48. Storm
Storm
SERAPHAE
“Caelan!” I screamed.
He was fighting it. Every muscle locked, hands pressed flat against the stone, trying to hold something inside himself that wanted out with everything it had.
His hands covered his face as an agonized scream tore out of him.
Mallas watched, his face awestruck as if he was watching something beautiful unfold.
“Let go,” he said softly. “You’ve been holding it for two centuries. Just let go.”
“You’re insane.” My voice came out wrecked. “It will kill everyone.”
Mallas waved a hand. “You and I will be fine.” He glanced down at me with pity. “Can’t say the same for the rest of the kingdom.”
I looked at Caelan.
He was still fighting. Barely. The magic wanted out, and it was stronger than him in this moment because he had just been broken, had just felt the bond sever, and was trying to hold two catastrophes at once.
“Caelan.”
He didn’t respond.
“Caelan.” Louder this time.
His head turned.
The shadows faltered. Slightly. Just for a moment.
I moved.
Mallas didn’t stop me. My legs were shaking and my hand was still bleeding and the drug hadn’t fully cleared my system, but I crossed the courtyard and I took his face in both my hands.
“Come back,” I pleaded.
His eyes were entirely dark.
“It’s no use, Sera,” Mallas said from behind me. “Monsters can’t be tamed.”
I ignored him and kept my eyes on Caelan.
“You’re not a monster.” My thumbs pressed against his jaw. “You can control it. You’ve always been able to control it.” My voice broke. “You won’t hurt me. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Sera.” A whisper. His voice, but barely. “I can’t. He’s too strong. The magic—”
“Then we do it the way we always do it.” I pressed my forehead to his. “Together.”
He looked at me.
“I’m with you,” I said. “If you’re a monster, then I’ll be the spine that keeps you standing. If you’re a storm, then I’ll be the eye you gather around. No matter what happens, I’m with you.”
Black pulled away from his eyes like curtains until only blue remained.
I felt it before it happened. The familiar channel, the one that had existed since the Hollow, since the cathedral, since every time I had reached for his magic and it had reached back. The bond was gone, but the recognition wasn’t.
That was ours.
That had always been ours.
The untamed came through me like a tide. Heat flared from where I touched his skin, gathering in my core before it spread to my hand. An orb began to gather behind Caelan’s back.
Shadows continued to dance around us.
I looked at Mallas, who was looking at us like he knew the outcome and was waiting for us to reach it.
He’d been wrong.
I extended my palm, a sizable orb already formed, toward him.
His smile stalled, and he raised a hand too late.
I detonated.
The shockwave hit the courtyard in a ring. Stone cracked. Torches guttered. Every Winter soldier that remained on their feet went down.
Maelor braced himself with his arms, but Mallas’s ice kept him pinned to the ground.
Mallas hit the far wall.
He slid down it slowly with a grunt. White hair falling across his face, blood at his lip. His hands pressed flat against the ground, and he was laughing.
“That,” he looked up. “Was unexpected.”
Ice burst from the ground the moment he finished speaking.
It came up in jagged pillars, sharp enough to skewer. I shoved Caelan sideways, and the spike split the space he had been in.
He separated us with a wall of ice.
“I admit.” Mallas turned toward me. “You truly are something special.”
My right hand trembled uselessly at my side. I snatched a fallen spear from the ground with my left hand and hurled it at Mallas’s face.
He didn’t even look at it. The ice on the ground curved and swallowed the weapon whole before it could reach him.
Show-off.
Shadows lashed out from Caelan in black ribbons that cracked like whips. Lightning followed, white veins tearing through the air. His hand shook as he tried to keep the rest of his magic contained while using what he knew how to use.
Mallas raised a hand, and the courtyard froze. A sheet of ice raced across the stone in a rush.
I completely lost my footing and hit the ground hard enough to see stars. Cold burned through the fabric of my dress and the skin of my palms.
Caelan had slid a whole three yards before catching himself with a tendril of shadows wrapped around a column. He launched a fireball and it hit Mallas square in the chest.
Mallas was forced back a step.
The fire singed his robes before it was smothered by ice that folded over his entire body like ice armor.
Fantastic.
I forced myself upright, boots skidding on the slick surface.
“Sera!” Maelor yelled.
