Chapter 27
Kael
Dereck Thorne’s men advanced, our soldiers retreating in tight defensive formation.
They struck the outer walls with stolen cannons.
From the shouts along the walls, I gathered they’d burned houses on their way to the castle, sowing mayhem through the city.
Some civilians joined them; some tried to shove them back.
Word from the archers was that the horde would reach the bridge soon, a swarm armed with torches and steel.
My heart did not stutter. My palms stayed dry. We had stood in this place before, and it was only a matter of time before I reduced this army to ash.
This whole notion of a staged siege buzzed at me like a persistent mosquito. I wanted to swat it and be done. But Lionel had insisted we make it look as though they had trampled us into a corner and left us no choice but to summon the storm.
“Archers!” someone shouted from the parapets. “Strike!”
A rain of arrows, invisible in the night sky, fell beyond the bridge. Enraged men dropped where they stood.
“Cannons!” another voice barked.
Several roars shook the ground near me, far weaker than what the castle truly held. Again, a staged siege. We had to play our parts.
Lionel stood beside me, clad in silver armor engraved with a golden lily over his breastplate, a dark blue cloak trailing behind him. His hair was bound in a black and silver knot. His palms rested atop the pommel of his longsword, the blade planted in the earth. No crown. No royal guards.
“Quite the sight…” I said as I gazed ahead, making idle conversation while the wolf inside scratched for release. The riot ahead twisted through the streets like a living serpent of flame.
“Yes, Kael, bloodshed is always so riveting.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. He did not enjoy my jest.
I unsheathed my sword.
“What is this for?” he asked, though he knew he would have to let me stain the blade red.
“You told me to wait before I release the storm, but you never forbade me from having a bit of fun with steel.” My voice came out a snarl. The thought of pushing my blade into a rioter’s flesh was a welcomed one.
Lionel sighed like a weary father who disapproved but would let it pass. “Go. But let them pass the gate first before you unleash your thunder.”
I dipped my head. “Understood, Your Highness.”
A vile smile crept across my face as I descended the steps and marched to the outer gates. The bridge would soon tremble beneath the weight of a hundred crazed rioters.
Our soldiers, armed with blackiron swords and steel plate, met the charge with clashing metal and raw shouts. Thorne’s army was a mess of plate, leather, and chainmail, a swarm of angry rats gnashing for blood. But they were many. Far more than I first expected.
Perhaps we would not need to pretend after all to let them cross the bridge and reach the courtyard.
A series of booms rolled through the city. Cannons on their side had fired, boulders crashing against the outer walls again. My gaze tracked one as it struck above the gates, tearing a chunk of the gatehouse to rubble.
I quickened my steps. I wanted this done. I wanted the damned farce over with so the mosquito whining at my ear would finally die, so nothing stood between me and what I actually meant to do.
What was that, exactly?
Every drop of blood, every bone in me burned to return to the castle. To the armory where I’d left Evie, all tears and regret. To hold her again. To drown myself in her rose scent. To tell her I would keep her safe, somehow. To mend what I had broken, because I had fucked it up again.
I had hurt her to prove another moot point. That she ought to stay away for her own sake.
But she was not afraid of the storm anymore. She would walk straight into it, and I could not stop her. I could not stay away, and neither would she. And I did not want her to. Which made me as foolish as she was.
So I had only one thing in mind. End this and return to my little doe.
My blade struck the steel of a rioter. I pressed forward until he stumbled, then drove the blade into the gap between his cuirass and breeches. The wet squelch was exquisite.
Another sword swung for me. I ducked and thrust out my hand. My attacker froze mid-strike, snared in my magic, and he screamed, “The Court Wizard!” before I cut his head clean.
More blood. More steel on steel. The sound followed me as I carved through the crowd. I had not fought with a blade in years, and gods, I had missed it, the simplicity of it, the way each kill coaxed the storm inside me.
But I was also a touch rusty, which earned me a few cuts and warm blood trailing down my face. It only rattled the storm harder.
Oh, they were about to see something unimaginable. A storm so bright it would blind every soul on this battlefield.
I could not wait to watch them burn.
Up ahead, fire writhed and curled in the air like flaming tentacles, devouring all in their reach. Thalen and his battlemages.
I joined them, swinging my blade in rhythm with their quarterstaffs, cutting down any fool who dared step close.
“How long are we supposed to hold them?” Thalen shouted across the clash.
“Not for long!” I called back, my sword buried in someone’s ribs.
The corpse clung to the blade before I shoved it aside and let it fall with a clank.
And then I saw him through the smoke.
Thorne looked every inch the paladin he fancied himself to be. Broad-shouldered, polished, dark blond hair turning white, swollen with his own importance. All sword, all shield, no humility. He carried himself like a man convinced the world should part simply because he had arrived.
But anyone with sense could see past his gleaming armor to the blood splatters crusted across it. Mud smeared his face. Blood coated his shield. Bits of flesh clung to the notches of his blackiron sword.
“The Court Wizard comes out to banish us for once and for all!” he howled as our blades met. His voice was loud, brash, meant to impress his rabble. “Will you turn this army to ash like you did the last time?”
He pressed hard against my blade, forcing me to shift my stance. “Not… yet!” I twisted aside and slashed at him.
He dodged and stepped back. “You know what I think, Magister? I don’t think you have any power at all. I think last time you and your magi conspired with evil beyond your ken. No mage alive can call forth the power of the Heavens.”
Oh, how little he knew. Our swords clashed again.
I was going to show him exactly how much power I carried.
