Chapter Sixteen
Halfway back to Alyssium, Marin spotted the purple clouds.
Everywhere else, the sky was blue, the kind of unblemished robin’s-egg blue that only a cloudless sky can be. The sea was calm, a nice breeze keeping them sailing at a clip. But those purple clouds were there in a knot, looking like a bruise on otherwise unbroken skin.
That was not good.
Ordinary storms rolled in with wind and rain and roiling waves, with darkening clouds that spread across the sky.
They still weren’t anything to play with—they could be deadly, especially for inexperienced sailors.
But at least they were predictable. You saw them on the horizon; you stayed in port. These were not ordinary storm clouds.
“Oh, that’s pretty,” Ree said.
She looked down at the shrub. “Um, yeah, I suppose so.”
Joining them at the starboard side, Dax looked out at the mass of purple clouds. “Never seen clouds like that. Are they supposed to be that color?”
She hadn’t thought about the fact that neither of them would have seen a magic storm.
Ree hadn’t left his greenhouse, and Dax had been sheltered inside his conservatory.
Magic storms were the result of an imbalance of magic use.
The emperor had issued a slew of laws in the last several years—the worst being no more traveling sorcerers and no more magic use by non-university-trained civilians—that resulted in a lot more magic concentrated near the capital.
The emperor had commanded that sorcerers limit their spells to imperial priorities, and as a consequence, the storms had worsened in frequency and intensity, especially in the outer islands.
It was one of the factors that had led to the revolution and the whole defenestration episode.
Yarrow’s family had talked a lot while they were sailing to Belde about everything the new government was trying to change. But even the most well-intentioned provisional government couldn’t fix years of damage in just a few weeks.
So the storms continued.
This one was far closer to the heart of the Crescent Islands than she’d ever seen.
Perhaps because the city was in disarray?
There weren’t enough sorcerers tasked with doing things like making sure hugely destructive and unpredictable storms filled with horrors kept away from the inner seas.
Staring at it, Marin thought this one was entirely too close to Alyssium. And to us.
Surely, the sorcerers would disperse it before it grew too large.
“Have you ever been through a magic storm?” Marin asked.
“No,” Dax said. “That’s what they look like?”
“Yep.”
“What’s a magic storm?” Ree asked.
“Hopefully, you won’t find out,” Marin said. “They’re unpredictable. It could disperse or head in another direction. If we’re lucky at all, a helpful sorcerer will decide to tame it before it becomes a problem.”
They watched the purple undulate, as if it were eating itself. She shuddered. She guessed it was pretty in the same way a deadly jellyfish was pretty. The sea below it was wine-dark.
“Keep an eye on it,” Marin advised. “We don’t want to get caught in it.”
All of them stared at it some more.
Ree asked, “Should we sail faster?”
“Sure,” Marin said. “You want to blow on the sails?”
“Rude,” Ree said.
Marin winced. “Sorry. Magic storms make me nervous. They shouldn’t exist, and it always feels like they’re really mad about that fact and want everyone to know it.”
“I’d heard theories that they are naturally occurring,” Dax said.
“Sure, maybe, but if that were true, why did they get worse after the emperor decided to hoard magic?” Marin asked.
“I guess it could be a coincidence. I’m not a sorcerer.
Never went to the university. Never even read a book on magical theory.
And anyway, the politics of why it’s here doesn’t matter. The fact that it’s here does matter.”
Quietly, Dax said, “You’re worried.”
She snorted. “Yes.”
Ree crept closer to her ankles. “Oh.”
“What do we do if it hits?” Dax asked.
“Hold on and hope as hard as you can that the universe still wants to be kind,” Marin said. “Until then … Ree’s right. We should try to outrun it.”
Try being the key word.
The storm hit hard and fast. It reached with purple tendrils like elongated fingers, stretching across the robin’s-egg-blue sky. The boiling mass howled after it, chomping up the sea as it crossed the miles in what felt like mere minutes.
There was no outrunning it.
Racing over the deck, Marin shouted instructions to Dax and Ree: seal the hatch and then secure themselves. “Give yourself enough slack to move,” Marin shouted.
Dax lashed Ree to the mast, and he tied a line around his waist.
She eyed the knot he’d used.
“No good. You have to be able to untie it fast if you need to swim.” She crossed to him and quickly tied a better knot. “You pull this to undo it.” She checked on Ree’s knots. “Only untie if we capsize, and it’s swim or drown!” She had to scream to be heard over the winds.