I spun toward him in time to see a gold object hurled at my feet. Gold slid across the ice. The dagger. The gold one that bonded Caelan and me.
The dagger felt wrong in my left hand.
His magic was too strong for me. But I could at least distract him.
I ran at him.
Mallas noticed me immediately. A flick of his wrist sent a wave of frost toward my ribs. I twisted and felt it slice fabric and skin instead of bone. Pain flared bright, and I hissed, but I did not slow.
Caelan’s lightning struck from above, splitting the air open. It slammed into Mallas’s shoulder, shattering a part of the ice plating his shoulder and chest.
I slid the remaining distance on my knees and straightened as I got close.
He looked down, but it was too late.
I drove my dagger upward into the exposed gap. My left hand was too weak. It didn’t go deep, but it was enough.
Mallas hissed and grabbed my throat. He lifted me clean off the ground like I weighed nothing.
“Did you think that would—”
A fireball hit him.
Mallas flew sideways with me still in his grip.
We hit the ground together. I rolled free just as another fireball detonated against his ribs. The armor cracked.
He retaliated with a storm of shards. Hundreds of them coming down like glass rain.
Another fireball went past his guard, and he lost his footing.
I threw myself sideways, but it wasn’t enough. The shards came down fast.
A tendril of shadow swept up in front of it like a crude shield. The shards shattered against the dark mass. One got through and cut clean across my arm.
Lightning gathered in Caelan’s palm. Brighter and wider than I’d ever seen it.
“Don’t,” I croaked, scrambling to my feet. “You’ll lose control.”
His eyes flickered to me. Storm blue, barely contained.
The sky above Twilight was partially cloaked with darkness, but the magic had stopped leaving Caelan. It thundered in agreement.
A lightning strike came down and struck something in the distance. The sky pressed inward as if waiting to see which side he’d choose.
His shoulders shook with effort. Then he cursed, closed his hand into a fist, and smothered the lightning with it.
Mallas was on his feet again. Shards of ice were flung violently.
Caelan pivoted narrowly, one striking him across the cheek. Blood slid down his jaw.
We couldn’t fight Mallas like this.
My eyes scanned the ice wall that separated us.
“Caelan.” I met his gaze, held it.
Understanding flickered across them before he nodded once.
Lightning sparked along his arms, and a sphere of fire spun in his palms as the lightning fed into it.
Mallas was close. Close enough that it made me an immediate problem.
I grabbed a discarded sword and ran at him, praying to all the gods not to let me slip.
Mallas snapped toward me immediately and lifted his hand. A shard, long and sharp like a blade, formed before shooting toward my face.
I dropped low, the momentum and ice carrying me across the distance. Not at him, but past him. With both hands and all that I had, I drove the sword into his foot, impaling it to the ice.
A scream tore out of him, and he buckled.
I spun with the momentum and swung in a wide arc around him, scrambled to my feet, and ran.
Caelan hurled a fireball with his left hand as the sphere in his right kept building. It flew past close enough for me to feel the heat.
Almost there.
Then, with a crackle in the air, he sent the fire and lightning flying.
Not to Mallas.
To the wall.
It tore through ice, sending frost exploding from the impact.
Cold splashed my face as I ran directly into it.
Caelan threw another fireball. “Down!” he yelled.
I dropped low and watched as a shard of ice flew past above me, sliding the rest of the way.
I slammed into Caelan’s chest, his arm coming around me, eyes still on Mallas.
I spun, one arm trembling around his neck, the other extended toward Mallas.
All of it, I told myself. I need it all.
I inhaled sharply as Caelan’s magic surged through me.
Heat ignited from where my skin touched his, through my core and into my left palm as an orb of light grew. And grew.
Lightning crackled, a storm forming in the sky. Dark and foreboding.
If Caelan was storms and shadows.
I was the sun that ended winters.
It detonated in a single catastrophic surge. Everything went white. Pillars shattered. Stone cracked. Trees split. The sound of armor hitting the ground. Screams and groans cut through the yard.
Caelan and I flew backward, him hitting the stone wall and me crashing against him. We hit the ground as one.
I steadied myself and choked once on nothing. Caelan kept his arm around my waist protectively.
Mallas had hit the other wall, which was split clean down the middle. He had crumbled to the ground in front of it and was on his knees.
For a long moment, no one moved as the debris cleared.
