Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
CALL THE STORM
T hree booms startle me out of a nightmare. I'm ripping off the covers and lurching out of bed, dashing towards the balcony before my common sense catches up.
Because, of course, we run directly toward danger instead of away.
Pushing open the doors I step out, staring in disbelief at the scene before me as heavy rain instantly soaks me to the skin, though every hair stands on end.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Seven lightning strikes scatter across the city before there's a lull, and the ground shakes. My third floor room is high enough to give me a decent view, but I can't see over the tops of other buildings.
Flame illuminates the skyline, and what flame withstands the onslaught of this unnatural storm? The lightning strikes again, this time closer to home.
I shield my face against more than the storm, cursing, then stumble back and whirl to dash back into my bedroom, whipping my nightshirt over my head as I find clothing and dress, cursing in five different languages which is one of the pleasures of being a natural polyglot.
Juliette intercepts me as soon as I step into the hall and we meet Numair, M?r?ngar?, and Lela in the courtyard. I cast a brief gaze over my assembled knights.
“Let's go,” I shout, wind whipping the words from me.
We follow the sound of crackling flames. The heat and roar of fire grows closer and then we're turning a corner, skidding to a halt as it hits us full force.
Juliette stares up at the townhouse in disbelief. “How can a fire eat through wards?” she says, asking what we're all thinking.
This isn't ordinary fire. It also isn't spreading. I glance up at the sky, face stiff with tension. What thunder god is up there, and why has he struck now?
A scout jogs towards me, brown-skinned with bronde curls, brown eyes sharp. Wanjenne, one of our Kenyan-Faronnesse halflings.
She stops and bows. “The lightning struck eighteen different targets in the city from prelim recon.”
“Are they identified?” Lela asks sharply.
“We're still scrambling, Sir. We’ll have more information shortly.”
“You use the word target,” I say.
Wanjenne hesitates, eyes flickering. “It may be premature, Lady.”
But I don't think it is. “Injuries? Deaths?”
“We’ll have more information shortly, Lady. ”
I nod dismissal. She whirls on her heels, jogging away. Numair, who’d slipped away, rejoins us, looking up at the burning building.
“Water wardens are on their way, but we're assuming every District has been hit,” he says. “We thought this was a residential building. Some of the neighbors say one thing. . .some of them say another.”
Fabulous.
“Inform the Commander,” I say, and Numair nods.
I glance up at the sky again, grim. Now the lightning is horizontal, and each flash illuminates the outline of a massive figure and what seem to be wings. At that altitude, that wingspan could easily engulf half a city block.
A new roar accompanies the thunder, and more light, but this is different. Flame. I don't understand how I know. Wyverns are a diminished infant cousin. But I know Dragon.
Juliette follows my gaze, though her expression doesn't change. “What are you looking at, Aerinne?”
“The lightning is odd,” I say curtly. They don't see what I see. Turning back to the building, “We enter and see if anyone is trapped inside.”
“Squads are already organized,” Numair says, grabbing my upper arm. I whip my head towards him and hiss, but he doesn't let go. “You're not going into a burning building, Rinne!”
My sister-cousins flank me, glaring at him. He winces and almost lets go, poking out his bottom lip a little. “Don't be idiots, the three of you! The rescue groups?—”
“Are no more qualified to enter a burning building and search for survivors than I am. Let go. ”
He begins to slide into a full-on adult-ish male pout when M?r?ngar? jogs up. He glances at Numair's hand, giving my stubborn chevalier a mild look—one of Baba's mild looks.
Numair's expression grows stubborn. “I'm not letting the girls rush into a?—”
As I step forward, yanking him with me if that's really how he wants this night to go, there's another drumbeat of thunder and seconds later, a crash of lightning halfway between me and the burning building.
An explosion.
I'm thrown, reminding me of the day High Fae picked me up and flung me into a tree like a kid tossing a frisbee.
I land on my back away from the blast, ears ringing, chunks of rock and debris raining down as I throw my arms up to cover my head, hastily erecting a shield against any magical elements.
