StormGate (SilverGate Academy #2)

1. Asha

Asha

“You utter cunt,” I growl. “I should’ve known it was you.”

Matron Yseld gives me a wry smile, and before my eyes, goes from crone to ugly beauty. “Anaxandra. Nice to finally meet you.”

I preen for a second, hearing my true name, and then scowl at her as I rise. No fucker makes me kneel again, not even this bitch. “How? How are you in a painting at SilverGate, lurking in the forests, and now here? Where even is here?”

Yseld straightens, and the throne room responds. Violet fire races through the floor. The columns brighten, revealing script cut into every surface.

“This is a memory held by the archive,” she says. “Mine, not yours.”

“Then get me out.”

“You entered willingly.”

“I walked down an aisle. That isn’t consent to bleed all over someone else’s history.”

She glances at the blood covering my chest. “Your true name caused that. SilverGate still refuses to let you speak it.”

“You just said it.”

“I’m dead.”

I stare at her. “You look irritatingly alive.”

“Records preserve more than words. SilverGate recorded me before my execution. I’ve had centuries to learn how to move through what remains.”

The blood slows, though pain still tears through my throat whenever I breathe. I wipe my chin with the back of my hand and study her face. It’s the same face hidden beneath the damage in those ancient temple carvings. Beautiful once. Severe now. Black eyes hold mine with absolute confidence.

“You found StormGate,” I say. “How? Are creatures in StormGate less powerful than SilverGate?” I still want this question answered.

“No. I syphoned enough of them to turn myself into a goddess.”

Relief strikes first, followed by disgust.

“So you weren’t powerful when you arrived.”

“I was powerful enough to survive.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No. I wasn’t a goddess. I became one.”

“By draining my people.”

“They weren’t your people then.”

“They were never yours.”

Violet fire surges across the floor between us. The throne room darkens at the edges, reacting to my anger or hers. Possibly both.

Yseld’s long black hair falls down her back, and the cloak vanishes to reveal armour marked with symbols from my oldest temples.

I recognise every one.

“You invaded StormGate,” I say.

“I escaped SilverGate.”

“That distinction might help you sleep, but it won’t save your arse from me.”

“I haven’t slept for centuries.”

“Good.”

Her black eyes narrow. “You wear my crown.”

“I improved it.”

“You claimed my throne.”

“I earned it.”

“You carry my current.”

That stops me.

The fire beneath the floor flares hard enough to illuminate the entire chamber. I look down at the gold and purple marks burning beneath my skin.

“No,” I say.

Yseld lifts her hand. Black marks spread from her palm, the same marks carved around the faceless figure beneath SilverGate.

My divine current answers.

Not willingly. Not gently. It surges through my arm with enough force to drive pain into my shoulder. The gold and purple lines shift beneath my skin, reaching towards her before I wrench my hand against my chest.

“You syphoned me,” she says. “Long after my death.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You took the crown from your predecessor. He took it from the one before him. My current passed with it, ruler to ruler, theft to theft.”

I stare at her. “You think the crown made me?”

“I think it gave you access to what remained of me.”

“I was divine before I touched that thing.”

“You were immortal. Powerful, dangerous, and ambitious. You weren’t what you became after you claimed my throne.”

The memory shifts around us. The columns dissolve into violet fire, revealing a battlefield beyond them. Bodies cover black ground beneath a torn sky, and creatures kneel around Yseld while currents of power stream from their bodies into hers.

I watch her consume them.

Winged soldiers drop first. Their bodies collapse while violet power drives into her armour. Horned beasts fall next.

“So that’s your trick,” I say with an eye roll. “Hardly impressive. I took that throne without the need for others’ power.”

She cackles at me. “Your power is my power, you little shit. I want my throne back.”

“Oh,” I say as understanding dawns on my arse. “I see now. When Zether and those other fools exiled me, you caught me at SilverGate because they’re inextricably linked. You did it so you could murder me and get your power back.”

She smiles. “Clever little bitch.”

“It wasn’t that hard to figure it out. You’re hardly being subtle about it. Even your villain speech needs work.”

Her smile vanishes.

I straighten despite the blood soaking my shirt and the pain in my throat. Yseld might have dragged me into her memory and forced me to watch her steal divinity, but she has made one serious error.

She told me what she wants.

Want creates weakness.

“You need me alive,” I say.

“For now.”

“No. That’s not accurate. You need me powerful. If killing this body returned your current, you could’ve done it the moment I arrived. But in this body, I’m useless to you.”

The violet fire dims.

I smile. “You can’t take it from this body.”

“I can when the gate opens.”

“And there it is.”

The battlefield disappears. The throne room rebuilds around us in violent bursts of light, but the throne remains empty. She doesn’t return to it.

“You need me to open the gate,” I continue. “My real body holds your current. This one only carries enough to wake the old systems.”

“You understand very little.”

“I understand you’ve been manipulating me since I landed here. With the book, the tunnels, the carvings in that ridiculous passage. Every clue points me towards the gate because you can’t open it yourself.”

The fire goes out.

Darkness slams into the throne room, but the marks beneath my skin keep burning. Gold and purple light spills over my ruined shirt and catches Yseld’s face.

