I strain to identify the sound, but I can’t make it out.

My feet are covered in the deluge and it rises to my calves, then my waist. As new raindrops hit the surface around me, I sense a melody in it, sounds I’ve never heard before, but I’m not sure how that’s possible.

I stretch out my arms, palms upward to the strange new beat. Raindrops slam my skin. I struggle to focus on the swooshing whispers, trying to hear…

Curse, curse, curse…

Your husband…

If the rain weren’t pushing down on me so hard, my eyebrows would have risen into my hair. As it is, all I manage is a wonky, single eyebrow lift.

I don’t have a husband. Not yet.

But my twenty-fifth birthday is a month away and I’m required to bond. All Princesses have to, because there comes a time when we can’t control the storm on our own. We need to share the physical burden and only the strongest male elf can share it with us. He can’t control the storm like we can—he can’t use its power—but he acts as an extra buffer, an extension of our own bodies so to speak.

I dare to take a breath, inhaling needles of cold water, and shout into the growing wind. “What do you mean?”

Death.

Not by choice. By curse.

Death? What the…?

If I die and another princess isn’t waiting to replace me, the elements will break out of the Storm Vault and tear Erawind to shreds. It’s the reason everyone treats me like I’m made of porcelain. My death would unleash the fury that killed so many elves long ago and nearly destroyed my home.

A dozen curse words rest on the end of my tongue but I don’t let them loose. Elves believe that language holds power and a word spoken aloud in anger returns that anger to the speaker. I can swear inside my head as much as I like, but a spoken curse word is just that—a curse. And right now, I’m already hearing ‘curse’ way more than I want to.

“How?” I scream.

Your husband will kill you.

Not by choice.

I freeze. Still it repeats, over and over and the message is loud and clear: My husband is going to kill me. It won’t be because he wants to. He’s going to be cursed.

Against my will, I’m shaken to my core. Still the rain pours down and I can’t listen to it anymore. I slap my hands over my ears. For the first time, my resolve slips. I’ve been calming the storm for so long that it’s a part of my life. A strange part, that’s for sure, but something I do to keep my people safe. Now I want nothing more than to escape. The rain is talking to me, for heaven’s sake!

Fear gives way to frustration and something else I haven’t felt for a long time—panic. I struggle against that emotion. The last time I felt panic that bad, I hurt someone I cared about.

I struggle to push the emotion away, but it clouds my logic and rises like the rainwater, rushing against me.

The orb of water has almost reached my neck. My hair floats behind me. My arms are immersed. I can’t feel my feet. It’s so cold that my toes have turned numb. At the same time, the lightning returns.

It crackles around me and through me. It glows like electric eels in the water, lighting me up. And still the rain whispers to me… Kill, curse, husband, kill, curse…

“Enough!”

With as much strength as I can muster, I push my arms upward, willing the lightning to follow my movement like it did before. The glowing strings of electricity speed upward, leaping from the water like spears. The lightning doesn’t stop there. Airborne once more, it strikes upward, lashing into the heart of the storm above me. Striking itself with my will.

An enormous crack slams my hearing so loudly that I scream.

Instantly, the rain stops. The water drains away into the floor. The thunderclouds disperse. All that remains is a wisp of white fog.

The storm is gone.

I stopped the storm, but not in the way I usually do. Normally, I wait patiently for it to do its thing. Today, I fought back. Somehow, I turned it on itself.

I drop to the floor, exhausted and drenched, hands loose at my sides, hair streaming down my back. There was a time I thought it would be fun to conquer the Vault wearing boots and leather like some kind of warrior princess. It turned out that was a good way to ruin expensive leather and chafe myself in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. The Princess before me wore a flowing white dress and floated on the water, meditating, even through the lightning strikes.

These days I opt for a black, full-body swimsuit made of thick material. Unfortunately, all attempts to waterproof it turned out to be useless. But it saves my dignity when I emerge from the Vault looking like a wet cat.

I drag myself to the first door, my whole body filled with worry, barely glancing up to see Elise pressed against the glass. Her hand moves, but I’m too tired to interpret what she’s trying to signal. She steps back as I push the door open. It’s spelled to open only for me so nobody else can get through it.

There’s enough light for me to see the worry written across her face. “Princess, you need to—”

My panic resurfaces and I babble over the top of her. “It’s gone wild, Elise. I can’t predict what’s going to happen in there anymore. I don’t know how much longer I can contain it on my own.” As much as I hate to admit it, I need to bond. Although, if I believe the whispering rain’s prediction that my husband will kill me, getting married is the worst thing I could do.

I shake my head and then freeze, realizing what Elise was trying to warn me about.

We aren’t alone.

Two male elves wait in the shadows near the far door, one taller than the other.

Before Elise can speak again, the taller male steps into the light, but his head is down so I can’t see his face. In a single fluid movement, he drops to one knee, both palms raised toward me.