My cloak catches on fire and I roll to put it out.
When I roll onto my back again, about to flip to my feet, terrible pain tears through my chest. I glance down at the jagged piece of wood impaling my abdomen—and stare, shocked.
I can't remove it unless I want to bleed out, and I should stay still but I need to move in case there's another?—
Pain in my head, then black as I fade. . .
And wake to the misty place, a dull echo in my head and abdomen reassuring me I'm still attached to my body. I sit up, vision clear and ears no longer ringing, and stare.
The Prince, clad in a sleeveless gray robe open to the waist, his blue-black hair draped over his shoulders, kneels, cradling a small body in his arms. He isn't alone.
Three shadowy figures surround him, at least two coming into clarity as I watch .
A black Dragon rests a massive chin on its claws, his deep blue eyes watching me with ancient calm.
His tail lies in a semicircle around Renaud and the others.
A tall two-legged male clad in black-and-gold scaled and spiky armor stands at the Dragon’s side, a broadsword at his side.
His head is helmed—not even a slit for eyes.
And closest to Renaud, the shadowy outline of a winged male.
He crouches, still but ready, his wings raised behind him.
Every instinct in me screams to back away, but Renaud’s anguish reels me in. There are tears down his pale cheeks, his still face. He rocks the boy in his arms and I flinch when I realize I'm looking at white-blond hair, the small body dressed in a child's white-and-blue formal Court robes.
The lightning followed me here, illuminating the dense grayness, and I scramble to my knees when I see another body, the mist drawing away to reveal?—
I crawl forward, every self-preservation instinct gone.
“ Mother. ”
The Prince doesn't look up, but the lightning strikes over and over and as I close in on them, a howl rises. Wind, a demon's shrieks, a maelstrom I recognize. It whips my hair and pummels my side, sending me sprawling.
Recovering, I push to my kneels, crawling forward when the Prince looks up.
I freeze.
His eyes. . .his eyes are. . .mad. There are no whites, only the pale moonstone gray struck through with striations of black and blue, and I swear I see lightning in his eyes too, or perhaps evening stars.
He stares and I don't know if he sees me; I don't care .
I lurch forward, toward my mother's still body dressed in a thin linen sheath, her true gold hair in two shelled and beaded braids down her chest, her skin golden brown from days of sun and sand. She'd been porcelain pale the years I'd known her.
His pale lips move, forming a word, and I can't tell whose name he speaks. Embriel, Muriel, Aerinne. Or if it’s just a denial. All I can tell is the emotion he's feeling ravages him. Blank, eerie angelic beauty, the eyes of a demigod's shattered mind, and the storm at his back.
Sara al hudar, sa ni rasha—Call the Storm and We will Answer. The motto of House Montague.
His storm.
This. This is all the rage and grief and anguish and denial I've been searching for every time we meet, confused when I find nothing. . .dreading its emergence.
If I’d had his storm, his lightning, I would have destroyed the city years ago, so I can’t in good conscience blame him now.
Not when I stare at the child in his arms.
He doesn't move, staring into my face. If he sees me at all. I drop my gaze from his and stare at Embriel—the boy Renaud must see him as now—then I look at my mother. The younger version he must remember her as.
We kneel on either side of her, our dead between us, the others surrounding us in silence.
Renaud murmurs a few Ninephene words then kisses the boy's forehead and lowers him carefully to lay next to my mother. I flinch. It's Embriel's face, Embriel's innocence. He cups her cheek, looking at her the way I’ve seen Danon look at me. A brother’s love, a ruler’s guilt .
My breath comes in ragged gasps now, though it must be an affectation of this plane—we're in no physical space.
The Prince turns to me, peels his lips back and lunges. I throw myself backward but he's fast. He’s crouching over me, incisors sharpening, his clawed hand around my throat.
“You.”
He's choking me, and I try to fight him but there's little strength in my arms as I dig my nails into his hands.