She looks less pleased now.

“You can’t cross back into StormGate,” I say. “Not without me. Something about the seal keeps you trapped in the space between realms, which is why you’ve spent centuries skulking in a painting.”

“I have been waiting.”

“You have been hiding.”

“From creatures capable of destroying this record.”

“Blackridge.” I take a step towards her. My legs tremble, which annoys me, but I keep moving until only a few feet separate us. “You pretended to help because you needed Hale, Tobin and Leith bound to the ritual.”

“They were already bound to you.”

My satisfaction falters. “What does that mean?”

Yseld smiles again. “You think they found you by chance?”

The throne room shifts. Three currents tear through the floor around me. Fire erupts first, and death follows, cold and black. Silver power cuts between them, bright enough to sting my eyes.

And then I’m back in the restricted section of the library.

I hit the floor on both knees.

Again.

Rage arrives before pain.

I shove upright, but Hale catches me under the arms and hauls me against him. “Where the fuck did you go?”

Tobin stands in front of us with silver power burning over both hands. The restricted archive has erupted into chaos. Cabinets hang open. Chains whip against black glass. Leith has one hand buried in a wall of shadow that cuts across the aisle where I vanished.

They tore the place apart.

“Asha,” Tobin says, too controlled. “What happened?”

I push against Hale’s chest until he sets me down. His hand stays at my waist.

Leith releases the shadow. It collapses into the floor, and every chain in the archive drops silent.

His blue eyes fix on the blood covering my shirt.

“Who did that?”

“Yseld.”

Death-current floods the aisle.

The cabinet beside him cracks straight down the middle. Black glass drops in heavy pieces, but he doesn’t look away from me.

“Where is she?” he asks.

“Dead, alive, trapped in a painting or a record. Pick whichever fits your narrative.”

Hale looks ready to burn the archive down anyway. “She gets the dead option.”

“She might already have it,” I say. “Several times.”

Tobin steps into my space and touches two fingers to my throat. Silver light sinks into the damaged tissue. Pain flares, then eases enough for me to swallow without wanting to execute someone.

“What did she show you?” he asks.

“Her conquest of StormGate. Blackridge was right—colour me not shocked. She syphoned my people until she turned herself into a goddess.”

Leith comes closer. Black current still lashes over his fingers. “What does she want?”

“My throne, her current and my real body.” I wipe the remaining blood from my chin. “She needs us to open the gate. Once I’m through, she plans to take back what passed through the crown.”

Hale’s heat spikes against my side. “She touches you, I burn her.”

“She’s a dead syphon-goddess buried in an archive record,” Tobin says. “Fire may not be enough.”

“Then I’ll keep burning until it is.”

I should find that reassuring. Instead, Yseld’s final words dig deeper into my thoughts.

They were already bound to you.

“She said something else.”

Tobin’s magic stops. “What?”

I consider lying. That lasts half a second.

“She said you didn’t find me by chance.”

Silence fills the aisle.

Hale looks at Tobin. Tobin looks at Leith. Leith watches me with a stillness that turns my irritation into suspicion.

“What?” I demand.

“We didn’t,” Leith says.

My stomach drops. “Explain.”

“The first night you arrived,” Tobin says carefully, “the academy pulled us towards you.”

“No. You were on the stairs when I first saw you.”

“I was in the east laboratory,” he replies. “Then every active current in the room pointed towards those stairs. I followed them.”

Hale releases my waist. The violence running through him needs somewhere to go, and gripping me is no longer safe. Fire crawls over his shoulders. “I was in the training yard. Something hit my chest and dragged me halfway across campus. I thought a rival hound had challenged me.”

“That explains why you arrived looking ready to punch the building,” Tobin says.

“I was ready to punch the building.”

I turn to Leith. “And you?”

His expression remains cold. “I heard your death.”

The archive seems to contract around me.

“You heard what?”

“The moment SilverGate caught you, every dead thing beneath the academy screamed.” His eyes hold mine. “Then they went silent. I followed the silence to you.”

I stare at all three of them.

Fire. Power. Death.

Yseld didn’t find convenient currents after I arrived. SilverGate delivered them to me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t understand it,” Tobin replies. “SilverGate directs creatures constantly. Doors open, corridors shift, wards redirect students. It didn’t seem significant until now.”

“Being magically dragged towards a newly dead goddess didn’t strike you as significant?”

“We didn’t know you were a goddess,” Hale snaps. “You looked like a pissed-off witch with crap shoes.”

“I was a pissed-off goddess with crap shoes.”

“Noted.”

Leith studies the purple current beneath the floor. “Yseld said we were already bound to you. That implies the connection existed before your arrival.”

“That’s impossible. I’d never seen any of you before SilverGate.”

“Not consciously,” Tobin says.

I point at him. “Don’t turn this into one of your smug theories.”

“It isn’t smug if it’s accurate.”

A chain rattles somewhere deeper in the archive.

The sound cuts through our argument. Purple light races beneath the floor, branching into the surrounding aisles. Cabinets slam shut one after another. The archive has recovered from their attack and appears ready to object.

Leith glances towards the sealed entrance. “We need to move. Blackridge is coming.”