Chapter 8
Where Lightning Once Lived
CAELIRA
As a child I thought it meant storms punished arrogance, that the sky devoured those who mistook its power for their own. But now, staring at the silver carved into my palm, the hum still pulsing faintly beneath my skin, I wasn’t so sure.
Thoughts lingered, ones that I shouldn’t have had, but they lodged anyway.
What if my father’s story wasn’t about a monster at all?
What if the rulers weren’t saviors, but executioners silencing someone they feared?
And what if the storm had chosen him once… and now it was choosing me?
Every small task seemed to splinter beneath my hands, so I retreated to the ledgers instead. Their weight was steady, dependable. The leather was cool beneath my palms, solid in a way nothing else felt. I held them tighter than I meant to.
Rows of numbers, precise and orderly, waited within. If anything could steady the hollow space opening inside of me, it would be the comfort of ink on the page, of something that could be counted, when nothing else seemed certain.
Numbers had long been my refuge, columns and tallies, grain shipments and debts, ink that obeyed rules when the rest of the world didn’t.
I opened the first book smoothing its spine flat, the page smelled faintly of foxglove and ash, parchment worn soft from years of entries. I set the rib to the page, ready to lose myself in ink. My hand stilled.
The numbers blurred, not entirely, not like a mistake of sight, more like water running through the figures, smearing the edges until they rippled. I blinked hard, they sharpened again, steady… as though daring me to doubt what I had seen.
I began tallying grain shipments from Verdant’s outer farms. Two measures of wheat here, half measures of rye there. My script looked neat enough, familiar strokes in each line, but as I added the sums would not sit still.
Four and three made seven, not eight. Then nine. Then seven again, it was as if the numbers themselves were arguing beneath ink.
A tremor rattled my wrist, ink pooled in the loop of a letter, bleeding outward in black veins until they nearly resembled the silver ones beneath my skin. I pulled back, startled, blotting the page with sand until the stain dulled.
“Order,” I whispered to myself. “Just keep the order.”
But even the act of whispering seemed to disturb the stillness of the cabin. The rafters groaned above me, the hearth cracked, sparks scattering across the stone. My gaze flicked to the mark on my palm, it pulsed, silver brightening once with each beat of my heart.
I passed the hand flat to the page, as if weight alone could keep the columns from shifting.
The mark flared, faint but undeniable, silver bleeding across the numbers until they seemed to glow against the parchment.
When I pulled my hand back the glow was gone, yet the page was changed.
The sums were correct now, every figure aligned, every column straight, as though it had never faltered, as though I had only imagined the ruin.
I slammed the ledger shut, the sound should have ended it, ink and parchment silenced by wood, but something lingered. A faint hum, thrummed in the air, as if the storm had left its voice pressed into the page.
The hum wasn’t just in the desk, it crept into the stone under my feet, into the rafters above my head. A string of lavender hanging over the hearth shed petals one by one, though no breeze moved. The kettle on the hook trembled, water lapping against iron as if stirred by an unseen hand.
I stared at the desk, waiting for it to fade. It didn’t. The vibration seemed to seep into the floorboards, into the table, into me. Even the “safe” things, my cabin walls, the bread still cooling, the books that had always been my refuge, felt claimed now, rewritten in ways I couldn’t undo.
A sharp crack against the glass pulled me from the thought. I turned just as the raven’s body struck the window, wings flared wide, scattering black feathers against the pane.
Its cry tore through the silence, too shrill, too knowing, the sound burrowing into the marrow of my bones.
The echo carried longer than it should have, twisting as though words were hidden inside. The raven’s cry bent itself into a word that didn’t belong to the townsfolk at all.
Mine.
A heartbeat later, I could have sworn I heard my own name tangled inside it, faint as breath against glass.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered, though the words scraped raw in my throat.
The pulse in my palm told me otherwise, each beat gleaming silver, undeniable. The silence shifted, titling, listening. Not empty, not passive but watchful, waiting.
My gaze fell to my hand, the mark glowing faintly, answering the storm outside in a rhythm I could no longer dismiss as coincidence. Not an echo, not a curse, but an answer.
The storm had always prowled beyond the glass, beyond the shutters. Now it lived in the wood, the air, my blood.
And if it was listening, then it could hear me too.