I stare in shock at the red stone he holds out to me in his open hands.

Every Elven House has a heartstone. All of them are priceless, irreplaceable, but this one is… legendary.

The size of my fist, the rock casts ruby light around us from a thousand carefully cut facets. There’s no mistaking it. It was the first heartstone ever created—the first true heart.

This stone belongs to the House of Rath.

My heart jumps. The male’s head is still down. All I can see is his hair: light brown, with a telltale kick on one side. I almost reach out to run my hands through it. It’s been so long…

I haven’t seen Baelen Rath since we were teenagers. Or, more correctly, since the day I almost killed him.

His name passes my lips before I can stop myself. “Bae.”

If he heard me, he hides it. His arms don’t waver.

The heartstone glints at me.

The male beside him steps into the light, unsmiling, staring at me. “Princess, the stone is offered to you.”

I blink. “What?”

The male’s forbidding expression turns to confusion. He spins to Elise. “Is she not aware of the protocols?”

Elise is ashen, her face paler than I’ve ever seen it. She doesn’t touch me—that would be dangerous right now—but her hand lifts in my direction. “Princess?”

The protocols…

Bae looks up for the first time and I catch my breath. His green eyes pierce mine. The cut of his jaw is unyielding. I follow the shape of his high cheekbones to his chin and the pulse at his neck.

Then he tilts his head to reveal the scar that cuts from his right temple down the side of his face and curves behind his ear. The scar splits at his jawline and slashes beneath his chin like a curling vine, as if a single wound wasn’t enough.

His voice is like ice as he turns the scar fully into the light. “This is what you wanted to see?”

“I… No…” My voice fails me. He’s wrong. I don’t want to see the scar. I want to see that he’s okay despite it.

But the fact that he’s holding his family’s heartstone out to me—offering it to me—means that he intends to be a champion in the fight for my hand. He intends to fight for me. By taking the stone, I will show him that I accept his nomination.

The thing is, the protocols force me to take it. The whole process is designed to make it look like I have a choice, but I don’t. If I refuse to accept him as a champion, then I’ll dishonor his entire House.

The problem is… he’s the only one left. He’s the only remaining Rath. The fight for my hand isn’t all about battle. It’s a game of wits first and strength last. But the final fight between the two remaining champions is to the death. It’s designed that way so the loser doesn’t live to challenge the marriage bond. If Bae fights and dies, his House will die with him.

The scar is a painful reminder that I almost ended his life once. I can’t do it again.

I take a step back. “I can’t…”

His advisor freezes beside him. I recognize the male elf as the same one who served the late Commander Rath. Baelen’s father passed away last year. I attended the wake and it was my first chance in seven years to speak with Bae. But a funeral is the one time that a Princess’s wishes don’t hold sway and despite trying to reach Baelen, I’d barely seen him from a distance before my personal guard whisked me away.

The advisor’s voice rises. “Does the Princess intend to offend the House of Rath?”

“My lord…” Elise hurries to defend me but I stop her.

I don’t touch her. That would be lethal with the storm’s rage still filling my veins.

As much as I feel like a mere vessel for the storm sometimes, the reality is that I control its power afterward. My outstretched hand crackles with lightning. The forces I’ve absorbed want to be released. It’s my responsibility to subdue the storm each day, but it gives me the power to wield its fury.

Technically right now, I am the storm.

It occurs to me then to wonder how long Baelen and his advisor were waiting inside the ante-room; how much they saw. It’s common knowledge that I can tame the lightning, but what I just did—stopping the storm in its tracks—was entirely unexpected. I have no idea if I can trust them to keep that secret.

Despite the power raging inside me, I’m tired. All I want is to slump in a warm bath and wash off the cold rain and its ominous message about my husband killing me.

More than anything, I want Bae to lower his hands.

I can’t take the heartstone from him without talking with him first. I can’t let him risk his life like this. Not for me. Not for anything.

I address his advisor. “My lord, you mistake my intentions. I can’t receive the heartstone right now. I’ve just come from the Vault. If I touch the stone, I’ll destroy it.”

I draw myself upright with my remaining strength, focusing on a point past the advisor’s face. “The power inside me will destroy the stone and anyone holding it.”

I lower my eyes to Bae’s, hoping he hears the message in my next words because I may not get another chance to say them. “I won’t be responsible for the death of the last Rath.”

I step up beside Bae, keeping my distance from him, but closing the gap between me and his advisor. The advisor takes a hasty step backward.

I sense Bae shift, his face turned to mine, but I don’t have time to assess his reaction—whether he’s as offended as his advisor is or whether he heard the fear in my voice and understood it.

I hiss at the advisor. “I will kill anything that I touch right now. Get out of my way and come back at a more appropriate time.”