“Mother,” I manage to choke out. “My mother.”
That's all I want—to see her before he kills me. In this place I'm tired, more weary than I have any right to be at my tender age, and any fires in me to take his life, to avenge her death, have sputtered out.
I want to sleep.
The Dragon rumbles. Armored feet pace forward, the massive figure looming over us. Then the gray angel is there—though I think the wings membranous, rather than feathered—crouching at Renaud's feet, the outline of his head tilted as he stares at me, then the Prince.
My breath is slowly being cut off.
“You will kill her,” the Dragon rumbles. “She will not come back if you kill her here. Consider with care.”
Renaud's fingers tighten.
“We're at war,” the armored male says, voice hollow. “I remain unconvinced, but killing her now offers no advantage. It will change nothing and she may be useful. In any case—death is mercy. Do you feel merciful?”
The hand tightens, and my vision goes dark. The shadowy angel lunges close to Renaud, reaching out to grab his wrist. A snarl comes from that amorphous chest .
“This is not what you want,” comes the angel’s low, cold voice. “Think.”
“Let him choose,” the armored one says.
“ No,” the angel snaps. “ None of you are qualified to make this choice. I am the one who? — ”
“If we don't allow him to choose, we will always be at war.”
The Dragon turns his head, eyeing us all, and sighs a snort of hot air.
“I'll destroy us all,” the angel snarls. “If this child pays—and we orchestrated everything —then so will we, I swear it.”
The Prince loosens his hold and I gasp, begin to cough. He lowers his head, bracing himself with his hands on either side of me and if it weren't such a predatory position it would feel intimate.
But murder is intimate.
Renaud lifts his head, his eyes glassy and those pale, perfect cheeks still stained with tears. He raises to his knees and reaches out a hand again, this time the fingers almost gentle. The gray shrinks, revealing whites, a thin rim of black around blue irises.
“My son ,” he says.
His anguish is crushing. “And my mother.”
Those glassy eyes focus, staring into mine. “I know.”
Renaud slides his hand to cup the back of my neck and lifts me to a half-sitting position as if he's going to replace the boy he'd cradled in his arms moments ago with me. His other hand rests on my lower stomach.
The shadow angel slowly releases Renaud’s wrist, still with that watchful aura. The armored male turns and walks away as the Dragon continues to watch .
“It is almost time, little Harpy,” the Dragon says. “We waited, as promised.” Big, impassive blue eyes turn toward the boy.
Renaud pulls me against his chest and I do nothing. Confused, tired, angry and sad. He buries his face in my hair.
“If our love ends in your death,” he whispers, “it won't be by my hand. We will live with this, Aerinne, even if by living we destroy each other. But I will not lose you. Not even for my sisters. Not even to avenge my son.”
“Let her go now,” the shadow angel says. “She’s injured. She will die, Renaud. She’s still too young.”
I open my eyes to searing pain and hammers at my temples.
I taste salt on my lips and lift the back of my shaking hand to smear away a stream of blood.
The hard ground is cold and wet beneath me and as I stare up into the night sky, the thunder and the lashing rain, gentles to a soft keening rather than ravaging grief.
The remnants of the dream begin to fade, no matter how I try to grasp them. Not a dream?—
Darkan. Darkan?
Yes. Dark angel, you call me, and I have become that for you.
The storm.
I told you not to go out in it. But there's nothing in his voice except the same weariness as mine.
The Dra ? —
Yes. Sleep awhile longer, my halfling . I will wake you when it’s time. I am here.
Numair kneels above me, his expression terrible. “We sent for Ishaan, Rinne. Hold on. We have to leave the stake in or you'll bleed out.”
No, no I don't want to sleep. Dark angel. The Dragon. My Dragon. . .Renaud. I almost grimace, but am distracted for a searing moment by the beloved name entombed in the darkest corner of a locked mind. Rani ? —
When it’s time.
When my eyes close, there's no mist to greet me.
The name is gone. But not the ever present feeling that something has always been missing. That something has been taken.