Jade
The sun’s setting across the horizon, and the five of us have been having the same argument for over an hour.
Well, not an argument. Arguments go somewhere. What we’re doing is chewing on the same piece of jerky pretending it’s going to turn into steak.
I’m sitting on the bench near what’s left of the front mast—thanks, Scylla, really appreciate you ripping it in half—and my hands are under my thighs because if I touch my bracelet right now, I’ll fidget a hole through my wrist.
Evie’s cross-legged on the deck with her star charts fanned out around her.
“The Pillars should be three days west of Aeaea,” she says, tracing lines on the paper. “We’ve been sailing west for four days, which should mean—”
“It should mean we’re there.” Callie’s at the railing, her arms folded, watching the sunset. “Except we’re not. So either west doesn’t mean what it used to, or the charts are wrong.”
“The charts aren’t wrong.” Evie’s pencil taps on the deck as she stares at the charts so hard you’d think she was trying to burn an answer into existence.
“And the compass is still broken,” Kieran adds from the bow as he sharpens a blade. He’s been sharpening that blade for twenty minutes, the scrape of steel against stone as steady as a metronome, and I don’t know how much sharper it can possibly get.
Evie traces the one of the charts without looking up. “Which is why I’ve been navigating by the stars, except the stars here don’t like staying in the same place, so I’m cross-referencing the academy’s maritime coordinates with a sky that might as well be—”
“Random,” Callie finishes.
“I was going to say unfamiliar.”
“You were going to say random and dress it up.”
Heat shimmers off Evie’s skin.
I yank my hands out from under my thighs. “Can we stop talking about the compass and the charts?” I snap, miraculously getting their attention. “We’ve been going back and forth about navigation for days.”
“Then what should we be talking about?” Evie snaps back at me.
“Maybe the reason why we’re out here. Circe told us the Blood Coven resurrected Ambrogio, they want to turn themselves into Revenants, and that the cosmic goddesses chose champions to stop it. That’s me. That’s what my lightning’s for. That’s why Tempest—”
“See, this is where you lose me.” Callie holds up one hand, palm out, like she’s directing traffic. “Every single time.”
Don’t spark. Don’t spark. Don’t spark.
“I stayed on the boat, so I didn’t talk to Circe,” Callie continues. “I didn’t see the loom. All I have is your version of it.”
“It’s not my version. It’s the truth.” My thumb digs into the sigil on my palm hard enough to draw blood. “Evie was there. Kieran was there. They—”
“They saw a burning thread on a loom.” Callie tilts her head.
“I believe that part. What I’m less sure about is the interpretation.
A sorceress who’s been isolated on an island for centuries tells you you’re a goddess’s chosen champion, that the original vampire has been resurrected from the Underworld, that he’s turning supernaturals into a supercharged vampire army, and we’re just accepting this with no questions or skepticism? ”
“What, exactly, are you skeptical about?” I ask, and it takes everything in me to calm the electricity in my veins that’s begging me to shock that smug smile off her face.
“I have lightning magic. Witches don’t have lightning magic.
So where did mine come from? Because it didn’t show up one day for funsies.
It showed up because Tempest touched my forehead during a lightning storm and gave it to me. ”
“And she told you this?”
I stop. “What?”
“Did Tempest tell you all of this?” Callie’s eyebrows lift.
“Did she explicitly say, ‘I’m choosing you as my celestial champion, here’s some lightning, go save the world from a resurrected vampire who’s creating a supernatural army to storm the heavens so he can steal the goddess he loves away from a dream realm she’s living in with her human lover? ’”
My mouth opens and closes, because when she says it that way, it does sound a bit far-fetched.
“Has Circe spoken to this ‘Blood Coven?’” she asks, measured and quiet in a way that’s somehow worse than shouting. “Has she seen Ambrogio? How do we know what she’s saying has any merit at all, and that she’s not just a sorceress doing what all immortals love to do—meddling in mortal affairs?”
She has a point.
No. Shut up. She does NOT have a point.
I look at Logan.
He’s leaning against the railing, his arms crossed, his eyes tracking between Callie and me with a completely neutral expression.
Say something, I think. You told me you’d seen the term Revenant in old texts. You were helping me research it.
Then, finally, he speaks.
“We should be careful about what we treat as fact,” he says, calm and level in a way that makes frustration boil in my blood.
“Circe gave us information. Some of it matches what the Headmistress said, and that’s worth paying attention to.
But it never hurts to remain skeptical of everything you hear.
To never assume that because one person says something, it’s true. ”
I stare at him, and the deck feels like it drops out from under me.
Because this is the man who whispered I love you against my skin more times than I can count, who time-traveled gods know how many times to keep me alive.
And now he’s standing here with his arms crossed, using his proctor voice, calling the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me a lie?
The others aren’t doing anything better. Evie’s staring at the star charts as if they hold the secrets to the universe, and Kieran keeps sharpening that damn blade.