I lunged and thrust out my arm toward him. Lightning would have struck before the thought finished forming, but Thorne was quick. Golden cracks of light pulsed across his shield as he drove it forward, chanting, “By sacred right, I break the false arcane!”
A burst of golden force slammed into me. My ribs felt struck from within. The world tilted as I hit the ground.
My senses warped. Copper pooled in my mouth.
Thorne paced around me like a circling shark.
“It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” he spat. “You don’t have the strength to protect this castle. It will be ours before moonrise.”
I snarled. I didn’t strike, not yet. I knew my task. I had to wait for the horn.
Oh, how I longed to crack his skull open with lightning. To see his eyes melt, run from their sockets while the last thing they saw was me.
I rose again, the wolf inside me howling. The storm clawed at my veins, desperate to spill free.
Thorne bared his teeth in an ugly smile. “You look pathetic, Magister, trembling like the scared little boy you are.”
I trembled because I was moments away from unleashing the storm.
“Brace!” he called to his men, though I could not yet guess why. Then he muttered under his breath, “Light of the Heavens, bare the truth and blind the wicked. Let righteous flame reveal all shame, let falsehood be stricken.”
I took a long stride toward him, ready to open him from throat to belly, but he raised his shield and slammed it into the ground.
Cobblestones cracked beneath it. Light erupted, a blinding, devouring radiance that swallowed the battlefield whole.
For a heartbeat, I saw nothing but white. A sight I knew well, though it felt strange when another had conjured it.
Everyone around me—our soldiers, Thalen, the battlemages—reeled from the blast of light, all of them temporarily blinded.
Sounds of blade through flesh echoed around me. Thorne’s men ripped through robes with their swords, cutting down a great many battlemages. Our soldiers, dazed and disoriented, fell to slashed throats and shattered ribs.
Thorne surged toward Thalen, who still shielded his eyes. I had to move, or he would fall next. I had no desire to lose a magister today.
My blade blocked Thorne’s with a thunderous crack. Behind me, Thalen stumbled, tripped, and crashed to the ground. I stepped between him and Thorne, raising steel to meet steel.
At least that old, stubborn fucker was still alive.
That was when the horns of retreat sounded through the city.
Every man and woman on our side knew what it meant. They had ten heartbeats to fall back before I summoned the storm.
Thorne’s men seized the moment to swarm across the bridge and breach the gates.
One.
Our soldiers scrambled for shelter. Thalen and his battlemages withdrew into the dark. I no longer saw them.
Two.
Thorne left me behind and pushed into the courtyard with his swarm of rats, their steel clashing against the guards within.
Three.
I stepped onto the bridge and walked slowly to buy our soldiers some time to hide, toward the courtyard, trailing behind Thorne’s insurrection.
Four.
Steel rang against steel in a wild metal symphony. Lionel stood far off by the castle gates, still as stone, watching the battlefield.
Five.
Some of Thorne’s men noticed me and rushed to cripple me. The storm leaked, and I turned them to ash.
Six.
I was about to do something I had nearly done twice before. At the academy, when I’d stopped the riots with an unending storm. At Drachenfels Keep, when I’d shown Evie my true self. But neither came close to what awaited now.
Because this time I would release it all. Every shred of energy within me, bound to the skies above. All at once.
Seven.
Even I did not know what it would look like. But I was feral for the sight of it.
Dark clouds gathered above the castle, nearly invisible against the night, but I felt them. They called to me. My skin prickled as the air thickened with static.
Eight.
Thorne’s eyes met mine as I crossed the gate. He cackled like a crow, mocking, blind to what stalked his fate. His baptism by storm. Behind me, the streets lay empty.
Nine.
Our guards fell back toward Lionel, forming a wall of steel around him. And when the king saw me, they all fled inside.
I began the release. Slowly. Undoing each chain around the wolf’s cage. Lightning crackled across my skin. My vision glowed.
The sky above shifted and twisted, answering me. Clouds raced, clawing into shape as if descending to meet the earth. They merged into something feral. Something howling.
Wind rose. Dark rain began to fall.
Thorne watched, his scowl fading. I smiled at him before everything vanished and I didn’t see a single thing anymore.
Only white light.
Ten.
Lightning split the sky. Thunder roared through me. The wolf stepped out of the cage and greeted the world, a shockwave ripping from my body and annihilating everything in reach.
That was my magic at its purest—white, explosive, untamed.
I was the one they could not explain, the one they could not control. The wolf’s impossible cub. The elves’ mystery. The academy’s protégé. The king’s secret weapon.
I was a conduit for a storm they either feared or craved, but none could wield.
And I was perfectly fine with that.
Because as I stood at the eye of my storm, my true self bared, my skin mirroring the dark, cracking sky above, I was at peace.
I was one with the storm, and the storm was one with me.
When the wolf was finally bored of its play, it slipped back into its cage, curled into a ball, and slept. It would sleep until sleep itself bored him again.
The light faded. Rain tapped against my skin, tugging me back into the world. My vision settled into what it had been.
I stood there, naked, at the courtyard’s heart, ruin and ash spread around me. Everyone lay dead. Part of the castle had collapsed. Part of the outer wall as well. A few lucky limbs were scattered like grain cast through soot.
The scent of roses reached me. Her hand brushing along my back made me jump.
Evie.
I turned to her. Her eyes were white, her power lit like mine had been. How long had she been standing there beside me while I unleashed the storm?
Color seeped back into her irises. She looked at me, shy and uncertain, lips parted. There was no fear, only pure admiration. And something I dared not name.
And in that breath, the world held still. Ash fell around us like winter snow.