Her mother lifted the first relic from the box, and the hair on Rora’s arms stood on end. The air crackled, and she felt far more residual magic standing close to her mother than she ever felt holding the stones herself.
This Stormheart was a cloudy, pearlescent stone and represented skyfire, the strongest of her family’s five affinities. When those jagged bolts of white fire streaked down from the sky, dozens all at once, it was her mother who protected the city of Pavan. And now that Aurora had turned eighteen, she would be expected to join in the fight the next time dark clouds rolled over their lands.
“Light in your blood, skyfire bows to you,” her mother murmured before settling the stone into the hollow that had been left for it in the center of the ceremonial headdress. Rora shivered, and her mother’s eyes darted quickly to hers. Queen Aphra interrupted the ritual to ask, “Did you—?”
There was such hope in her voice that Rora couldn’t bring herself to meet the queen’s eyes as she shook her head. Frowning, her mother bent to pick up the next Stormheart. This one was a deep ruby, thin and sharp like a shard of glass.
“Fire in your blood, firestorms bow to you.”
Firestorms built quickly with little warning, and hot embers fell like hail. They could singe straight through skin; and in the flat, grassy kingdom of Pavan, they could set the land ablaze in a blink. It was said to be the rarest of all affinities. Carefully, the queen slotted the gem into an open space on Rora’s necklace. It lay over her sternum with the sharp point coming to rest at the top of her cleavage. Several smaller versions of the crystalline lightning bolts that adorned her headdress fanned across her collarbone on each side of the bloodred Stormheart.
The queen added four more hearts to the ensemble, speaking the words that her father had once spoken to her. A flat blue stone set into a bracelet for thunderstorms. The heart of a windstorm, gray and cylindrical, slid into a socket on a thin silver belt around Rora’s waist. A jagged slate-gray piece for fog adorned her other wrist. And last, her mother lifted a silver ring adorned with a small black jewel. It was the only Stormheart in the box that wasn’t ancient.
No, this Stormheart was barely twelve years old. Rora’s brother, Alaric, had stolen it from a twister that had touched down near the southwestern border of their territory. Stormling families were limited to the affinities they inherited from their original Stormling ancestors, but some believed it possible, though wildly dangerous, to gain a new affinity in the same way the first Stormlings were said to have done—by stealing the heart of a storm and absorbing its magic. At eighteen, Alaric believed he could take down a twister and gain the Pavan family another affinity.
He’d been wrong. He had thrust his hand into the heart of the storm to claim it as his own. And when the battle was almost won, the storm’s winds returned the favor, thrusting a tree branch through the heart of the Pavan heir.
The few devout priests in the kingdom who still followed the old gods had claimed it a reminder from the skies not to reach above one’s stars. Sometimes Aurora wondered if they weren’t still being punished.
The ring did not rouse at the queen’s touch, but remained a cold, dead gem as she slipped it onto Rora’s finger. It only would have worked for Alaric or his offspring. Rora and her mother pretended it was just a normal ring. Just as Rora always pretended to be something she wasn’t. And her mother pretended she wasn’t disappointed with her daughter. And that they all wouldn’t have been better off if Alaric had lived.
Rora would keep pretending, through the celebrations and the wedding after that. And then her entire life. She would pretend that she did not desperately wish she were better. Different. More.
Her mother took her shoulders in that familiar hard grip. “Remember, be confident and controlled. Do not let them intimidate you.”
“I won’t.”
“Do not speak more than you must. Keep a tight rein on your temper lest you—”
“Lest I give myself away. I know, Mother.”
The queen paused, the curve of her lips pushing into a frown. “I know this isn’t ideal. I wish we had all the time you could want and could wait to find you a love match or at least someone of your choosing.”
“But we don’t. We are out of time. I understand.”
Arranged marriages were rare in Pavanian royal history. Often, rulers chose for love, like her mother and father. Others held contests of skill for young nobles to prove themselves to the heir. But soon the skies would bruise and bleed and howl as the Rage season drew its first breath, and if Aurora was not married by then, her own little kingdom of lies would topple.
“Promise me you will try to find the good in this. To find some happiness,” the queen said.
Rora nodded. She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother how impossible she thought that was with a man as hard and cold as Cassius Locke, the second son of the Locke kingdom. The Lockes by reputation were cunning, smart, and as vicious as the storms that plagued their city by the sea. If she showed a weakness, she had no doubt they would exploit it. And if they learned exactly what all the jewels and powder and fine fabrics hid? Aurora’s last hope to keep her kingdom would unravel.
“Are you ready?” her mother asked.
A small part of Aurora screamed in revolt; she wanted to ask for permission to leave, to disappear into the wildlands and find another life. But the queen had lost enough in this life. Her husband succumbed to a disease that her magic couldn’t touch. And her son had captured a storm’s heart at the expense of his own. And the only one she had left, her daughter … her daughter looked the part of the perfect Stormling princess—so impressive, so ethereal, that no one would ever dare to think the truth.
That she had no storm magic at all.
*
Aurora’s muscles twitched involuntarily as she stood outside the throne room, as if her body might decide to run without her mind’s consent. Two of her guards, Taven and Merrin, waited a few steps behind her. They followed her inside, and an eerie silence took hold after the heavy doors closed.
Moments later Cassius Locke melted out of the shadows, looking more like a villain than a prince—dressed all in black with dark hair and eyes to match. At twenty, he was a mere two years older than she. But the prince before her seemed bigger, older … much more a man than she had expected. He reminded her of those thunderstorms that stalled on the horizon—growing bigger and darker as they churned in on themselves.