I look at Logan one more time, but he doesn’t speak.
“Fine.” The word tastes bitter in my mouth. “Great. Nobody believes me.”
Evie shifts uncomfortably. “That isn’t what they said.”
“No, Evie, it’s okay. We need more data.
We need to be critical.” Sparks crack between my fingers, sharp and bright, and the wind picks up around the boat.
“I’ve got storm magic I can’t control, a goddess who ghosted me, an army of supercharged vampires that wants to kill me, and no one on this boat thinks any of it’s real, but—”
Suddenly, the sky splits.
One second the sunset’s bleeding copper across the water, then it’s swallowed by a wall of black clouds. The wind hits the boat sideways, and Evie’s charts rip off the deck, spinning into the dark before she can grab them.
“Jade!” Logan grabs my arm, and I wrench it away. “Find the sphere—”
“There is no sphere!”
Thunder crashes through the deck, through the hull, and through my bones.
The boat lurches so hard I stagger into the railing and grab on.
Cold rain hits in a wall, plastering my hair to my face and soaking through my clothes in seconds.
There’s salt water in my eyes, my mouth, and my lungs, and then electricity’s arcing off my hands and scorching the wood, as if it has a mind of its own.
Stop stop stop stop—
I can’t.
Everyone keeps telling me to control it, like there’s a switch in my body, like I can reach inside my chest and politely ask the storm to take a seat.
But there is no switch. The storm is me.
My rage is the wind tearing at the sails.
My guilt is the rain hammering the deck.
My fear is the lightning searching for a target.
Then, Evie’s magic explodes into a shimmering dome of heat that spreads out and encloses the boat.
The rain evaporates when it hits the shield, hissing into steam and filling the air with scorched metal fog. The wind bends around the edges, the storm’s roar turning muffled. Her arms are shaking, and sweat’s beading at her temples, evaporating instantly from the heat rolling off her skin.
“Evie, drop it!” Logan calls through the steam, his eyes flat and calculating. “If you burn out, you collapse. If you collapse overboard, you drown.”
He time traveled, I realize. He tested which words work the fastest, and now he’s using them to save us all from whatever Evie did in a timeline we’ll never have to live.
“Two Thornes lost at sea.” He stalks slowly toward her, holding her gaze in challenge and stopping a few feet away. “Is that what Oliver would have wanted?”
Evie makes a sound like she’s been punched in the stomach.
The dome drops, rain crashes back, and my whole body goes electric with fury.
Because Logan weaponized Oliver to break Evie’s concentration, and I know he rewound time to find those exact words.
It’s the cruelest, most efficient combination, because that’s what Logan does.
He optimizes, he calculates, he finds the fastest path between two points, and he doesn’t care who he crushes to do it.
The storm surges, and I look up at the swirling clouds, as if they hold every secret and answer that no one’s wanted to give me.
“Tempest!” Her name rips out of my throat, aimed at the black sky. “I know you can hear me!”
Bolt after bolt of lightning slams into the water around us, so close together that it’s like we’re in a cage of silver fire.
“You put this in me and left!” A wave slams me sideways, and I’m on my knees on the flooded deck, grabbing the bench as saltwater burns my eyes. “I can’t do this alone! I can’t—”
Pressure pushes down from the sky, foreign and wrong, its magic so big it makes my lightning feel like static electricity.
And then, a figure steps down through the clouds. The storm literally parts for him, and he descends through the gap, the wind solidifying beneath his feet with each step he takes.
He’s tall in a way that doesn’t make sense. His skin’s the blue-gray of storm clouds, and his hair is silver-white, whipping in winds that aren’t the same winds hitting us, as if he’s carrying his own weather system.
Then, he lands on the ocean.
Not in. On. He’s standing on the surface of churning water like it’s a floor, the waves going flat under his feet.
There’s an ancient leather bag in his hand, and when he holds it out to me, it’s like someone’s reaching through my ribs, grabbing the live wire wrapped around my soul, and ripping the storm out of me.
Lightning cracks and pours inside the bag, wind screaming after it. Rain bends horizontal, streaming into leather that shouldn’t be able to hold a puddle, let alone a storm.
My vision goes white. My ears ring in the nothing. The ocean is glass, the clouds are gone, and the air is still, minus one soft breeze.
He cinches the bag shut with one sharp pull, and the contempt in his pale, luminous eyes when he looks at me…
I’ve been looked at like I’m nothing before. My ex did it when he told me I didn’t fit his plan. My parents did it every time my grades came back as anything less than an A, which was more times than not. Vera does it twice a day as a hobby.
This is different. This is someone looking at me and seeing something specific that they hate.
“That’s Tempest’s magic,” he says, her name coming out of his mouth like it’s poison he’s been holding on his tongue for centuries. “Which means she apparently has a terrible taste in champions.”