He makes way for me as I push for the door and stride through the next room. Elise stays close on my heels. As my personal advisor, only Elise is supposed to be allowed inside the Vault’s ante-room. She’s the only one who sees what I go through to keep my people safe. How Bae and his advisor got inside the ante-room is something I mean to find out.

The members of my all-female personal guard, also known as the Storm Command, wait outside the final door. I prefer to think of them as the nunnery. They’ll surround me once I reach them, making sure nothing and nobody comes near me. That includes any male elf or even female who isn’t part of the Storm Command.

I can’t imagine what Jordan—the head of the nunnery—will say about me being approached by a male in the ante-room. It’s her job to keep all elves away from me. Until one of them wins the right to marry me, all contact is forbidden. Even the heartstone protocol is supposed to take place in a very public arena under intense scrutiny.

I risk a glance back at Bae through the open doors between us. He’s on his feet, turned in my direction. The stone rests in his fist at his side. I’m amazed at how it disappears inside his big hands. He was always the tallest, strongest, biggest.

All Raths are built for war. Fighting. Protecting.

It’s the reason they’re all dead.

I clench my jaw. I won’t let you die, too.

I push on the final door and Jordan immediately assaults me. The nunnery snaps to attention—ten strong female elves—forming a wide circle around me in the broad corridor. They don’t dare come within five feet of me, and they won’t let anyone else either.

To my surprise, Jordan’s expression is as worried as Elise’s—not a look I’m used to seeing on her face. Jordan is always confident, composed, and in control.

Her face is flushed. She holds out her arm horizontal to her chest and rests her forehead on it in a gesture of remorse. “Princess, I ask your forgiveness. I had no power to stop him.”

My eyes narrow. As the head of my personal guard, Jordan is ranked more highly than any other military officer. She doesn’t control the army—only the nunnery—but no other elf can give her orders except for me. It’s a necessary precaution to ensure that nobody can get to me.

The only military position of higher authority than Jordan’s is the Commander of the elven army—again for my personal safety: it’s important for the leader of the army to communicate directly with me without obstruction from my guard. Baelen’s father used to fill that position but he stayed away from me. After what I did to his son, I didn’t blame him.

Luckily, the gargoyles have been quiet for the last seven years so it was possible for him to keep his distance. After his death, a temporary replacement filled the position, but to my knowledge, the Elven Command hasn’t announced a permanent replacement yet.

“Jordan?”

“I received word while you were in the Vault. Baelen Rath is now the Commander of the armed forces.”

And the only male allowed near me.

My legs almost fail me with shock—but at the same time a thread of relief flows through me. Maybe now I’ll have the chance to convince him not to be a champion…

At least it explains how he got past Jordan and made his way inside the ante-room.

She steps back, her focus shifting to a point behind me, and I suddenly realize that the door didn’t close when I passed through it. I’d thought Elise was right behind me, but she’s hovering in the background.

I sense Bae’s presence in the doorway like a force stronger than the lightning. I twist to assess the distance between us, the logical part of my brain telling me I can’t endanger him. The illogical part wants me to close the gap between us.

He steps forward, allowing the door to close behind him, moving far closer than anyone else would dare. His eyes don’t waver from mine. The heartstone is nowhere in sight.

“Marbella Mercy.”

It’s strange to hear him say my name. Everyone else calls me ‘Princess’ or worse: ‘the Princess’ even if they’re speaking to me, as if I’m a thing. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard my name associated with my House: the House of Mercy. When I became the Princess, I had to leave my home and my family behind. My mother’s allowed to visit me once each year, but I’m not allowed to see my father and brother.

“I meant what I said,” I tell him. “I could hurt you right now.”

If he’s worried, he doesn’t show it. “Danger never bothered me.”

Spoken by anyone else, those words would sound conceited, but from a Rath they only ring with truth. I try to quell the smile forcing its way onto my lips. “I learned that about you a long time ago.”

Jordan clears her throat, her face flaming. Her eyes dart left. We’re blocking the corridor and, although it’s not a frequently traveled path, elves are gathering on either side unable to get through. Jordan’s expression makes it clear that we’re creating a spectacle.

On the eve of the marriage protocols, a spectacle is a bad thing. I remind myself that I’m not a girl anymore. I can’t catch Bae’s hand in mine like I once did, can’t tell him my secrets, can’t even smile…

I force myself to take a step away from him. He might outrank Jordan but he doesn’t outrank me. Damn that logical side of my brain. I want to stomp on it and kick it into a corner.

I swallow and speak loudly. “Commander Rath, you will attend the War Room to discuss your appointment. My Storm Command will be in attendance. I expect you there in two hours.”

I spin without another word, asserting my authority. He may be the Commander of the army but as a potential champion there are rules he has to follow.

The nunnery closes around me, stopping all the gaps that someone could step through, protecting me even from myself.

I’m supposed to be alone, untouched, pure, and pristine.

Only Baelen Rath knows that I’m not.