Then he coughed. Blood spilled over his hand, dark against the frost-silver ground. He laughed weakly, breathing hitching before he fell over.
Caelan stood and pulled me up with him.
“Well,” Mallas said, lying on the ground, the sheet of ice dissolving underneath. “That was…painful.”
Caelan looked at me, then took my hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
“Be right back.” He smiled, painfully, before going to his brother.
Mallas laughed again before choking and coughing wet sounds.
For a long moment, Caelan only stood over Mallas. Something passed between them. Caelan’s hands were loosely at his sides.
I moved across the yard to kneel next to Maelor.
He groaned and rolled onto his side.
Mallas was close enough now that I could see blood on his face, brightening his gray eyes.
He propped himself up onto his elbows and stared at Caelan with a sinister smile, teeth red with blood.
“Remember how, when we were young, you said you’d never let anything happen to me?” he murmured. “So I learned that all I needed to do was stand behind you.”
A wet laugh.
Caelan said nothing. Just stood there.
“Want to know a secret?” Mallas said, eyes flickering across Caelan’s face like he wanted to memorize it. Or his reaction. “When you were eight, I fed you silversap.”
My stomach lurched.
Caelan tensed. Fist clenched. Eyes darkening with rage.
Lightning crackled in the sky above.
“I wanted to see if would make you lose control.” Mallas laughed weakly. “But it did more than that. It was lovely.”
Caelan’s shoulder trembled once. Just once.
He had been careful not to let anything show on his face.
I could tell by the way his jaw clenched tight.
But it did nothing to stop a single stubborn tear.
For a moment, all I saw was a little boy, looking down at the only brother who ever showed him kindness.
But that kindness had been a lie from the beginning.
And the brother he loved most was the one who had taught him how to suffer.
My heart broke.
Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at Mallas.
Monsters weren’t born in the dark. They were raised beside you in the light.
Maelor tried to move, but hissed and collapsed back down.
Caelan’s gaze lifted to me, his eyes red, expression broken.
My hands shook, not from pain but from anger.
In the moment where Caelan had turned, Mallas moved.
It was subtle at first. The way his face twisted into an ugly snarl. His gray eyes flickered amber and latched onto Caelan like a predator hunting prey.
He raised a hand.
An icicle formed.
Caelan was frozen, eyes on me.
“Caelan!” I screamed, but he did not move. Did not even turn to see his brother, still trying to kill him.
The world slowed. My pulse kicked, and air left my lungs. I was up on my feet and was reaching for the gold dagger at the side of the courtyard when the thought came. There wasn’t enough time. I wasn’t going to make it.
My hand closed around the hilt. But Mallas and Caelan were still half the courtyard away. The icicle had fully formed.
Mallas shot the icicle.
“No!” I lunged anyway.
The shadow behind Caelan moved, and Riven stepped out of it—directly into the icicle.
It shattered against steel.
Riven swung his blade, the movement sending frost flying across the courtyard. The momentum ended when he plunged the blade into Mallas’s arm.
An agonizing scream tore out of Mallas that dragged on until he ended it with a wet cough.
Riven stood over Mallas. Face bloodied, one arm held at the wrong angle. His jaw clenched tight, white knuckles gripping the hilt of his blade.
I ran to him.
I wasn’t sure what Riven was expecting when he turned at the sound of my footsteps, but it wasn’t me throwing my arms around him.
He went completely rigid. Every muscle locked as he stood there with my face pressed into his chest.
“You’re alive,” I breathed. “Gods. You’re alive.”
His arm came up after a moment and held me for just a second.
I pulled back and turned to Caelan.
His eyes stayed on Mallas as he lay there, pinned by Riven’s blade.
Mallas had stopped screaming. Eyes rolling back and body giving way. For a moment, I thought he was dead, but his chest rose. Shallow, but breathing nonetheless.
Caelan didn’t look away, didn’t move.
Not when Twilight’s army arrived and arrested Mallas. Not when Riven and Maelor left the courtyard along with everyone else.
He stayed that way, frozen in time as the world moved carefully around him.
I touched his hand first. Slowly, giving him every chance to pull away.
He didn’t.
My fingers threaded into his, and I leaned my face against his arm.
We stood there in silence.
The sky partially cloaked in darkness, looking just as broken as the prince beneath it.
But this time, he had his light.