“Understood!” Ree shouted back.
Silver rocked hard in the furious waves, and water sloshed over the deck. Marin stumbled as she made her way back to the helm. With shaking hands, she secured her own knot, keeping enough slack in the line that she’d be able to steer freely.
“Dive deep, Perri!” she shouted with every bit of air in her lungs. She hoped he heard her and hoped extra hard he’d listen.
And then there was no more time for preparation. No more time for words.
The purple clouds enveloped them, and the sea turned black.
She aimed toward a flat spot, tacking in the smoothest part of the water.
She had to avoid sailing on a reach across the breaking waves—they’d roll the boat over.
Gritting her teeth, she concentrated. Every movement mattered. Every choice …
Around them, lightning crackled and danced.
She heard Dax shout and Ree scream and knew why: overhead, the lightning had coalesced into the shape of a white-hot kraken.
Its tentacles stretched above them, crackling with electricity, and its howl was the sound of thunder.
It rattled her bones so hard that they hurt.
But she kept her eyes on the water and the sails.
She thought of her family story and wished she knew how to summon a sea witch, but they were rare and never swam this close to the inner islands.
No miracle was going to pop up to save them.
I’ve used up all my miracles. She should have known the universe wasn’t going to let it be so easy.
Maybe she wasn’t meant to swoop in and save her parents.
Maybe she was doomed to keep making the wrong choices, endangering the people and beings she cared about the most.
I should have told Dax how I feel.
Wait, how do I feel?
I care about him. His sweet innocence. His endless joy. His kindness. His passion for music, for seeing new islands, for … her? I care about him a lot.
A wave slammed into her, and she choked as she inhaled seawater. It threw her hard against the helm, and she clung to it as the boat rocked. When it cleared, she spat out the water and spread her legs wide, bracing herself.
Out in the water, she saw Perri, trying to reach them.
“No!” she screamed at him. “Dive!”
He had to stay under the water, keep himself away from the excess magic in the air—he’d sicken. Magic creatures had been known to die from exposure to magic storms.
Another surge, and she lost sight of all three of them—Perri, Dax, Ree. No!
And then, out of the purple electricity-laced darkness, she heard singing, if it could be called that—a howl against the wind, wordless but with a clear melody. Dax, clinging to the mast, was singing as loud as he could.
It wasn’t a spell. There was no magic in his melody. There was nothing in the music that would turn back a storm. But he kept singing pure defiance. She heard wisps of it, between the howl of the wind, the scream of the lightning kraken, and the crash of the waves, and it kept her fighting.
She wasn’t going to let the storm win.
She wasn’t going to let Iovar win.
She was going to fight the whole universe if she had to.
No one and nothing was going to drown her or Dax or Ree. Or hurt Perri. Or break Silver. She was going to save her boat and save her crew. Hands gripping the helm, Marin steered them between the waves as the sails strained and collapsed and then strained again.
She positioned her boat and let out the sails, allowing them to fill with wind.
They shot across the boiling sea as lightning skittered over the surface.
Her skin tingled with its nearness. She could barely see—water streamed into her eyes, and she had to blink and squint to glimpse the water roiling around them.
As she fought to control her beloved boat, her muscles ached and shook. Her lungs burned. She felt as if they’d been within the storm for hours, days, forever. It was impossible to imagine anything before or after the storm. It encompassed her. It consumed her.
Ahead—was that a patch of pale blue?
Marin aimed for it.
And then the lightning kraken descended. Everything blared white. She felt the waves surge beneath them, and they were tossed into the air.
They didn’t fall.
A second later, the white faded, and all she saw was purple everywhere.
Spinning, they soared higher within the lightning-choked purple clouds.
Marin couldn’t see the sea. She couldn’t see half the boat—the mast was swallowed by clouds.
“Dax! Ree!” Her shouts were instantly silenced by the howling winds and the crashes of thunder.
Her hands clutched the helm, but she couldn’t feel it. The sails were ripped. She saw the tatters of the sails streaming toward her, flapping uselessly, still anchored but torn into strips.
She heard a snap—the mast? Had it broken? “Dax! Ree! Answer me!”
The white lightning kraken was suddenly there, its maw open wide in front of her. She threw her hands up to block her face …
Everything went black and silent.